Henry VIII's dissolution enforcer stashed Catholic manuscript—its lost pages have just been rediscovered
Sir John Gage, a key figure in Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, saved a dangerous Catholic book from likely destruction, a new study suggests. The identification of six lost pages of a medieval bestseller—illicitly prized by Catholics in the Reformation—as belonging to Gage, exposes the split loyalties of one of Tudor England's great survivors.
Six missing pages from a rare 15th-century manuscript that belonged to a personal attendant of King Henry VIII have been discovered. The book in question, a copy of Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, was owned by John Gage, a devout Catholic and key figure in Henry VIII's court. Gage kept the book after it was initially destroyed during the dissolution of monasteries.
The missing pages, which detail Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, were found in a collection of Gage family estate records. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Sussex compared the dimensions, annotations, and headers of the missing pages to those of the complete manuscript and found them to be identical.
While the significance of the discovery is clear, it remains uncertain if the missing pages will be reattached to the original manuscript.
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