The chief treasure of Upsala is an old, time-worn parchment manuscript, in many respects the most interesting book in the world, for it is the only original Gothic manuscript extant and the only early source of information concerning the Gothic language, the oldest of all Teutonic tongues.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The Castle at Upsala.
The manuscript contains a translation of the four Gospels in Gothic by Bishop Ulphilas. The good bishop died in the year 388, and this copy was made undoubtedly within a century of his death. Not only did Ulphilas make this translation, but he invented the Gothic alphabet, some of whose letters show his indebtedness to the Greek. The letters are stamped in silver upon purple parchment, while some of the capitals and more important words are in gold or otherwise illuminated.
It has been said: “The old monk who laboriously stamped this parchment with his single types, a letter at a time, little knew how near he came to inventing printing, yet had he only combined three or four types together and stamped a word at once, the great invention would have been made there and then.”
I am not so sure of this, for our modern printing-press uses letters set one at a time, as the old monk used his hot metal types. But evidently the world was not yet ripe for Gutenburg and his printing-press, and it had to wait another thousand years for the invention that opened the aristocratic halls of learning to the democracy of the world. A saying of Max Müller’s is worth quoting for you here: “To come to Upsala,” he says, “and not see the Codex Argenteus would be like going to the Holy Land without seeing the Holy Grave.”
I am glad that the guardians of the Codex are fully alive to its unique value. Every night, in its silver case, it is locked up in a fire and burglar-proof safe, for the authorities remember that many years ago a watchman stole ten leaves of the Codex. For twenty years they were lost, and only on his death-bed the thief confessed his folly and drew them out from the pillow beneath his head. Such a theft seems to me a good deal like stealing a red-hot stove, or, perhaps the Mona Lisa, for how a thief could expect to dispose of any of these treasures or profit by them without discovery is a mystery.
Another building here, to which I must not fail to introduce you, is the splendid cathedral, the noblest church in Sweden and the historic center of the kingdom. It has recently been so thoroughly restored that all the old cathedral has been renovated out of it, except its memories and its tombs. Yet from the modern standpoint it is a magnificent building, nearly four hundred feet long, and with three beautiful Gothic spires that soar as many feet into the air.
The tombs have interested me the most, however. Here lies Gustavus Vasa, in a granite sarcophagus between his two wives, who in effigy lie on either side of him, while no thoughts of jealousy or rivalry stir their granite hearts. Here, too, is the charming philosopher and naturalist, Linnæus, whose statue in Stockholm I described, and Swedenborg, the great mystic, who could look into heaven and hell and describe what he saw there, and whose works, which have so strong a hold on a multitude of Americans to-day, are published and re-published in a multitude of languages.