Recoup soul. Food. Still to come a duty to book hunters from opposite corners of the world or for book hunters collect books with a passion and ensure their safety. In times of chaos war and other calamities book hunters are guardians of the worlds Cultural Heritage this tree of knowledge is from a book found in a street in iraq written in the middle ages it had fallen into the hands of barbarians as well that sadly the head of jesus has disappeared we have no idea whether or not it was cut off by Islamic State and all we do know is that here jesus no longer has a head but its a beautifully restored intrude on no account what it took because thats not really completely the shit out here. In Northern Iraq father not runs what could be described as an arc for persecuted books he and his voluntary assistance want to digitize as many historical manuscripts as possible in the meantime manuscripts are delivered to him from all over the country documents that have been subjected to the ravages of war just like the people in conflict areas state of the Art Technology makes an exact copy every ink stain finds its way into the digital world. Books and people have found refuge in air bill a city in the heart of kurdish iraq with well over a million inhabitants mosul is less than one thousand kilometers away refugees from all over iraq and syria have become stranded here. Both father najib and is terrible library of the dominican monks of mosul have already fled twice from the socalled Islamic State. That you just like because this collection has become nomadic you know because we are newmans we are. So these books are refugees to carry them through. But i hope we will be able to live in peace here wherever we go we will take up books with us because these. No mother or father would ever abandon their children they would save them so we are saving ourselves together. Since two thousand and nine father not gz work has been supported by a benedictine monk from the United States father colomba manages an Electronic Library in which digitized manuscripts made publicly accessible so reading is very important to us and one of the marvelous things about the monastic life over the centuries is that it has been a place to teach people how to read in periods of time when very few people were literate. So i often tell people that manuscripts are some somehow in our d. N. A. And that it is part of our vocation to do what we care to keep them safe. But the first monk to think like father colomba was an italian by the name of cassiodorus archaeologist raimondo is an expert on the life and times of the roman statesman and monk. In five forty eight he had founded a monastery which he named the volume or the fish farm an advocate of the transformative powers of reading cassiodorus had the monks there read write and copy books he established his ministry on his familys a state in school i changed. The. Screen arch a cassiodorus wrote hangs over the valley like a vine heavy with ripe grapes. Thanks to his classic allege occasion or to culture and Water Management flourished the monastery might well have had glass windows Underfloor Heating and bars with hot water or the result of Practical Knowledge which cassiodorus never imagined could ever be lost a month or part of the. Roman villas were destroyed even before the vandals invaded it with which in this region was then gradually abandoned during the greco gothic wars. As a result knowledge of fish farming was also lost. Even today we can still see how the monks extended the bays into the cliff in order to keep the fish so naturally that as cassiodorus wrote they never even felt they were in captivity. Was used to separate the small bays from the sea to ensure a constant influx of fresh water. Cassiodorus wrote a textbook that was in use for centuries in it he recommended that monk should also read and copy works by pagan authors because reading he emphasized is the mother of all knowledge but he had to be careful by now christianity was Gathering Force it had become the official religion of the roman empire and the works of pagan authors were burnt after all why did people need knowledge when they were supposed to believe. This century things truly fall apart. Or begin seriously to fall apart in the roman world. The script orio places where people copied manuscripts are shut down no one wants to buy new manuscripts no one has time to read the schools break down. The market for books breaks down. Libraries are padlocked and shop best selling author Stephen Green that is fascinated by the fact that even in the chaos of total decline there were still people who kept a cool head so there would be two impulses lets say but even to say two is to simplify one is knock it down. This is. Tainted goods poisoned bread we need to destroy. But alternatively no no this is precious this is something we can use this is a gift that we can turn to our worship. Within sight of cassiodorus is fishponds a small church has been excavated. Possibly the vivarium on a street charge. The cloverleaf aps dates back even further. Let me quote. This small trefoil aps is probably older than the church itself. Its likely that it was the infield the water sanctuary of a roman settlement which was part of cassiodorus as villa. Later is often happened in antiquity it was put to other uses because water was an extremely important element i mean especially for christian baptisms. Cassiodorus lived in two cultures the classical culture he had been born into and the christian one in which he died it is here that he first saw the light of day in an ancient town which had a form of theatre and a circus but his birthplace was abandoned even in his lifetime sculptures with thrown into the fountains including the image of a man whom the sculptors of antiquity portrayed so naturally that even the semi paralysis of his face is recognizable. The ancient town of them was abandoned and rebuilt on the hills of school are