PREFACE

In 692 AD, Abbot Ceolfrid of the Wearmouth-Jarrow Abbey in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria, commissioned the creation of three Bibles. An estimated 500 calves were raised and slaughtered to produce the vellum each volume would require, and after an unimaginable amount of work from farmers, parchment makers, and skilled scribes, the three massive tomes, each weighing over 75 pounds and numbering a thousand pages, were complete.

Two were placed in the twin churches of Wearmouth and Jarrow. One of those has been lost to history, the other is now in tatters, a mere remnant of its former self.

The third was taken by Ceolfrid to Rome in 716 as a gift for Pope Gregory II.

He never made it.

It was lost to history for centuries, before turning up in Tuscany. After a storied past, it now rests in Florence, Italy, nearly perfectly preserved.

This is all documented fact.

What isn’t known is why, if it took 500 calves to produce each Bible, were documents later found in Ceolfrid’s personal papers that showed 2000 had been slaughtered instead of the expected 1500?