The earliest surviving intact European book, which lay buried in a saint's coffin for hundreds of years, has been bought by the British Library for £9 million (US$ 14.4 million).
The seventh century St Cuthbert Gospel is on display at the library in King's Cross, north London.
It was purchased and saved after a multimillion-pound fundraising effort.
The book was produced in the north of England in the late seventh century and buried alongside St Cuthbert, an early English Christian leader, on the island of Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumberland in around AD698, reports The Daily.
The coffin was moved off the island to escape Viking raiders and taken to Durham, where the book, which is a copy of the Gospel of St John, was found when the coffin was opened at the cathedral in 1104. Its original red leather binding survives today.
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