chain. Of a virus and did not last long either. The fate of cassiodorus is Famous Library is unknown. Nice or gallup it share we know for certain that after cassiodorus his death both the value monastery incentive maria to terry. And also square logic castle were destroyed. The media probably by the lombards is that the beast will. Be maintained on the. Back of the monastery was destroyed its manuscript burned and its knowledge lost and yet for centuries cassiodorus has inspired those hungry for knowledge right through to the present. We built a first gallery on the web for digital photographs of manuscripts and we needed a name for it and i have been doing a lot of reading about cus eudoras for my research and found it very interesting and he was a collector of manuscripts from both the latin and the greek worlds and we were working both in europe and he sure christian countries so we took the name for that gallery. Four hundred kilometers north of lies the bay of naples with mighty mt vesuvius. A volcanic eruption in seventy nine eighty devastated me im claiming thousands of lines. Traces about dramatic events can be seen in the National Library of naples one of the few libraries of antiquity to has survived through to the present day. Unfortunately apart from a few fragments these traces of the past cannot be read. Honestly does own study that we suspect that the manuscript belonged to fill a demon a philosopher who probably brought them to her kill any im from greece. They manuscripts were found in the ruins of a roman villa which was owned by the father in law of Julius Caesar so should all the jews. Are we talking perhaps about a lost manuscript penned by aristotle ever since the chart pyrate were found in her researches have been a great pains to make them legible in the Nineteenth Century a librarian invented a machine designed to carefully open the rolls at a rate of four millimeters a week but it took a scientist from another field that of optical equipment to come up with a better idea vito much ella from naples bombarded the pyros rolls with x. Rays from a particle accelerator to obtain spectacular images from inside them. We know there are. Many many interesting Things Unknown things in this book about how people are we we were meeks long. Long months of this because. It was reported in the worlds press that marcela had managed to decipher individual letters inside the pirates rolls but the manuscripts had by no means become legible this is a bios you. Need to automate it by and finally war. On the fly is. And try to follow the surface. Peter much alan has tried to isolate individual letters on the layers of the pirates more clearly in order to obtain further sequences of letters but all this has produced is a sad chart copy of ancient box. Hundreds of thousands of books were in circulation in classical times and this is all that remains of them. Sarajevo lost its box not as a result of a Natural Disaster but through a horrific war. In august one thousand nine hundred two the Bosnian Serb Army shelled the National Library of bosnia and herzegovina destroying it completely. Within their lives reveals the serbs not only had their sights set on the citys inhabitants. They also deliberately wanted to obliterate sorry a voce cultural history of you know move. Of the look of. Destruction implement. Artists can do little against bullets yet in the middle of the war world famous singers conductors and musicians came to sorry a vote and performed mozarts requiem in the ruins of the National Library. Zubin mehta conducted. While outside people had to run for their lives to avoid sniper fire. That. Was. That. The. The National Library was completely gutted the Oriental Institute was also shelled resulting in the destruction of medieval manuscripts of inestimable value this loss was deeply felt by the librarian of the last remaining library in sarajevo. In your city if you get dollars if so little that we knew what had happened to the National Library and the Oriental Institute which is that our library could not be left in one place for too long is it true that with us more during the war we moved today times that there is a sea in the news that another war. The gansey whose red bag library has its origins in the mid dresser a Religious School in the middle of sarajevos old town after the bosnian war the library was rebuilt in wood and marble. The library is famous for its some twenty thousand priceless medieval manuscripts. In one thousand nine hundred two these manuscripts lay on the far side of the river in the ghazi has red mosque right on the demarcation line. And to the border i was that there was a crossing this bridge was really dangerous because towering up at the back is the mountain where serb snipers were in position and they would pick people off so this is so slight that this is a good thing but when there was a lull in the shooting and things were calmer they would dash over the bridge as fast as we could but only at the end these were never ran together though you always wanted a time that is but you know thats how we managed to get all the manuscripts across the river all of that is. Today the route they took is a peaceful tourist trip most of a yacht hitch packed the manuscripts in banana boxes since sorry ever was totally cut off finding food was a major problem so the sight of banana boxes attracted many hungry staff. To a pocket. But in a civil war the war had been going on for quite some time and food was running short. And i was also getting harder to find people willing to help us carry the manuscript which were packed in banana boxes well so sometimes young people would come up to us and say youve got so many bananas and we havent got any bread. Then theyd try to grab the boxes. But when they saw that the boxes only contain books they give them back to us they quoted. The war in bosnia also posed a threat to this little book the sarajevo had written. By jews stolen