A 24-year-old Maine residence found the most unlikely object for sale at an estate sale: a medieval French manuscript page being offered for only $75.
According to a report in The Maine Monitor, Will Sideri”™s foray into an estate sale in Waterville, Maine, led him to find a framed object with a handwritten yellow sticker that read “1285 AD. Illuminated manuscript on vellum. $75.”™”™ Sideri purchased the item and confirmed the object was an authentic leaf from The Beauvais Missal, a manuscript was written in or near Beauvais, France, in the late 13th century. The page was written in an elaborate Latin script and includes musical notations in gold, blue and red script.
The intact Beauvais Missal was once owned by the publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst, who sold it in 1942. The full manuscript was broken up into individual pages, and 114 pages of the original 309 have been located.
As for Sideri, he plans to keep his purchase, jokingly explaining, “I have something very vintage ”“ like 1285 vintage.”™”™
Photo courtesy Will Sideri
