While the Bible is good for the soul, it’s not good for the body… at least not if you are using mercury to make illuminated copies of it.
Biblical Text-Writing May Have Poisoned Monks
June 27, 2008 — Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red.
The study, which will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, also describes a previously undocumented disease, called FOS, which was like leprosy and caused skull lesions.Additionally, the researchers found that mercury-containing medicine had been administered to 79 percent of the interred individuals with leprosy and 35 percent with syphilis.Since the monks, who were buried in the cloister walk of the Cistercian Abbey at Øm, did not have these diseases but contained mercury in their bones, scientists believe the monks were either contaminated while preparing and administering medicines, or while writing the artistic letters of incunabula, or pre-1500 A.D. books.
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Other religious groups may have experienced mercury poisoning due to scripting holy texts. In a separate study, scientists from the Soreq Nuclear Research Center in Israel and the Israel Museum found cinnabar on four fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include passages from the Hebrew Bible.
Filed under: Christianity, History, Israel, Religion, Science | Tagged: Archaeology, Bible, Cinnabar, Cistercian Monks, Dead Sea Scrolls, Incunabula, Mercury Poisoning, Science
