Working in secret for a fourteenth-century Oxford professor who would translate the Bible into English, master illuminator Finn forms an alliance with Lady Kathryn, a widow desperate to protect her inheritance from the church and the monarchy.

"The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings-the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened...