This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Sir John Gage, a key figure in Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, saved a dangerous Catholic book from likely destruction, a new study suggests. The identification of six lost pages of a medieval bestseller—illicitly prized by Catholics in the Reformation—as belonging to Gage, exposes the split loyalties of one of Tudor England's great survivors.
Fans of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy will recall Gage appearing as a religious conservative and yet dependable enforcer for Henry VIII, as Constable of the Tower and Privy Counsellor. But new research suggests a bold act of subterfuge by Gage, in which he shielded a treasured Catholic text from the very destruction the king ordered him to enforce. Archival sleuthing by researchers from the University of Sussex and the University of Cambridge has reunited six fragile pages in The Keep archive in Brighton, England, with a manuscript held 3,500 miles (5,600 kilometers) away at Yale University in the United States: Nicholas Love's early 15th-century Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ.
Katie Walter from the University of Sussex and Dr. James Wade from Girton College, Cambridge, overcame a cataloging puzzle that had frustrated scholars for nearly a century, leaving the fragment "hiding in plain sight." Their study is published today in the journal Notes and Queries. A trail of clues left by various archivists and scholars eventually led Wade and Walter to a digitized manuscript known as "Takamiya MS 20" held by the Beinecke Library at Yale University.
Scrolling through it, they found the gap where The Keep pages belonged—just before a controversial passage on the importance of oral confession to a priest—and matched the scribe's handwriting and the content of the missing passage to prove the connection. On the final page of the Yale manuscript, among a list of names of likely owners, including those of two religious women, is Gage's signature. Walter says, "The fact that two possible owners before Gage were religious women suggests the manuscript might have been in a monastic house before it came into his possession.
The dissolution of the monasteries led to the destruction of many books, but others were taken and then circulated through informal networks. Considering Gage's active role in the dissolution, it's very possible he acquired the book during this chaos." Wade says, "One possibility is that Gage went to a monastic library and brought it home. Another is that someone else smuggled it out, and it briefly circulated from hand to hand until Gage acquired it.
The key thing is—he kept it safe when he was meant to destroy books precisely like this one." Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ went from being an approved, orthodox bestseller in the early 15th century to a "risk to life" book in the English Reformation a century later. Love completed his English translation and adaptation of an earlier Latin text around 1409, at a moment of intense anxiety about the rise and spread of heretical beliefs. The Lollards, a proto-Protestant religious movement, were boldly arguing that people should have access to the Bible in English and challenging the role of the pope and priests.
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