13th-century bible returns to its original owner

After nearly five hundred years, a medieval bible has been returned to the cathedral library it initially belonged to.

But there’s a good reason it left in the first place: Henry VIII’s dissolution of the Catholic Church.

The Guardian reports that the Canterbury Cathedral recently combined a grant and private fundraising efforts to purchase the thirteenth-century Lyghfield bible.

According to The Guardian, the cathedral library once had around 30,000 books before Henry VIII broke up the monastic community, but only thirty are known to have survived to the present day.

Of them, the Lyghfield bible is the only complete bible and “the finest illuminated book known to have survived from the medieval collection.”

The cathedral spent almost 100,000 pounds (over $131,000) to acquire it.

Read more at The Guardian’s website.