It is one of the most important medieval manuscripts in the world. The Evangeliary of Saint-Mihiel was classified as a national treasure on 1 March 2020. According to the opinion of the Commission consultative des trésors nationaux, it was indeed "one of the most beautiful witnesses to the last period of creation of the Reichenau school". Nothing like it has come up for public sale since at least the beginning of the 20th century. It belonged to the Catholic University of Lille (called "la Catho") which wanted to sell it, officially because its conservation was too complex.
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- Reichenau Abbey, c. 1100
Irmengarde and Werner offering a book to Christ, illumination from the Evangeliary of Saint-Mihiel
Photo: Wikipedia (Public domain) - See the image in its page
In reality, the feeling of having been taken for a ride by this institution to which we had turned to investigate the two scandals that concerned it (the destruction of the church of Saint Joseph and the sale of this gospel book - see article) is very strong. For the work was not sold to a European private individual, but finally to the Getty Museum (probably via Jörn Günther in Basel, who provided the photographs for the Getty’s press release), which has just proudly announced it [1] (it is called the Irmengard Codex, after its patron). And if we do not know the selling price, it seems to be extremely high. The Temple merchants are no longer outside the Church, they are now inside the Church. And the responsibility of the archbishopric of Lille (the archbishop is now that of Paris) is immense, as is that of la Catho, which preferred to sell this manuscript to raise as much money as possible rather than favour its preservation in France.
So once again, a major national treasure is leaving our country. The Ministry of Culture is also responsible, of course, bearing in mind that this is not the Direction générale des patrimoines (Directorate General of Heritage), but the Department of Books and Reading, which is part of the Directorate General of Media and Cultural Industries. A directorate and a service, it is easy to understand, that don’t give a damn about heritage, which once again raises the question (we will come back to this) of the attachment of the Bibliothèque nationale, which is in reality a museum for a large part of its collection.
The Bibliothèque nationale itself has not been able to mobilise people around this masterpiece. Has the president of the public institution ever been heard to speak on this subject? A search on Google[[We searched: "Laurence Engel" "évangéliaire" "Saint-Mihiel"] immediately answers this question: no, of course not. Has the library been preoccupied with other acquisitions that are more within its means? We doubt it very much. We will now investigate in depth the reasons for this major failure, one more, of French cultural policy. What is the point of classifying a few rare objects as "national treasure" if nothing is done to acquire them? All this, once again, is revolting.