Manuscript Piece, 1,300 Years Old, Sold for $105,600

A fragment of a 1,300-year-old manuscript, found last fall in the binding of a book in Washington, was sold Tuesday for $105,600, Sotheby’s auction house said.

The buyer of the fragment--believed to be the earliest known surviving manuscript written in England--was an unidentified dealer who bid by telephone.

The tattered, yellowed double page was found in the Folger Shakespeare Library and is believed by experts to have been written by an Irish monk in an English monastery in early- or mid-7th Century.

The fragment is 200 years older than the Book of Kells, an Irish manuscript at Trinity College, Dublin.

The text, in Latin, is a copy of a translation of the “Ecclesiastical History” of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine, who lived from 265 to 340.