English scholars reunite missing pages of centuries-old Catholic text

English researchers have reunited an incomplete manuscript of The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ with several long-lost pages. Professors Katie Walter of the University of Sussex and James Wade of Girton College at the University of Cambridge published their findings in the journal Notes and Queries.

The researchers identified the missing fragments in the East Sussex public records office. They determined that these pages belonged to a fuller manuscript held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. That specific copy was previously known to scholars as having belonged to John Gage, a Tudor-era royal courtier.

The text is a translation of a 14th-century devotional work by the English monk Nicholas Love. It was a popular book among English Catholics before the Reformation. Wade noted that Gage spent much of his life as a Catholic during the period of the English Reformation.