From the U.S. to the Museum of the Cathedral to "read" the Vercelli Book

Put a team of scholars from overseas in a room - not just any, but one where in '98 he slept Pope John Paul II -; then put a rare manuscript that has some pages worsened, and a sophisticated machine that can bring them back in life and do, in practice, a real virtual restoration. Then, if the volume is one of the oldest texts written in Old English, the Vercelli Book, the picture that emerges is worthy of the best television series to historical theme.
 

For several days the Library chapter of Vercelli became part of the "Lazarus Project," an ambitious project in which four American researchers are able to bring to light portions of text no longer visible as canceled wear, water or by unorthodox techniques used by the restorers of the past. This is Gregory Heyworth, director of Lazarus, Ken Boydston, JR Hall and Roger Easton Jr., welcomed by Timothy Leonardi, conservative and rare manuscripts to the foundation of the Cathedral Treasury Museum and Archives capitulate. 's team, thanks to a tool that uses multispectral different filters, including ultraviolet and infrared, "photograph" ancient texts from different perspectives: the data, then, are transmitted to a computer that holds the images. The end result is a snapshot of the page, but it also contains traits of writing that have been deleted, and therefore invisible to the naked eye.
 

A true restoration, but virtual, which returns the page as well as the scribe had originally made."Technology - explains Leonardi - has been used by members of the team to the Folger Library in Washington, where they were able to bring to light the signature that William Shakespeare did on the title page of a book in his possession. From America moved to Vienna, where they recovered a schedule that was completely erased, and then to Vercelli, only Italian, where we were asked to work on our Vercelli Book. " The team led by Heyworth is restoring virtually the first and the last page of the old book, which have an increased wear. Once the "photographs" of the Vercelli book, the four scholars - who say they are honored to work in the "room of the Pope" - will go to other medieval manuscripts damaged, as an old medieval map of the world.