2023-10-08 11:41:59
He has been visiting the most important libraries in the world for 32 years to faithfully reproduce true bibliographic monuments in almost original codices which have become state gifts for dignitaries and treasures for bibliophiles. The editor’s job Manuel Moleiro, Galician from Cea, was described twenty years ago by the newspaper “The Times” as the art of perfection. The Louvre Museum itself and the French government corroborated this in the large exhibition organized at the Conciergerie in Paris on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the birth of Louis IX, Saint Louis, because of the 130 pieces that were exhibited there between October 2014 and January 2015, 129 were original sculptures, codices and objects from the time of the 12th century monarch. All except one: the clone of the Saint Louis Bible made by M. Moleiro Editor. There was no difference with the original and the curators of the exhibition considered that it contributed nothing to move it and exhibit it.
Passionate about books
Graduated in journalism from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Moleiro left his native Cea for Barcelona at the age of 17 with the purpose of studying film, but had to abandon the idea due to the closure of the cinematography faculty and because they denied him the transfer. registration fee to Madrid. Passionate about books since he was a child, especially those with images, Moleiro founded the Ebrisa publishing house while he was a university student and, together with the Italian editor Franco María Richi, produced some of the best-published books of the 1980s. framed in the collection “The signs of man”, with signatures of authors such as Augusto Roa Bastos, Jorge Luis Borges, Cortázar or Umberto Eco.
His first blessed
In 1989 he sold his company to Planeta and He undertook his editorial dream of rescuing from the shadows the literary treasures that remained hidden in museums and libraries.. “There are many manuscripts that have endured due to their uniqueness, because they were a treasure from the moment they were created and that have always been hidden precisely because of their value; My idea was to bring them to light because no one can go to the National Library of Madrid, for example, and see the Blessed of Ferdinand I and Doña Sancha that is preserved there.”
That manuscript was his first “almost original”, of which he produced an edition of 777 copies – the number of perfection that he craved and for which he has never lacked the means. A decade later, already specialized in medieval books before the printing press, the publisher had been opening the showcases of the great codices that are preserved in institutions throughout Europe and the United States, such as the national libraries of Europe, France, Russia, Italy, Portugal, and museums and foundations such as the Metropolitan in New York, Pierpont Morgan in New York, the Burbekian Foundation in Lisbon or the British Library.
Unique editions
He accompanies the recreations he carries out with a volume of studies done by specialists in various subjects, which he publishes in English, French, Spanish and, occasionally, another language such as Portuguese or Italian. The editions are unique and unrepeatable, limited to 987 copies numbered one by one and accompanied by a notarial act that attests to their exclusivity..
“The exceptional nature of my work is what has opened doors for me,” he says. And that’s what big libraries want. “I maintain a relationship of complicity with them and I do them a great favor because the manuscript that I recreate is studied and disseminated, I pay for the digitization, sometimes the restoration, and the rights. “It’s a bargain for them.”
The prestige it acquired has brought it closer to treasures coveted by others.. This is the case of the Breviary of Isabel the Catholic, which is preserved in London. “I think all European editors asked for permission to edit that manuscript because it is the most important codex with paintings made for a monarch in all of history. They denied all the requests, but they asked me to do it and even pressured me because at that time I was doing other things and wanted to start it a couple of years later.” The same happened with exceptional works from the National Library of France, such as the Codex of Beato de Liébana or that of Santo Domingo de Silos, taken to the neighboring country by Pepe Botella when he was king in Madrid.
Almost original
The more than fifty bibliographical gems that Moleiro has cloned in more than three decades are books of hours, bibles, saints, books on astronomy, medicine, hunting, literature, cartography, atlases… medieval manuscripts that he recreates with the same size, the same skin of the covers, identical texture and color and even the same smell. “If the original parchment is made of leather, we use one of plant origin because the sacrifice of so many animals would be unimaginable,” she clarifies. However – he adds – “I continue to coat the parchment in the same way that Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci or Velázquez prepared their canvases for painting,” he explains.
That search for perfection It leads him to use natural leather tanned in underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia to avoid those treated with chemicals.. “A leather like the one Louis Vuitton works with, to give an example, would not work for me because it is tattooed with chrome and hardens, so the engraving we make on it, whether dry or with stamping of the metals that have been used, it would be lost only with the passing of the hand, with use.” On the other hand, “the person who has a clone of one of our manuscripts will have the same skin and the engraving perfectly preserved in 500 or 800 years, unless it has been treated inadequately.”
The editing procedure they carry out is all manual and artisanal, they even use hemp and thread that they sew by hand.. “We use the advantages that the technique gives us, although I still think that when it comes to reproducing a color there is a difference between what a machine can do and what the human eye does, perhaps in the future it will not be like that, but today Yes”, he considers.
