A 1,000-year-old Byzantine Gospel manuscript will return to Greece after a century’s absence. Last week it was returned to the Greek Orthodox Church in the US by the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, it was reported in The New York Times.
The manuscript had been originally kept in the Monastery of Panagia Eikosifoinissa in northern Greece and was used for centuries. The monastery was sacked by the Bulgarian Army twice, during the 1912 and 1913 Balkan Wars as well as in WWII, when many of its relics were looted.
Located on Mount Paggaio, the monastery was founded in the 6th century and had a continuous influence in post-Byzantine times as it was associated with ecumenical patriarchs. By the 18th century it had amassed a remarkable collection of 1,300 codices, which included 430 valuable manuscripts.
The Museum of the Bible acquired the manuscript at a Christie’s auction in 2011.