British Library, Add MS 40618 is a late 8th century

illuminated Illuminated may refer to: * "Illuminated" (song), by Hurts * Illuminated Film Company, a British animation house * ''Illuminated'', alternative title of Black Sheep (Nat & Alex Wolff album) * Illuminated manuscript See also * Illuminate (disambi ...

Irish

Gospel Book A Gospel Book, Evangelion, or Book of the Gospels (Greek: , ''Evangélion'') is a codex or bound volume containing one or more of the four Gospels of the Christian New Testament – normally all four – centering on the life of Jesus of Nazareth ...

with 10th century Anglo-Saxon additions. The manuscript contains a portion of the

Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and form ...

, the majority of the Gospel of Mark and the entirety of the Gospels of Luke and

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

. There are three surviving

Evangelist portrait Evangelist portraits are a specific type of miniature included in ancient and mediaeval illuminated manuscript Gospel Books, and later in Bibles and other books, as well as other media. Each Gospel of the Four Evangelists, the books of Matthew, Ma ...

s, one original and two 10th century replacements, along with 10th century decorated initials. It is catalogued as number 40618 in the

Additional manuscripts The Additional manuscripts are a collection of manuscripts stored at the British Library. The collection was started at the British Museum in 1756, and passed to the British Library on its establishment in 1973. They form by far the largest collecti ...

collection at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

. The manuscript has 66 surviving

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other anima ...

folios. The pages are 130 by 105 mm. The text occupies an area of 101 by 73 mm. There are gatherings of 16 or 20 folios. The oak board used as the back cover survives along with a vellum cover from another book that was used as a wrapper starting in the 17th century. The manuscript is missing several folios. The first 18 folios are missing from Matthew so the text begins at . There are two folios missing that contained the end of Matthew and the beginning of Mark. The remainder of Mark and the other two Gospels are complete. The original final page of John has been lost, but was replaced by a folio written in by a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon scribe. The original Evangelist portraits of Matthew, Mark and John have also been lost. In the 10th century Evangelist portraits were added to either replace or to supplement the originals. Of these the portraits of Luke and John survive. The manuscript is a

pocket gospel Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland. The term derives from ''insula'', the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style dif ...

. The text belongs to the Irish

Vulgate The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels u ...

tradition with a few

Old Latin Old Latin, also known as Early Latin or Archaic Latin (Classical la, prīsca Latīnitās, lit=ancient Latinity), was the Latin language in the period before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. It descends from a common Proto-Italic ...

readings. The manuscript is written in a pointed

Insular minuscule Insular script was a medieval script system originating from Ireland that spread to Anglo-Saxon England and continental Europe under the influence of Hiberno-Scottish mission, Irish Christianity. Irish missionaries took the script to continental ...

in three hands, although the second hand wrote only a few lines on folio 51. Edward the Deacon, the scribe who wrote the Anglo-Saxon page at the end of John, wrote in an Anglo-Saxon minuscule that had some features of

Carolingian minuscule Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one reg ...

. Edward added a colophon in

rustic capitals Rustic capitals ( la, littera capitalis rustica) is an ancient Roman calligraphic script. Because the term is negatively connoted supposing an opposition to the more 'civilized' form of the Roman square capitals, Bernhard Bischoff prefers to call ...

(QUI LEGAT ORAT PRO SCRIPTORE EADVVARDO DIACONE – "may he who reads this pray for the scribe Edward the deacon"). The portrait of Luke, which is the only surviving original miniature, strongly resembles the Evangelist portraits of the

Book of Mulling The Book of Mulling or less commonly, Book of Moling (Dublin, Trinity College Library MS 60 (A. I. 15)), is an Irish pocket Gospel Book from the late 8th or early 9th century. The text collection includes the four Gospels, a liturgical servic ...

. The Anglo-Saxon miniatures are done in an early version of the Winchester Style and were influenced by Carolingian illumination. The manuscript originally contained decorated initials. These were erased in the 10th century and new

zoomorphic The word ''zoomorphism'' derives from the Greek ζωον (''zōon''), meaning "animal", and μορφη (''morphē''), meaning "shape" or "form". In the context of art, zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It c ...

initials were repainted in an Anglo-Saxon style. The placement of the initials is unusual because lines are rarely broken to start a new paragraph. The text usually continues and the initial is omitted from its proper place and is instead inserted into the margin. This system is used in some Greek manuscripts including the

Codex Alexandrinus The Codex Alexandrinus (London, British Library, Royal MS 1. D. V-VIII), designated by the siglum A or 02 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 4 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts), is a manu ...

. There are gold crosses, which were probably also added in the 10th century, in the margins of John. The manuscript is thought to have belonged to

King Athelstan King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

, who may have ordered the 10th century "modernization". On folio 66 verso there is a partially erased 12th century inscription which reads "iste est liber sanct......" Also on folio 66v are two ownership inscriptions. One indicates that in 1538 the book was owned by William Newman. The other indicates that in 1662 it was owned by Robert Lancaster. The manuscript was purchased by the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

in 1922.

External links

British Library catalogue entryBritish Library Digital Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts entry

External links

Further reading