The blazing beauty of the open book

An 8th-century manuscript of St Augustine’s Quaestiones et locutiones in Heptateuchum produced in Laon (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département des Manuscrits, Latin 12168, f.Cv-1) - on display at the Centre Pompidou Metz

To open a book has been for millenia a sacred experience. Its doors flung open, the book invites the reader into its inne…