Inside Salisbury: Rare book could be returned to Salisbury Cathedral after 800 years

13th Century Bible illuminated by one of the greatest artists of his time.

By Annette J Beveridge

AN URGENT campaign has been set up to return a rare book to Salisbury after almost 800 years.

The campaign was set up by Friends of the Nations’ Libraries (FNL) and there is less than 90 days to raise £90,000. If the campaign to purchase the book is successful, it will be donated to Salisbury Cathedral.

The 13th Century Bible was illuminated by the famed Sarum Master, who was one of the greatest artists of his time. He was a manuscript illuminator working in the mid-13th Century and led a large workshop at a time when no other cities apart from London and Oxford are known to have supported this scale of book production.

At the time when the Sarum Master was working, Salisbury Cathedral as we know it today was being built. Salisbury was a hive of artistic activity and this Bible bears witness to an academic culture that was flourishing.

An expert on medieval manuscripts, Christopher de Hamel, had said: “The Sarum Master was one of the earliest manuscript artists in England of whom we have a recognisable oeuvre. Salisbury and Oxford had the first professional book illuminators in England, ahead of London.

“Salisbury had been founded as a new town in the 1220s, and there were artists working on the stained-glass and chapter house carvings of the new cathedral.”

In a similar way to Oxford and Northampton, Salisbury had schools which might easily have developed into a university, and it had access to court money through the royal palace at Clarendon, as Oxford did with Woodstock.