Ancient prayer book to be shown at V&A
By Duncan Gardham
(Filed: 22/12/2005)

For 300 years it has been a book without a beginning, middle or end.
But thanks to scholarly detective work, a 15th century Book of Hours, written for King Louis XII of France, has been pieced back together and will go on display for the first time at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in February.

The prayer book was known as a book of hours because it had different prayers for different hours of the day and different times of the year.

It was illustrated with full-page illuminations, measuring 24cm by 17cm (9.5in by 6.7in), by Jean Bourdichon in 1498 and 1499 for Louis XII and may have been brought to England on his death by Mary Tudor, his third wife.

By 1700 two individual pages turned up in a volume of calligraphy compiled by the diarist Samuel Pepys. After that the pages appeared in various collections. In 1973 Janet Backhouse, the curator of manuscripts at the British Library, worked out that all the illustrations had come from the same book. The rest

Priest's hunch finally uncovers Porto's hidden holy scrolls
By Barry Hatton in Porto
Published: 22 December 2005

Few people ever knew, but the medieval alleys of the Portuguese city of Porto on the Atlantic coast once provided cover for a persecuted minority at risk of being burnt at the stake.

In the 16th century, a thick-walled granite house that still stands in a row of narrow buildings along a cobbled street held a dangerous secret. At the back, steep steps lead down to a warren of alleys ideal for conspiratorial comings and goings that helped keep an outlawed religious ceremony hidden.

Four centuries later, the secret of the synagogue is out. The mystery began unravelling when Fr Agostinho Jardim Moreira, a Catholic priest, bought the four-storey house for use as an old people's home for his parish. When construction workers told him they had come across a false wall, he told them to pull it down - sensing a hidden tale. the rest