sentences:  The manuscript, containing 266 pages with the text of the four gospels, 50 of them full page illustrations, was sold by auction on 6 December 1983 at Sotheby's in London for £8,140,000.The purchase price was raised, in the context of a German national initiative for the preservation of national treasures, by the German government, the "Bundesländer" of Lower Saxony and Bavaria, the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz and private donors (largely from Brunswick).It was the most expensive book in the world until 1994, when Bill Gates bought the Codex Leicester, a manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci.