1,000-year-old Greek manuscript stolen in World War I returns to its place
India Today
A 1,000-year-old Greek manuscript, stolen during the Bulgarian invasion of Greece in World War I, was returned to its rightful place after 100 years.
After more than 100 years, the Greek monastery received its thousand-year-old manuscripts stolen from it during World War I. The manuscripts were stolen when the Bulgarian army invaded Greece during the war in 1917. In the invasion, soldiers looted the monastery's 400 manuscripts.
The manuscript is reportedly one of the oldest handwritten scripts in the world. According to a news release from the Museum of the Bible, the manuscript was written back in the 10th century.
The Museum of the Bible claims that it was written in southern Italy’s Greek monastery. However, the Greek manuscripts were moved to Northern Greece around the 14th and 15th centuries.
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After the scripts were stolen, they were purportedly sold in different parts of Europe and later ended up in American museums.
It was donated to the museum in 2014 after being bought at auction. Museum officials subsequently identified it as one of the manuscripts stolen from the monastery in 1917 and informed Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, of their desire to return it, reported the Associated Press.
In 2015, nearly 100 years after the manuscripts were stolen, the Church in Greek appealed to the American museum, having the manuscripts, to return them to the monastery - the place where they originally belonged.
