Achieving absolute flawlessness is not on calligrapher Donald Jackson’s mind when he sits down to work in his Welsh studio.

BALTIMORE -- More than eight centuries ago, St. Francis of Assisi and two companions randomly opened a prayer book three times inside their parish church of St. Nicolo in Italy.

WASHINGTON -- It was the global political tension of the Cold War that prompted the collection and copying of millions of pages of sacred manuscripts, a project now being led by Benedictine Fr. Columba Stewart at St. John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minn.