Gospel Book

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Accession number:

MS M.728

Title:

Gospel Book

Created:

Reims, France, ca. 860.

Binding:

French 18th-century red morocco gilt with the arms of the Abbey of Saint-Remi on spine. Medieval wood boards possibly still present. Outsides of boards re-covered with panels of 19th-century russet sheepskin, 19th-century clasps at fore-edge; in blue buckram clamshell box (formerly in tan half-case).

Credit:

Purchased in 1927.

Description:

192 leaves (1 column, 21 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 303 x 258 mm

Provenance:

Executed in Reims during the time of Archbishop Hincmar (845-882); rebound in the 18th century and arms of the Abbaye de St-Remy stamped on back; at the monastery at least until 1790, when the Revolutionary authorities removed 248 manuscripts; sale of the bookseller Savoye (Paris, May 28, 1828, lot 11); J.L. Bourdillon (catalogue, 1830, p. 2-3, no. 4); purchased by Robert S. Holford from Payne and Foss; purchased for the Pierpont Morgan Library from the Holford estate in Nov. 1927.

Notes:

Ms. Gospel book; written and illuminated in Reims, France, probably at the Abbaye de St-Remy (the Abbey of Saint-Remi), ca. 870s.
Decoration: written in gold; 4 full-page Evangelist portrait miniatures; 4 illuminated incipit pages; 1 decorated canon tables.
Nees, Frankish Manuscripts, vol. 2, 294, sees formal similarities to works in ivories commissioned by or around Hincmar in the 870s, including the cover of the Pericopes of Henry II (Munich, Clm. 4452). Some of the decoration shares similarities with New Haven, Beinecke M 413, created in Reims probably in 873-877.
At the end of the volume, there are three flyleaves, originally from a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century lectionary, including readings for Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, Holy Sacraments, St. Remigius, dedication of a church, and Assumption. Front flyleaf and last flyleaf are from a book of homilies of Pope Leo, written in the fourteenth century.

Script:

Caroline minuscule

Language:

Latin

Resources:

Description/Bibliography

Century:

9th century

Genres:

Canon tables

Caroline minuscule

Illuminated manuscripts