“My friend Franco María Ricci told me: ‘Manuel, that happens to us because we have a soul and IBM computers don’t.’ Now there is Artificial Intelligence, but I think there will always be a difference, it is said that it will end us, the same as when the Internet began they said it would end books. That has not happened, rather it has given me the opportunity to sell manuscripts in India or Japan, before the message did not reach everywhere.”
Long process
The process to clone a manuscript is long, “I find it practically impossible to do something well done in less than two or two and a half years, it depends on the volume of the book.” The most laborious was the Saint Louis Bible, most of which is preserved in Toledo, although there are 32 pages in the Morgan in New York. “It took us six years, but San Luis did it in twelve, so we beat them by a landslide,” says Meleiro.
“It was my show of affection towards Galicia, but they have the value of being the first friend’s songs set to music in a Romance language in Europe”
Among such powerful codices, there is a modest manuscript cloned by Meleiro: the Vindel Pergamino, which collects the songs written by Martín Códax in the Vigo estuary to his absent lover “It was a sign of my affection for Galicia, but they have the value that they are the first friend songs set to music in a Romance language in Europe; According to Núñez Feijóo in the exhibition at the Galician Sea Museum in 2017, they are the DNA of our culture and, in the words of Abel Caballero, it is the founding letter of a culture and tradition. A small detail with this manuscript kept by the Morgan in New York, which is said to have been a sign that was rolled up and opened from a pulpit used by the poorest students at the University of Paris, is that in the work prior to the cloning, when looking at it in detail against the light on a glass, it is very clearly seen that those two pages have some sewing stitches in the middle, it is clear that those four pages were part of a larger whole of which only those two have been preserved leaves” .
The specimens of Meleiro’s recreations They are in the large university libraries that spend money on it. “In cases like that of the Vindel parchment, many talk about its importance, but then they are unable to spend a penny. And like there everywhere. People have to have an interest that goes beyond talk.”
Illustrious clients
Among Moleiro’s regular bibliophile clients are one of the former directors of the powerful multinational investment company Black Rock, Deryck Maughan, and Brigitte Macron, former high school teacher and wife of the French president. “In France there is a great interest in heritage, the president usually inaugurates the Paris book fair, and they come to be interested in what you do.”
The Nobel Prize in Literature José Saramago had one of Moleiro’s codices, Blessed Fernando, John Paul II had the Bible of Saint Louis on his bedside table and Pope Francis owns a copy of the wills from the cathedral of Oviedo, which contains the most important miniatures that Romanesque art bequeathed to us. “They are not traditional testaments, this book was made at the time with the purpose of highlighting the importance of Oviedo and the kingdom of Galicia, which included Asturias, so that the diocese continued to depend on Rome directly and not on Braga, as was intended. ”.
Popes John Paul II and Francis, the kings of Spain, Saramago, Brigitte Macron, the queen of Jordan, George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are some of the illustrious owners of Moleiro books.
In the Spanish royal house there are several copies of Moleiro’s clones: when Kings Letizia and Felipe were engaged, she gave him the Book of Hours of María de Navarra, the first one made in the Iberian Peninsula, whose original she keeps the Marciana Library in Venice, King Felipe VI received as a gift from the Portuguese government on his first institutional trip as monarch a copy of the Gubekian Apocalypse, and the emeritus received a Bible of Saint Louis. “They summoned me to the Zarzuela to deliver the delivery and they notified me 24 hours in advance of the date, I went in my car and drove into the palace, I was amazed because when I arrived at the entrance control they asked me for my ID and they made me pass without further review,” says Moleiro.
Anecdotes with US presidents
The editor’s surprise was due to the fact that on previous occasions with other leaders the situation had been very different. “When George Bush came to Spain, they summoned me to Moncloa and even took my pen.” The Spanish government gave the North American president the Book of Hours of Charles VIII of France. He was not the only American dignitary to be presented with a Moleiro clone. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter Carter Clinton also received codex clones. “When I am asked for a copy for a dignitary of this importance, the manuscript they receive is exactly the same as anyone else’s, but I can personalize the case. Jimmy Carter’s case caught my attention that when I consulted the protocol service They tell me that the dedication engraving should simply put his name, the one he had since he was born, being president of the United States is a temporary position,” explains Moleiro.
This Galician editor takes special satisfaction from being claimed by countries that especially protect their heritage.. It happened in France, when the Louvre requested a copy of Sal Luis’s Bible for the exhibition about this king in 2014. And it happened again with Italy, which “also takes care of and boasts of carrying art in its DNA.” when the Minister of Culture asked him for the “Theatrum Sanitatis” to give to the Queen of Jordan.
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