Accession number:
MS M.869
Title:
Gospel Book
Created:
Canterbury, England, 1000-1020.
Binding:
German 19th-century red velvet over heavy boards, 2 clasps of silver gilt studded with agates and amethysts, from the Three Kings Shrine, Cologne, by Nicholas of Verdun. The manuscript was purchased without the original upper cover decoration (an arrangement of enamels, gems, and a 15th-century jet figure of St. James Major), which was removed by Seligmann and some of its components sold separately. At least four enamel plaques from the upper cover were in the Germain Seligmann Collection and loaned to the 1970 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition The Year 1200, illustrated as catalogue no. 191.
Credit:
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows and the special assistance of Mr. William S. Glazier, 1954.
Description:
167 leaves (1 column, 28 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 302 x 191 mm
Provenance:
Executed in Canterbury in the early 11th century; manuscript was in Cologne at the end of the 11th century (the first document on fol. 14 is Pope Gregory VII's decree canonizing Archbishop Heribert of Cologne, issued between 1073 and 1075 and written in a German hand of the early 12th century); owned by the church of St. Severin at Cologne (oaths in Latin and German taken by officials at St. Severin in the 14th-18th centuries found on fols. 1-9, 14, and 124-125v); Cologne, Canon Franz Pick (1750-1819); 1802 Brussels, Duke of Arenberg; no. 2 in the Arenberg Library at Brussels (label on spine); exhibited by the then Duke at the Düsseldorf Kunsthistorische Ausstellung in 1902 (Düsseldorf, Kunsthistorische Ausstellung, Katalog 1904, p. 178, no. 522; purchased from Duke Engelbert Charles d'Arenberg with the assistance of the Fellows and the special assistance of Mr. William S. Glazier through Jacques Seligmann in 1954.
Notes:
Ms. gospel book in the version used at Tours under Alcuin; written and illuminated in Canterbury, Christ Church, England, 1000-1020.
Manuscript contains later documents added in Germany: forms of oaths in Latin and German taken by officials of the church of S. Severin at Cologne in the 14th-18th centuries (fols. 1-9) and Pope Gregory VII's decree canonizing Archbishop Heribert of Cologne, issued between 1073 and 1075 (fol. 14).
Decoration: 5 full-page miniatures (Crucifixion and 4 Evangelist portraits), 8 historiated canon tables, 4 incipit pages with gold and colored script.
Artist: illumination attributed by Gameson to Artist A of the Harley Psalter (London, British Library, Harley MS 603).
Variant Title:
Arenberg Gospels
Script:
Caroline minuscule with uncial and rustic capitals
Language:
Latin
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