In the early twentieth century, resourceful bookdealers figured out a devious way to make a profit: instead of selling an entire medieval manuscript to a single buyer, they would take the book apart and sell the pages off one by one. This practice, known as "biblioclasm," resulted in the destruction of hundreds of manuscripts in the name of capitalist profit. On the other hand, because of this practice, small collections around the U.S. were able to acquire single leaves for research and teaching, when they could never have afforded to purchase entire manuscripts. A thirteenth-century manuscript known as the Beauvais Missal was one of the best-known victims of this practice. Focusing on the leaf of the Beauvais Missal owned by Dartmouth, manuscript expert Lisa Fagin Davis will explain how modern digital technologies can help repair the damage caused by these biblioclasts.

Lisa Fagin Davis received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University in 1993 and has catalogued medieval manuscript collections at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Walters Art Museum, Wellesley College, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Boston Public Library, and several private collections. She has taught Latin Paleography at Yale University and regularly teaches an introduction to Manuscript Studies at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. She was elected to the Comité international de paléographie latine in 2019 and has served as Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America since 2013.