SW News: A 1,000-year-old handwritten Book of Gospels stolen from a Greek monastery a century ago has finally been returned to its original owners. It was on Thursday last week, that the Museum of the Bible in the US handed over the Eikosiphoinissa Manuscript to the Mother Abbess of the Theotokos Eikosiphoinissa (Kosinitza) Monastery in northern Greece.

According to Brian Hyland, curator of the Museum of the Bible in the US, the manuscript is one among the oldest handwritten Greek-language Gospels in the world. The Eikosiphoinissa Manuscript was looted from the monastery by Bulgarian troops in 1917 during World War I. Over the course of the decades, it ended up with Christie’s.

CNN has quoted the museum as saying that the manuscript was auctioned off by Christie’s in 2011 and it was purchased by the Green Collection of Oklahoma City in the USA, which donated it to the Museum of the Bible three years later.

“It is a true blessing for the monastic sisterhood and the Christian world to see the religious artifacts that were removed from the Monastery officially return to their natural home and used hereafter for the spiritual edification of the faithful, and by art and history scholars,” said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual head of the Greek Orthodox Church in a statement released by the museum.

According to the museum, the Evangelistary Manuscript dates back to the 10th or 11th century. “When the Museum of the Bible discovered that this text was illegally and rapaciously taken from the Monastery, it moved quickly, responsibly and professionally to see to its restoration and repatriation,” said Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, who represented Patriarch Bartholomew in the return ceremony in Greece.

“We cannot express enough our gratitude to the Green Family and the Museum for their Christian and professional service,” he said. “You have set an example for others to follow, and we pray that they do,” the Archbishop continued.
George Tsougarakis, general counsel at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, hopes that the return of the manuscript would prompt other institutions to return any item stolen during World War I.