The writing on the leaf, she said, is part of a prayer book used by a priest for a liturgy of that time period. “This stuff just shows up at the craziest places,’’ she said. So far, Davis has located 114 pages of the original 309. at other estate sales, old barns, basements and museums. They’ve located individual leaves all over the U.S. To the great lament of today’s academics, art dealers began removing pages of the manuscript and selling individual leaves.ĭavis, the executive director of the Medieval Academy of America, has been piecing together the scattered leaves of the missal for several years, and has written extensively about the sleuthing done by herself, other academics, collectors and dealers. “The dream!”Īccording to Davis, the intact missal was once owned by William Randolph Hearst, the businessman and newspaper publisher who sold it in 1942.

“$ 75 is a RIDICULOUS price, really unheard of in recent memory,’’ she wrote in a Facebook message. Today’s value: between $5,000 to $10,000, according to Davis. The manuscript was written in or near Beauvais, France, in the later part of the 13th century. Within a few hours they determined that indeed, the estate sale discovery in Waterville appeared to be an authentic leaf from what’s known as The Beauvais Missal. Davis tried to read the urgent text message but couldn’t open the photo because all the phone users in the 107,000-seat stadium had overloaded the circuits. Cook, meanwhile, sent the photo to a friend and fellow academic, Lisa Fagin Davis, who was at a University of Michigan football game. Then Sideri hustled home and got a check to pay for his find. “I said, ‘wow, that looks familiar,’ ’’ Cook recounted. I think this might be real,’’ he recalled telling Cook after coming upon the document on Saturday, Sept. $75.’’Ĭould it really be more than 700 years old? Sideri excitedly texted his former professor, Megan Cook, with a photo of the piece. Scribbled on a yellow sticker was another clue: “1285 AD.

Medieval manuscript