A U.S. museum has returned a priceless 1,000-year-old Christian manuscript that was taken from a monastery in northern Greece by Bulgarian forces more than a century ago, along with hundreds of other papers and artefacts. The 11th-century gospel was solemnly read in front of guests on Thursday at the Eikosiphoinissa Monastery, including Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elpidophoros of America and representatives from the Museum of the Bible in Washington. According to the Archdiocese of America, the Greek manuscript, one of the earliest handwritten gospels in existence, is considered to have been composed in southern Italy.
It was acquired at an auction in 2014 and then donated to the museum. Officials at the museum later identified it as one of the manuscripts taken from the monastery in 1917 and expressed their desire to have it returned to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of all Orthodox Christians worldwide. Elpidophoros thanked the Museum of the Bible on Thursday for its ‘courtesy in recognising where (the manuscript) belongs and returning it. A historical injustice has been corrected,’ he said.
The gospel was stolen together with 430 valuable manuscripts and hundreds other sacred artefacts by marauding soldiers from the adjacent nation of Bulgaria. Most of them are still unaccounted for. The eighth-century monastery was set on fire during World War II by Nazi-affiliated Bulgarian occupation forces. It has since been refurbished and is now a convent.
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