From Cicero until Erwin Olaf. Discover the Special Collections of Leiden University

© Leiden University Libraries

Some of Leiden University Library’s most precious possessions will be on display at Museum De Lakenhal from 9 March until 30 June 2013. Among these will be  a number of medieval manuscripts, like the famous Leiden Aratea, produced around 840 at the court of Louis  the Pious, Charlemagne’s son, and an Evangeliarium from a few decades later, written in the Benedictine abbey of St. Amand. A Dutch (Walewein) and a German chivalric novel (Wigalois), both from the fourteenth century, will be on view alongside books of hours from the fifteenth century and Enguerrand de Monstrelet’s history of the Burgundian and French wars in the first half of the fifteenth century, a splendid manuscript of probable Bruges origin, with miniatures by the Master of the Prayer Book. The classics are represented by the seminal Lucretius manuscript from the ninth century and a luxurious copy of Virgil’s Opera from the fifteenth. These are accompanied by manuscripts from Persia, Indonesia, Birma, China, Japan and other Asian countries, next to printed books, maps, drawings and photographs from the library’s collections.

World treasures. From Cicero until Erwin Olaf. Discover  the Special Collections of Leiden University, Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, 30 March – 30 June 2013.
Contact : J.M.P. (Jef) Schaeps