by christians and saved by muslims like its original owners the book has a nomadic history. Created in barcelona in thirteen fifty the sarajevo haggard out describes the exodus of the israelites from egypt when the jews were expelled from spain at the end of the fifteenth century the book found its way to venice. The church there took a hard line towards those of different faiths and the venetian censor history me took a very close look at the book to see whether the haggard data contained anything at variance with catholic doctrine during the war and dragged out over edge stuck it out in the National Museum and risked her life for bosnia as contra heritage she held firm like vista rini the venetian censor who perhaps deliberately overlooked a few things that was the period of the church was very strict about the content of the books so almost every book had to be inspected and decided should it be left alone to live or take the book or pass the censor even though it contained images which at the time contradicted catholic doctrine the hakadosh showed for instance that the earth is a sphere and not fat. So it is very interesting how the book survived censorship catholic censorship with such images in it so some of authority is think that maybe this was clever kids jill. Visto dharmesh revised by me is to really wrote at some point the book ended up in sarajevo where in eight hundred ninety four a certain years of coin sold it to the National Museum of bosnia and herzegovina cohens went to sarajevo perhaps because for centuries jews muslims and christians there had been able to live side by side in peace despite religious linguistic and cultural differences the people of sarajevo shared a history until nine hundred ninety two when the bosnian war destroyed their common ground. The book under community is international and knows no religion the National Museum of bosnia and herzegovina has guarded the haggard hour for over one hundred twenty years. In one thousand nine hundred ninety two no one here was prepared for a wall. Nevertheless a muslim scholars set out to save the jewish book. There were no civilians left in the city only combatants there was shooting everywhere there was bombing. When i arrived at the museum all the staff had gone only the porter and his family were left we went in to look for the ha gotta just imagine the size of the four huge Museum Buildings and only two people ever knew where the hog and i was camped on a director in the secretary. But they had already fled and couldnt be reached searching for the hard i was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Police look for thirty plus the scene. The professor searched for the book with a handful of bosnian soldiers in the end they found the hakadosh in the boiler room and of course is that when i finally held the hunger down my hands i opened it and smelled it look at the smell of ancient leather told me that i really was holding the original in the scene was it was of course i turned to the soldiers and said man this is it it was a month away imagine how overjoyed we were in the us we had at last found the book we had risked our lives for that day that. He. Lays it out. Risking ones life for a heap of old paper is a concept not unfamiliar to the people in iraq either on august the sixth twenty fourteen the inhabitants of kut akash in Northern Iraq had to leave their homes in a hurry they included many christians and father not cheap. The socalled Islamic State had attacked the town. Continually but we continued to digitalize manuscripts right up until that final evening then came the drama of the night of august the city we left along with tens of thousands of other cars the road was completely genet and then we heard that the kurdish checkpoint had been closed. Kurdish peshmerga had protected cattle cars right up to august the sixth but then suddenly withdrew with awful consequences for the inhabitants for father not jean and for his ancient books. Said we didnt know where to go and so we got out of our cars and a little girl came up to me he said father father look over there to the right is it it was early dawn and the sun was just rising is it was and i saw hundreds of black and white flags the flags the baseline explain what was it like that that the man or in their vehicles and ready to attack its over a certain and were going to die together but suddenly we heard that the front wheel was open. And we were allowed to walk us through the checkpoint but. We just took the bare essentials with us whatever we could carry sickie puts you fortunately i had youngsters with. Whenever i saw any of them with empty hands i asked them to take a book with that says off on this journey of it was one go because were about ten years old carried for all five books and manuscripts dating back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century but as she carried them through to the other side of the border elaine doing so rescue to have a dish also is not that he was totally exhausted and traumatized the people from cara car she was stranded in abil a large kurdish town in Northern Iraq. All the refugees had was what they carried in a few plastic backs. It is almost a miracle that father was able to save his precious manuscripts fortunately he only had a few still with him at the time he had taken most of the books to abbeville just a few days before the mass flight from ca to caution a premonition he reckons. Havent achieved Library Receives a constant stream of newcomers this book was brought to him from baghdad twenty years before monks had concealed it in a monastery to prevent it from being seized by saddam husseins cultural forensic unfortunately it was then forgotten and it was only recently rediscovered for centuries people read the book by candlelight as evidence by the spots of wax off. The manuscript was clean and prepared before being digitized with a truly professional need and professional equipmen