We have prints from the Saint John’s Bible on display in the Baer and, to complement these contemporary hand-illuminated folios, some of our own medieval texts are on show next door in the Permanent Collection Gallery. These pages must be among the oldest objects – give or take a few fossils – in the college’s holdings. 
This vellum page (right) from a Vulgate Bible is the earliest in the collection. It dates from 1230, and for me the most evocative marks on the page are the gridlines that must have been carefully drawn in the scriptorium to guide the artist’s hand (detail below).
I’ve been told the college purchased these pages from an itinerant pedlar who saw no shame in separating leaves from their parent volumes. The exquisite example at top comes from a French breviary of 1390: The initial letters are gilded and the foliage is painted in a rare green pigment. 
