Help us return the Sarum Master Bible to Salisbury Cathedral!

Friends of the Nations’ Libraries (FNL) is leading a campaign to raise £90,000 to buy a stunning 13th-century Bible, illuminated by the famed Sarum Master, and to donate it to Salisbury Cathedral – returning it home after nearly seven centuries.

We have just 90 days to raise the £90,000 we need to bring the Sarum Master Bible back to Salisbury.

This Bible is one of only six manuscripts definitively attributed to the Sarum Master and only four of these are in UK collections.  Neither  Salisbury Cathedral Library or the City of Salisbury has an example of his work in their collections.  FNL wants to rectify that!

The ‘Sarum Master’ was one of the greatest artists of his time, he was a manuscript illuminator working in the mid-13th century.   He led a large workshop at a time when no other towns apart from London and Oxford are known to have supported this scale of book production.

In the 13th-century, when the Sarum Master was active and the present cathedral was being built, Salisbury was a hive of artistic activity; it’s even thought that some of the vault paintings at Salisbury Cathedral may be related to the work of the Sarum Master.

Help us bring this Bible by the Sarum Master home to Salisbury, where it can be seen and studied in the context of other surviving works of art from this rich period of the city’s history.