Undoubtedly a scintillating read

Four pages of the seventh-century text De Laude Virginitatis (“In Praise of Virginity”) are going up for sale at Sotheby's next month. De Laude Virginitatis is England's earliest known book written for women. The author—an Anglo-Saxon cleric named Aldhelm—produced a book of advice for the abbess nuns of Barking Abbey, giving them specific pointers on avoiding the “untamed impulses of bodily wantonness”. (Apparently, you can't “be excused as if you were of a chaste and modest mind” if you dress in a way that serves to “nourish the fires of sexual anticipation”.) De Laude Virginitatis sounds like quite the page-turner, and even this tiny fragment is expected to sell for £500,000.

[Via The Telegraph]