Church leader hopes hand-written and illustrated Bible can heal religious divides

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: When the printing press was invented nearly 600 years ago, it put an end to centuries of handwritten manuscripts in which scribes, mostly in monasteries, tediously wrote and illustrated sacred texts, such as the Bible.

Fred de Sam Lazaro one monastery that brought back that tradition just once, and, in the process, is helping bridge divides.

It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: It was a ceremony rife with symbolism, held in a 13th century chapel called The Crypt in London's Lambeth Palace.

Most Rev. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury: Father Abbot, let's have a go.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: A special edition of the Saint John's Bible, commissioned by an American Catholic monastery, was gifted to the head of the Church of England, who, alongside the American abbot, John Klassen, burnished a tiny gold dot on the dedication page.

Man: It's perfect.

Most Rev. Justin Welby: His glistens more than mine.

(Laughter)

Fred de Sam Lazaro: Joking aside, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, had high praise for a glistening addition to the palace library.

Most Rev. Justin Welby: This is something of great preciousness as a book. It isn't just a collection of ancient documents. The beauty of the illustrations, I mean, the facing page to Genesis Chapter 1 is breathtaking.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: The Genesis of the Saint John's Bible took place nearly three decades ago in a Welsh village, where Donald Jackson, a noted calligrapher and scribe to the queen, dreamed up his own Sistine Chapel project, a handwritten illuminated Bible. He then brought the idea to the monks at Saint John's Abbey and University in Minnesota.

Abbot John Klassen, Saint John's Abbey: The initial reaction was one of, really? In a world that's going digital, is this a good thing to do?

Fred de Sam Lazaro: Not to most people, perhaps. But these are Benedictine monks.

Abbot John Klassen: Historically, writing the word, scribing it, illuminating it, it's deeply woven into monastic DNA. So we moved steadily toward it.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: After agreeing to raise several million dollars the effort would cost, the monastery and scriptorium began collaborating, a Minnesota committee of scholars weighing in, informing the art and layout for Jackson and his team of illustrators and scribes.

Woman: I'm satisfied with the image itself, but not so much with the position and scale.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: Over fax machines and snail mail, long before FaceTime or Zoom, it took nearly 15 years to complete the 160 illuminations across 1,120 pages of handwritten script, all of it faithful to the ancient methods, quills from feathers, natural inks, and vellum, or calfskin, not paper.

The text came from the revised standard version of the Bible accepted by most Christian denominations.

Man: It represents a tree of life. We are all connected.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: It's in the illuminations that the Saint John's Bible shows its distinctiveness and a sensibility to the modern times. This one, for example, called the Genealogy of Christ, is a menorah-shaped family tree, with Hebrew text alongside Latin, also a nod to the third branch of Abrahamic faiths.

Man: I just added the name of Hagar, whose son Ishmael was the ancestor of Mohammed. So, I put her name in Arabic.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: The pages and artwork of the original Saint John's Bible have been exhibited on tours across the United States and even Great Britain.

But their permanent home is here at Saint John's in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Tim Ternes, Director, The Saint John's Bible: This was never meant to be a museum piece. It was meant to be shared, but, in reality, it does need care.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: That's Tim Ternes job, as director, or, as he puts it, keeper of the pages, which, along with the sketches and raw elements that preceded all the finished art, are meticulously cataloged and stored in a temperature- and light-controlled environment.

In a time of so much polarization, Ternes says, these pages have had something for everyone who's visited the exhibits.

Tim Ternes: We have people who are non-believers, who are people who are staunch believers, people who are fairly liberal, people who are fairly conservative, and they all come together.

And so it does what it's intended to do. For me, the most surprising thing is how truly communal the Bible really is.

Abbot John Klassen: The Bible has often been used as a weapon to justify violence against other people.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: Abbot Klassen says a key goal of the project is to heal religious divides. And this was an apt place to begin, the very place where, in the 16th century, the Church of England declared its independence from the pope and professed its loyalty to King Henry VIII.

Henry also ordered monasteries confiscated or destroyed amid the bloody break and the Protestant Reformation.

Abbot John Klassen: We are just aware of the enormous wrenching pain from the most awful, awful conflicts between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church and, frankly, the loss of the Benedictine world in some respects here in England.

So, to be burnishing this together with the archbishop here, we would hope that it would lead to other kinds of communion.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: In that spirit, the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury invited his Catholic guest to co-lead an evening prayer service, the new Bible at its center.

In the front pew, the scribe Donald Jackson. Looking back, he says even as events of our time influenced the artwork, the words themselves influenced the artists. On September 11, 2001, for instance, he happened to be working on an illumination of the prodigal son, the parable of a father's enduring love and forgiveness toward a wayward son.

Donald Jackson, Artistic Director, The Saint John's Bible: Bam. The Twin Towers, it was happening there before my eyes. We were stunned, like everybody else in the world

Fred de Sam Lazaro: The Twin Towers are now part of this biblical illumination.

Donald Jackson: As I was burnishing the gold leaf on those two tower blocks, which I inserted into the background of the view of the father reaching out to the prodigal son, I realized -- because I was feeling hatred, but I realized I can't hate my way out of this.

I have to somehow or other find what God was, Jesus was telling us. We have to love our way out of this.

Fred de Sam Lazaro: This so-called apostles addition, one of a handful of fine art facsimiles printed on high-quality paper, is dedicated to the late Queen Elizabeth II. It is on display at London's Lambeth Palace Library, where her son King Charles III recently popped in for a visit.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro in London.