Beowulf manuscript copied in England

1005

An Anglo-Saxon scribe in a southern scriptorium finished copying the only surviving manuscript of the great heroic poem of a Geatish warrior who slays monsters and dragons. The codex would sit largely unread for seven hundred years before escaping a Cotton library fire that seared its edges. The poem's survival by a single copy makes it one of the most precarious treasures in all of English literature.