Summary

UCB 107 is neither the most elaborately decorated manuscript, nor the most richly illuminated, nor the most well preserved. We know very little of its origins, its creators and original owners. This is not to say that the work has nothing to offer us. Rather, it presents us with a great gift—a mystery to solve and an enigma to contemplate. What do we know about UCB 107? We know it contains the story of a particular time and place in book history. That story is set in the North of France around the year 1300. We know it participates in a fascinating moment of cultural change that saw feudalism and the church in decline and secular culture on the rise. In this book, we also see the flowering of one tradition, that of the illuminated manuscript, and the germinating of another, that of literary fiction. Study and analysis can only reveal part of the story though. For the rest, we must look to our imaginations to fill in the gaps.