Missing Pages of Henry VIII Manuscript Rediscovered

Six pages, missing for centuries from a 600-year-old religious manuscript, have resurfaced. This book once belonged to an attendant of King Henry VIII and offers insights into the religious changes and shifting loyalties of the Tudor court.

The book, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, was a popular religious text translated by monk Nicholas Love early in the 15th century. Owning a copy indicated adherence to Catholic piety, emphasizing sacraments, confession, and transubstantiation.

James Wade of the University of Cambridge notes its importance as it sat at the intersection of orthodox and dissenting beliefs, becoming a marker for identifying heresy.

John Gage, an aristocrat serving Henry VIII, was tasked with managing monastic properties during the king's break with the Catholic Church. Gage, a devout Catholic himself, kept his copy of Mirror rather than surrender it.

The book remained with Gage's family until 1976, when a descendant sold it at auction to collector Toshiyuki Takamiya. Takamiya later donated his collection to Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where the manuscript was digitized. However, it was incomplete.

Now, the six missing pages, which detail Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, have been located. Their separation occurred when the binding stitches loosened, and the pages were inadvertently left out during a later repair.

These loose leaves ended up within Gage family estate records, changing hands before reaching an archive in Brighton, England. Researchers James Wade and Katie Walter of the University of Sussex suspected a connection between the archive's pages and the digitized manuscript.

In a recent study published in Notes and Queries, Walter and Wade detailed their findings. By comparing the dimensions, annotation styles, and header colors of both documents, they confirmed they were once part of the same text.

"We identified what the six pages were," Wade stated, "and then we started looking at existing manuscripts of the Mirror to match it up, and we found the connection."

While the pages are now found, their reunification with the main manuscript is uncertain. As these pages are invaluable historical artifacts, their future is a complex decision.

"I'm pretty sure that, no, they won't be reconnected," Wade commented, "But it's useful to reconstruct medieval objects. Yes, this book is incomplete, but now you know where to find what's missing."