myArmoury.com - Reliable sellers of medieval manuscripts?

Chad,

Please do not buy leaves or folios.

The trade in individual leaves and folios is a vicious one. It leads to people cutting books up. Intellectually and culturally, a book is worth more than the sum of its leaves, but financially, it is almost always more lucrative to sell them in pieces. So long as there is a market for leaves, there will be someone there to cut books into bits to take advantage of that market.

One might argue that if the seller owns the book, it is his to do with as he pleases. This is very short sighted, as it robs our descendents of their cultural patrimony.

If you are concluding that you can personally live with that, let me point out that this trade in old leaves has an even darker side. Some of the items for sale have come from cutting leaves out of library books. Perhaps you remember how Professor Melnikas was caught cutting rare and valuable leaves out of books in the Vatican library in 1995. He was a high profile tip of an iceberg. Ask any librarian you know about book cutters and you will hear horror stories. Ask them privately, though, because librarians are loathe to admit that the books in their custody have been raped this way. It is in the nature of the crime that the victimized libraries don't talk much about it, lest they lose the confidence and financial support of their institution and their donors .

Friends don't let friends buy parts of old books.

Mac

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