IT WAS A HEIST, but not a typical one. It wasn't smooth or well-crafted, considering the value of what was being taken. And to top it off, a month later the dissatisfied robbers offered back their loot. It's true: On April 5, 1995, one of Sweden's historic treasures—a sixth-century, Gothic-language manuscript known as the Silver Bible—was stolen from the exhibition hall at the Uppsala University Library in Sweden. A month later, someone called with a tip that led to the manuscript's recovery.
But what made the artifact worth stealing? For one thing, this 15-century-old Bible is practically the only vestige of the now extinct Gothic language. The Silver Bible is based on the bishop Wulfila's fourth-century translation of the Gospels from the original Greek into Gothic. And it is literally handwritten with silver ink. Why use such an extravagant ink to copy a Bible? Tradition has it that the Ostrogothic (or "eastern Gothic") king Theodoric, who invaded Italy in 489, ordered the printing of the manuscript. This also may explain why the pages—made of vellum, or parchment—are purple, a color often associated with royalty.
In 1648 at the close of the Thirty Years' War, the Swedes seized it as war booty during a raid in Prague, in the modernday Czech Republic. Eventually, in 1669, the Bible was presented as a gift to the University of Uppsala, and has been there ever since.
