British Library to pay millions for well-preserved Anglo-Saxon book

Religions still sells &151; big time.

The British Library is having to come up with 9 million pounds (that's $14.5 million) to buy the rights to display the St. Cuthbert Gospel, a 7th Century book revered by its contemporaries and their many descendants.

Cuthbert lived in the 7th Century, dying in 687. He was buried at Lindisfarne, the famed target of Viking raiders a few hundred years later. To protect the bones and other treasures left behind by Cuthbert, monks moved the coffin to Durham. When the coffin was opened in 1104, those responsible found the small book inside.

The book contains a complete Latin text of the Gospel of John. The book is remarkably well preserved, given its age. The cover is leather, and cover and contents are in such good shape that you have to wonder whether the airtight nature of the coffin helped in keeping the book from falling apart down through the centuries.

Lindisfarne, of course, was plundered and burned, but Cuthbert's remains were long gone by then, which is one reason that they have survived to the present day. Another reason, of course, is that the Church needs money.

The Church in this case is the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, and they will profit quite handsomely from merely hanging on to the book all these years. The British Library, meanwhile, will get to show off yet another artifact from the island's past. The library reports having raised more than half the money already. (That's half of 9 million pounds — not bad for a fundraising effort.)