Customer Reviews

Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections (Medieval & Renaissance Manusc)

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This modestly-sized book is primarily concerned with listing the location of all medieval manuscripts and manuscript fragments in New Zealand. Now, that seems pretty obvious, based on the title, but you have no idea how literal the title is until you peruse this book.

Some of the better items are pictured in the section of the book devoted to plates. There are a fair number of both black and white and color reproductions. Otherwise, the book is mostly one huge list of title and provenance for New Zealand manuscripts. While the provenance items often contain some interesting tidbits about manuscript history, there is not really enough to make the book truly informative and useful for someone not living in New Zealand and looking for a list of manuscripts to request access for study.

I thought, based on the title, that this would be an exhibition catalogue of some sort, but it is not, not really. It's just not in the same league as Weick's <i>Painted Prayers</i> and other works of that ilk. Nor is the text informative enough to put this book at the same level as, say, de Hamel's <i>A History of Illuminated Manuscripts.</i>

That said, the book does have some good qualities. Again, there are a number of interesting tidbits contained in the various lists, and a number of the plates are artistically interesting. I would not suggest that someone looking for a coffee table book select this volume, but it is an acceptable addition to the collection if you collect books about illuminated manuscripts.

The fun thing about a book like this is that it presents the type of books real people actually own! Chris de Hamel wrote elsewhere that you can still buy a real medieval page for a very reasonable price. It would be a page like what's in this book rather than something in the Tres Riches Heures. Most manuscripts were pretty and attainable by moderately wealthy middle-class people, not necessarily the Duke of Berry! For people that collect fragments, or maybe get a nice music page for Christmas, this is the type of book that can orient you better than the greatest treasures of the greatest collections. These volumes travelled far to get all the way to New Zealand, and there are a couple of good masterpieces, notably the Wharncliff Hours and the Eastern French Missal. But most of the items are good, solid, decent, but not wildly important manuscripts.