The Bodleian Library in Oxford owns impressive books and manuscripts from ancient times. Many were written or copied by religious scholars and scribes who, for centuries, dominated the intellectual world. Here are some of the most striking examples.

This mutilated manuscript of the aged Gospels, most likely copied in Ireland, is from the second half of the 8th century while a slightly less treasure, from a Gregorian Sacramentary, is probably from 825-50 AD.

Not all the extant books and manuscripts are religious. This 888 AD Euclid's Elements, from Constantinople, includes drawings. So does this late 10th/early 11th century work from the "Caedmon Manuscript" of Anglo-Saxon Biblical poetry. (Be sure to scroll down to the end of the text to see the drawing: an angel guarding the gates of Paradise.)

Rarely do we get to see pictures of the monks who worked so hard to create such masterpieces. This monk decided to be different. At the end of his manuscript of St. Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah, this illustrator (from the late 11th century AD) created a self-portrait. The work is from the Benedictine Abbey of Jumieges in Normandy.

Because the Bible was the source of so much discussion and so many manuscripts produced during the Middle Ages, most of the stunning illuminations we still have today are Bible-related. "Hezekiah and the Water Clock" is a pictorial" interpretation of II Kings 20 while the monastic skill of first-letter illumination is graphically shown in the letter "B" from Psalm 1 ("Beatus vir).

Sometimes monks did much more than copy the works of other scholars. Sometimes monks fundamentally disagreed with the tenets of their religion. Woe unto free-thinking monks and scholars who ran afoul of the Catholic Church in Europe! Their histories undoubtedly had tremendous influence on the founders of the American Republic. One such history, still significant today, is the story of the British scholar, John Wycliffe.

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