[16648] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: EXTRA -- Sorbonne rare book losses?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Wed Mar 22 20:40:34 2006
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Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.58.0603211737450.22630@well.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:56:37 -0800
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
FYI France: EXTRA -- rare book losses at the Sorbonne?
Among the sad losses at the Sorbonne, this week, appear to have
been some books:
"Les cartulaires sont ceux de Saint-Leu d'Esserent, de
Saint-Christophe en Halatte, de l'abbaye de Morienval, de
Notre-Dame de Chartres, du prieuré de
Saint-Godon-sur-Loire et de Saint-Thomas d'Epernon..."
The cartulaire of Chartres!...
These appear to have been off of their Ecole des Chartes library
shelves -- sent out to a digitization project, located elsewhere
at the Sorbonne -- where last week someone during the CPE protest
& occupation mayhem broke in, trashed the equipment, and took the
books out to the rue Soufflot, and stole or maybe even burned
them... Can anyone else confirm this? There appears so far to be
only the following one news source: [tr. JK]
http://www.la-croix.com/article/index.jsp?docId=2262506&rubId=4076
"Rare books stolen or burned"
March 21, 2006, by Bernard Gorce, La-Croix.com
[Excerpts:]
"Rare religious books of great value were burned or
stolen during the occupation of the Sorbonne during the
night of March 10 to 11.
"It was not just hundreds of tables and chairs which were
destroyed at the Sorbonne, during the night of March
10-11. The 300 people, students or other, who took over
the premises also manhandled ancient works of great
historical value. An initial list of books burned
in-place or stolen just has been delivered to the recteur
of Paris by the directeur des études of the Ecole des
Chartes, Jérôme Belmon.
"The six works [above] are ecclesiastical cartularies
from the end of the 19th century. More precisely, these
are the records of the abbeys of the Ile-de-France, in
which all their official and private law documents since
the Middle Ages were entered...
"[Jérôme Belmon:]'These works could date from the 10th
century, representing a very rich source for our
knowledge of the Middle Ages'. Valued at 1,000 to 2,000
euros each on the rare books market, they are very rare
although not unique... 'The Bibliothèque national de
France holds a copy of each one', Jérôme Belmon said...
"... they left their library shelves as part of a project
for digitizing cartularies... the place where they were
being held was completely vandalised. Seven laptop
computers there were stolen.
"In the hours which followed the evacuation of the
Sorbonne by the police, many books were retrieved in the
courtyard and in the nearby streets..."
Cartulaires burned in the rue Soufflot -- what a very sad image.
Here's that digitization project:
http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/cartulaires/
But the above story sounds like a heist, to me, not mayhem: a
small bunch of very rare books of great value, plus 7 computers,
all off in their own isolated room, sounds like... So an inside
job, maybe, or at least something "cased in advance": in other
words, somebody knew where to "smash" and what to "grab"...
So I bet they get these back. I bet, myself, that these didn't
get "burned in the rue Soufflot", in fact, but will show up on
some auction block somewhere. Hope I'm right.
As I said initially here, though, I have seen only this one news
source, so far: better information would be much appreciated.
--oOo--
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