Codex Amiatinus was made in a monastery in Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria, in the early 8th Century.
Measuring a foot thick, the “extraordinary object” was described by the British Library’s chief executive Roly Keating as “one of the great acts of creative book production of the entire millennium”.
It is the earliest complete surviving manuscript of a Bible in Latin.
Announcing the Library’s 2018 highlights, Keating said: “It was gifted to the Pope in the year 716 and has been in Italy ever since.”
The Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence has “agreed to lend it back to the UK for the first time in 1,302 years”.
The abbot who took the Bible to Rome died en route, but the book still made it to Italy.
“It has never been back to Britain since it set off 1,302 years ago.
“It is one of the greatest treasures of Anglo Saxon England and the earliest complete surviving manuscript of the Bible in Latin, ” Keating said.
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