[MR] BBC: Manuscript with Henry VIII

[Garth Groff]

Noble Friends,

This may be one of the most interesting stories from our period of 
interest I've yet encountered. The VAUX PASSIONAL, a manuscript held for 
90 years by the National Library of Wales, was discovered to have an 
illumination featuring the young Henry VIII mourning his mother. The 
image was only given careful analysis when it was recently digitized.

Here's the BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20003806

More illuminations from the VAUX manuscript: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20006163

The Library's home page for the VAUX digitization: 
http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=5926 . Note that links to their 
other digitized manuscripts are shown on the menu bar on the left. 
There's enough cool stuff to keep any Scadian busy for a long time.

Of related interest, RENAISSANCE magazine has a regular feature called 
"Digitizing Rare Manuscripts" which offers brief reviews and links to 
new items. This month they link a catalog of digitized medieval 
manuscripts from UCLA. This catalog is eventually intended to offer 
access to all the world's digital manuscripts, a tall order. The URL is 
http://manuscripts.cmrs.ucla.edu/index.php .

For those of who who weren't aware (I wasn't, and I work here in my 
modern guise), UVA has a digital archive of the Douglas H. Gordon 
Collection of French Books, including a number of rare 16th century 
manuscripts (some illuminated): 
http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/digitalcuration/portfolio/gordon/completed_titles.html 
.

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, Shire of Isenfir's Unofficial Librarian