Handwritten Bible a decade-long undertaking

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. —

No one expected it to be easy, but no one expected it to be this hard either.

Almost a decade ago, the first word was written in The St. John’s Bible, the first handwritten and illuminated Bible in 500 years commissioned by a Benedictine monastery.

In 2000, after two years of preparation, calligrapher Donald Jackson wrote the initial verse of the Gospel of John. (Jackson, senior scribe to Her Royal Majesty’s Crown Office in the House of Lords, used a goose quill on calfskin vellum.)

As the $5.5 million project passes the halfway point, with five of the seven planned volumes completed, 2,414 lines of text remain to be written. The project is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

“This whole process has caused us to rediscover the Bible in a different way ... that every book of the Bible is interrelated with each other ... and we want this visually to capture that,” said the Rev. Michael Patella, chairman of the theological committee for The St. John’s Bible.

AP

The Rev. Michael Patella, OSB, turns to the ornate illumination for the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes in a bound copy of the Heritage Edition of the St. John's Bible at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library in Collegeville, Minn. The book is the first handwritten and illuminated Bible in 500 years commissioned by a Benedictine monastery. Kimm Anderson/St. Cloud Times

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