The Ceolfrid Bible (London,

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

, Add MS 45025) is a fragment of a late 7th- or early 8th-century

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

. It is almost certainly a portion of one of the three single-volume Bibles ordered made by

Ceolfrid Saint Ceolfrid (or Ceolfrith, ; also Geoffrey, c. 642 – 716) was an Anglo-Saxon Christian abbot and saint. He is best known as the warden of Bede from the age of seven until his death in 716. He was the Abbot of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey, an ...

Abbot Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the head of an independent monastery for men in various Western Christian traditions. The name is derived from ''abba'', the Aramaic form of the Hebrew ''ab'', and means "father". The female equivale ...

of Monkwearmouth-

Jarrow Jarrow ( or ) is a town in South Tyneside in the county of Tyne and Wear, England. Historically in County Durham, it is on the south bank of the River Tyne, about from the east coast. The 2011 census area classed Hebburn and the Boldons as ...

. It is closely related to the Codex Amiatinus, which is the only surviving complete Bible of the three ordered by Ceolfrid. The eleven surviving

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin (rather than the skin of other animals), or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellu ...

leaves of the manuscript contain portions of the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

text of the third and fourth

Books of Kings The Book of Kings (, ''Sefer (Hebrew), Sēfer Malik, Məlāḵīm'') is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Kings) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of ancient Is ...

. Except for folio 11, which is missing a strip at the bottom of the leaf, the leaves are 430mm by 340mm. The text is written in two columns of 44 lines in an

uncial Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...

hand. The script and the text both bear a remarkable similarity with the Codex Amiatinus, although there are some corrections in the Ceolfrid Bible not in the Codex Amiatinus. The text is arranged "per cola et commata", that is, the length of a line serves to clarify the sense of the text. The text is divided identically as the text of the Codex Amiatinus. The first lines of each chapter are written with red ink. The beginning of the Fourth Book of Kings is marked by an enlarged initial P decorated with red dots. In the margin next to the initial P there is a Chi Rho monogram flanked by the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

letters

Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...

and

Omega Omega (, ; uppercase Ω, lowercase ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and last letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numerals, Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value ...

Punctuation Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of writing, written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, c ...

was added to the text at a later date. In the 14th century modern chapter numbers were added along with a note between the end of the Third Book of Kings and the Beginning of the Fourth Book of Kings which reads ''Explicit Regum liber tercius. Incipit quartus. Prevaricatus est etc''. An additional single leaf, now in the British Library (Add MS 37777) contains another portion of the Third Book of Kings and shares all of the similarities shared by the Ceolfrid Bible and the Codex Amiatinus. This leaf almost certainly is either also from the Ceolfrid Bible or from the third Bible ordered made by Ceolfrid. The leaves of the Ceolfrid Bible were used in the 16th century as covers for the

Cartulary A cartulary or chartulary (; Latin: ''cartularium'' or ''chartularium''), also called ''pancarta'' or ''codex diplomaticus'', is a medieval manuscript volume or roll ('' rotulus'') containing transcriptions of original documents relating to the fo ...

of the lands of the Willoughby family. They were afterwards preserved at

Wollaton Hall Wollaton Hall is an Elizabethan country house of the 1580s standing on a small but prominent hill in Wollaton Park, Nottingham, England. The house is now Nottingham Natural History Museum, with Nottingham Industrial Museum in the outbuilding ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated ''Notts.'') is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. The county is bordered by South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. Th ...

. Add MS 37777 was discovered by Rev.

William Greenwell William Greenwell, (23 March 1820 – 27 January 1918) was an English archaeologist and Church of England priest. Early life William Greenwell was born 23 March 1820 at the estate known as Greenwell Ford near Lanchester, County Durham, Lanchest ...

in 1882 in a shop in

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England, United Kingdom *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area ...

. A third leaf was found in 1982 at Kingston Lacy, a National Trust property near

Wimborne Minster Wimborne Minster (often referred to as Wimborne, ) is a market town in Dorset in South West England, and the name of the Church of England church in that town. It lies at the confluence of the River Stour and the River Allen, north of Pool ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

. This leaf, which came from Ecclesiasticus III-IV, had been used as a covering for documents which had also come from the Willoughby family of Wollaton. The leaf is now on long-term loan to the British Library.For an illustration of this leaf, see Christopher de Hamel, ''A history of illuminated manuscripts'', 2nd ed. (London, 1986), p.20-21

References

External links

{{Commons category, Ceolfrid Bible (690-716) - BL Add MS 45025
British Library Catalogue entry for the Ceolfrid Bible.British Library Catalogue entry for Add. MS 37777.
Illuminated biblical manuscripts Vulgate manuscripts 8th-century biblical manuscripts British Library additional manuscripts