24-Year-Old Will Sideri was walking through an estate sale in Waterville, Maine when he came across the 700-year-old manuscript. On the frame, the price sticker read, "1285 AD. Illuminated manuscript on vellum. $75.''
Sideri thought the manuscript looked like something he had studied in college several years earlier, so he texted a picture of the frame to his former medieval literature professor Megan Cook, asking her to take a look at the page, saying "I think this might be real."
Cook thought so too and reached out to a medieval manuscript expert, and a guest lecturer in her class, Lisa Fagin Davis. Davis also suspected it to be authentic. She believes it is from The Beauvais Missal, which was used in the Roman Catholic Beauvais Cathedral in France and dates back to the 13th century.
Cook told Artnet,
There are perhaps a few hundred people in the world who would recognize a leaf from the manuscript if they saw it, so really an extraordinary stroke of luck there.
In her guest lecture, which Sideri attended, Davis talked at length about the Missal, which was last owned in full by William Randolph Hearst. After his death, it was sold as separate pieces, including this bargain page that Sideri found.
Not only did he get a great deal, but the leaf was also in better shape than the ones in the school's collection.
Sideri told the Maine Monitor that he plans to keep the artifact, which is valued between $5,000 and $10,000.
I have something very vintage. Like 1285 vintage.
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