Turn the pages of these rare, historic texts

I loved Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book, a novel that traces a rare manuscript’s centuries-long journey from its creation Spain to its discovery in war-torn Sarajevo. The novel is based on the true story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, which today is on display at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. Recently I happened upon a fascinating digital collection that gave me more insight into the Haggadah, the Jewish text that contains the story of Exodus and the Passover Seder ritual.

The British Library’s Turning the Pages online gallery allows users to leaf through the pages of great books. Those works include the first atlas of Europe, Jane Austen’s early work and William Blake’s notebook, to name just a few selections. Visit that collection and you’ll also be able to peruse the Golden Haggadah. In addition to being able to digitally leaf through the pages of that manuscript, the gallery's features allow you to magnify the images, listen to commentary about the resource and read background material about that particular book. Reading through the available material, I learned the Golden Haggadah was likely brought to Italy by Jews fleeing Spain in the late 1400s. The volume remained in Italy until it was acquired by the British Museum.

The image above is a facsimile of the Sarajevo Haggadah and comes from the online exhibit “You Shall Tell Your Children: The Passover Haggadah in the Yale University Library Collections.

Robin Hood: Merry Thief or Embattled Veteran?

Russell Crowe’s new version of Robin Hood opens in theaters across the country this weekend. This adaptation reportedly doesn’t depict Robin as a merry thief. Instead, he’s portrayed as a war-weary veteran who has recently returned from the Crusades, where he served as an archer in the army of King Richard the Lionheart. Personally, I’m not a big Russell Crowe fan and I favor the campy (and now cancelled) BBC Robin Hood Series over a Ridley Scott epic. If I want to gain some insight about what it was really like for a crusader fighting in the Holy Land, I’ll likely turn elsewhere, such as the Hanover Historical Texts Project. That project was launched by the History Department at Indiana’s Hanover College. The site features historical digitized texts that cover a period spanning from Ancient Greece and Rome to the 20th century. Its contents include some amazing materials such a letter that crusader Stephen, count of Blois and Chartres, wrote to his wife Adle in 1098. It reads in part :

Hastening with great joy to the aforesaid chief city of Antioch, we besieged it and very often had many conflicts there with the Turks; and seven times with the citizens of Antioch and with the innumerable troops coming to its aid, whom we rushed to meet, we fought with the fiercest courage, under the leadership of Christ. And in all these seven battles by the aid of the Lord God, we conquered and most assuredly killed an innumerable host of them. In those battles, indeed, and in very many attacks made upon the city, many of our brethren and followers were killed and their souls were borne to the joys of paradise.

The image above is titled The Crusaders arriving at Jerusalem. It is an illustration from Tasso's La Gerusalemme Liberata. and comes from The British Museum.