legends · 5 min read ·
The Repaired Page
A conservator mending a parish Bible finds a guard leaf, and then finds the book rewritten.
**Kerrow Conservation Studio — Treatment Report 26/17**
**Item:** Parish Bible, folio, 1611 (King James), Great Pilland church · **Conservator:** M. Aird
**Condition on arrival:** boards detached, text block loose, extensive foxing, water damage to the lower margins, and a large tear in leaf 214.
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**Proposed treatment**
1. Dry clean the text block.
2. Surface clean the leaves with a soft brush and a latex sponge.
3. Mend tears with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste.
4. Reback the volume in the original calf.
5. Reattach boards.
*Estimated time: 90 hours.*
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**Conservator's notes — Treatment day 4**
Leaf 214 (the Gospel of Luke, ch. 17–18). A tear running from the head margin to the middle of the leaf, 21 cm, through the text. The paper is rag, long-fibred, strong. The break is clean. I lined up the edges under the microscope and began to mend.
Behind the leaf, adhering to the verso, I found a very thin sheet, a second leaf, of similar paper, but lighter. It had been pasted to the back of 214 centuries ago as a patch, or a guard. It carries text. Printed, in the same type as the Bible, but not the same text.
I cannot read all of it. The paste has made it translucent. What I can read is a verse, set as a headed paragraph, in the book's own format. It reads like scripture. It sounds like scripture. It does not appear in any translation I know.
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**Conservator's notes — Treatment day 6**
I have lifted the guard leaf with a wet spatula and dried it between blotters. I put it under a lamp. The text is complete, a single page.
It is headed, as the Gospels are headed: *The Gospel according to* — and the name is torn. Below it, in double columns, thirty-one verses. I translated the sentences in my head as I read, mouthing them. They tell of a man who came to a door at evening, and knocked, and was let in, and sat at table. The man said nothing. The household asked him no questions. They ate, and the guest rose, and put his hand on the head of each one, and went out.
In the morning, the household were not found.
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**Conservator's notes — Treatment day 7**
I have mended leaf 214. I mended the tear with great care. The tissue is invisible. When I held the leaf to the light the guard leaf had gone from the back. It had not come away. It had not been lifted. The paste was undisturbed. The sheet had simply ceased to be there, and the verso of 214 was clean and blank.
But the text of Luke on the recto had changed. In chapter 17 there is a verse that should read: "And he said unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come." It read: *And he said unto the household, It is impossible but that one will come.*
I corrected nothing. I am a conservator. I do not alter the text.
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**Conservator's notes — Treatment day 9**
I examined the rest of the book. The text block has changed throughout. Not in the large. In small, careful ways. The word "disciples" has been replaced by "household" in forty-one places. Thirty-three verses have been struck and rewritten in the body of the text. Not in a different hand. In the same type, the same ink, the same paper. As if the book had always read this way, and my memory of the other reading were wrong.
I rang the rector. She said the Bible had been read from every Sunday for four hundred years. She said it read as it always had. She asked me to read to her the verse at Luke 17:1. I did. She said: "That's right."
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**Conservator's notes — Treatment day 12**
I have put the volume back in its boards. It is stable, clean, and sound, and it will last another four hundred years. I attach photographs.
I have not recommended the book be read in service. The rector has not asked my opinion. I told her only that the repair was complete. I did not tell her what the verse says. I cannot, because each time I try to recall the thirty-one verses I find only the standard text.
I have, however, in my own handwriting, on the back of the treatment sheet, a list of seven words. I do not remember writing them. They are: *the household, the guest, the hand, the morning.*
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**Conservator's note (final, M. Aird, 14 days after delivery)**
The Parish Bible was returned to Great Pilland church on the 2nd. The rector reports that on the following Sunday, when she opened the book, all the leaves had been turned to the page of Luke 17 by themselves. The ribbon marker lay across the gutter.
At the 8 o'clock service, the congregation numbered eleven. At the end, as is the custom, the rector read the blessing, and put her hand on the head of each as they left. The following Sunday, there was no-one. The doors of the church were open. The book was lying open on the lectern.
I went to see. The lamp was lit. The pews were empty. In the page, in a neat Jacobean type, a verse I had not seen: *And in the morning the church was not found.*