Bibliothèque Municipale d’Epinal

[jimhines]

On my first day at Les Imaginales, a pair of librarians came up and invited me to visit the Epinal Library. What I didn’t realize — they may have mentioned it and I just missed it — was that they were giving us a private tour of the rare books room.

It was amazing. One of the true highlights of my trip to France. My interpreter Lionel, an author himself, was as awestruck as I was. Especially when they brought out the first book. If I’m remembering right, this was from the 8th century.

The next one wasn’t quite as old…being from the 9th century. This Gospel of Saint Mark was a youthful 1200 years old.

The cover is metal and ivory. I’m not sure what kind of jewels those are. The circular areas on the corners were for holding relics. Here’s a glimpse of the interior:

You can see the full set of photos on Flickr. (Or you may have already seen them on Facebook.) It was such a wonderful experience. My thanks to everyone at Bibliothèque Municipale d’Epinal for their time and generosity.

I’ll end with a map of Michigan from one of the books that was “only” a few centuries old. Michigan sure looked different in the old days…

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Comments

[reedrover]

Amazing! I hope you keep that memory close for a long time!

[labelleizzy]

wow. you lucky bastard. *awed*

[thewayne]

That is such a gorgeous library! I really need to photograph the National Library of Medicine the next time I'm back to NIH in a few months: it's no where near the natural wood look of the Epinal, but it is quite cool. It is built in to a hillside to give it resistance in case an atom bomb was ever dropped on DC, and the bill that established funding for it was by two senators, one was Senator John F. Kennedy, but he was the junior, so it wasn't named after him.

Today all libraries just seem to be metal and concrete monstrosities, no soul to them. Sadly that also seems to describe the country's leaning.

[lokifan]

Amazing!!!