Breton Gospel Book (British Library, MS Egerton 609)

Egerton MS 609
Breton Gospel Book
Language	Latin
Date	9th century
Genre	Gospel Book

British Library, Egerton MS 609 is a

The manuscript is believed to be part of the 'Irish-Northumbrian' group.[4] Other manuscripts considered 'Irish-Northumbrian' are the Book of Armagh, the Lichfield Gospels, the Book of Kells and the MacRegol Gospels.^[4] There have long been cross-cultural artistic connections between the British Isles and Brittany, which is especially evident in medieval manuscripts, due to their locations across the channel from each other.^[5] Breton manuscripts resemble British and Irish decoration with their animal ornamentation, interlace and other designs; while also using the script developed at Tours and earlier Continental decoration.^[5]

Contents

The Breton Gospels Book contains St. Jerome's letter to Pope Damasus, The Prologue of St Jerome's commentary on St Matthew, and the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.^[2] It also includes prefatory material and canon tables, an index for a medieval manuscript.^[1] It consists of 102 folios, plus two unfoliated paper flyleaves.^[1] The book's dimensions are 310 by 210 mm, or about 12.2 by 8.3 inches.^[1] The text space for the script is 230 by 145 mm, or about 9.1 by 5.7 inches, with varying of lines of text per page.^[1] The Breton Gospels Book is written in Latin, with Caroline minuscule script.^[1] It is thought that the book was copied by an Insular scribe.^[1] It is a parchment codex, with ink and pigments on vellum, and was bound after 1600 with red gilt leather, gold tooled paper, and marbled end papers.^[1]

Carolingian minuscule began in the eighth century under Charlemagne, but became popular in the ninth century and was created from

St. Jerome's letter to Pope Damasus was usually placed before the texts of the gospels in a manuscript, and is called 'Novum Opus' because of its first words.[6] In the O of 'Beato' there is a face which was a common decoration in early medieval manuscripts.^[6] The face is this manuscript is simple; it has lines forming a basic outline of a human face.

The canon tables are Eusebian Canon tables.^[1] Canon tables were used to divide up the gospels in a manuscript and are similar to a table of contents. The canon tables from folio 3v to 7r are in frames with brown and yellow. The canon tables' design changes between the open folio leaves. Some have animal heads at the ends, while others have organic designs. The canon tables on folio 3v to 4r have animal heads on both the top ends of each outer column.^[2] On folio 3v, both animal heads are the same and look like birds; whereas on folio 4r, they are different.^[2] The animal head on the left looks like a bird, where on the right it is another animal.^[2] Folio 4r on the second to the right column has a design at the top where it forms the arches, which the other side does not have.^[2] The canon tables are also inside a decorative micro-architecture frame.^[1] The canon tables on 4v and 5r only have a single animal head on each page.^[2] They are each on the column facing the index of the manuscript (on 4v it is the far-right column, and on 5r the far-left column).^[2] These frames also have less decoration, and are more simplistic. On folios 5v and 6r, they become simply lined frames.^[2] Folios 6v and 7r are almost the same except for small ornamentation at the cornered ends of the columns.^[2] Folio 6v has small curved ends at each of the bottom outer ends of the columns.^[2] The one on the right looks similar to an animal head. Where on folio 7r it has different swirling designs at the ends of the frames.^[2]

There are four large initials that are decorated within the manuscript.^[1] They are mostly in brown, orange, yellow and some blue.^[1] They all show elements of interlace and zoomorphism.^[1] These letters occur on folios 1r (Jerome's letter to Pope Damasus), 8r (the Gospel of Matthew), 46r (the Gospel of Mark) and 79r (the Gospel of John). Luke's was the only Gospel that did not have a large decorative initial. There are other initials on folio 1r, 2v (The Prologue of St Jerome's commentary on St Matthew), 7v (the preface to Matthew), 44v (the preface to Mark) and 77v (the preface to John) that are also decorated but not to the size and extent as the other ones. It was common in the Middle Ages to have a preface for each gospel.^[7] The prefaces in the Egerton manuscript are the so-called Monarchian Prologues.^[8] Luke is again the only saint not to have a preface or a decorated beginning. They also used the same colors, along with interlace and zoomorphism.^[1] Many of the beginning initials are highlighted or filled in with orange, brown and yellow, some of them having more than one color.^[1] It is thought that the monastery was not wealthy because the manuscript was modestly produced, along with a limited variety of colors.^[9]

There are similarities from the colophon of Luke from the Bibliothèque Nationale MS nouv. acq. lat. 1587 to that in Egerton 609.^[10] The Bibliothèque Nationale MS nouv. acq. lat. 1587 was produced in the 8th to 9th century in Brittany.^[10]

Matthew

The beginning to the gospel of Matthew is similar to that of the beginning of the Gospel of Mark.^[11] The animal heads and interlace which appear on the 'LI' are related to styles that have been transformed and simplified from early medieval Northern and Western France.^[11] These designs are more geometric than that of extravagantly curving letters found in Anglo-Saxon and Irish manuscripts, they have more in common with the classicising letters found in Charlemagne's court.^[11]

Mark

In the preface of the Gospel of Mark, the design in the first letter in 'Marcus' is a unique variation in Anglo-Saxon England and Ireland gospel books made from the eighth and ninth centuries.^[9] For this letter the shape and interlace have been modified into linked geometric patterns, where traditionally they use spirals and curves.^[9]

The beginning of the Gospel of Mark is similar to the decorations in gospel books from Britain and Ireland in the eighth and ninth centuries.^[5] The title is written at the top of the folio (f. 8r) in capital letters with color added to the script.^[5] The beginning letters of the gospel are almost the size of the page and slowly shrink until it becomes standard script.^[5] The larger letters also have color added to them, while the regular script does not. The first two letters 'IN' at the start of the gospel are decorated with animal heads and interlace.^[5] These two letters are also unified, which first appears in the late 7th century in Irish manuscripts.^[5] The decoration with the animal heads and the interlace shows the Breton tradition of imitating Irish and similar art in manuscripts.^[5]

John

The beginning gospel of John is the same as the beginning gospels to that of Mark and Matthew.

• 
  Folio 1. The beginning of Jerome's letter to Pope Damasus, along with decorated initials 'B' and 'N' and interlace.
• 
  Folio 2v. Decorated initial 'P' with an animal head and a stylized tail.
• 
  Folio 3v. Canon table with micro-architectural frame and beak heads.
• 
  Folio 4r. Canon table in a micro-architectural frame and beak heads.
• 
  Folio 8r. Zoomorphic initial 'L' at the beginning of Matthew, which includes animal heads and interlace.
• 
  Folio 44v. At the beginning of the preface of Mark, the word 'Marcus' is decorated with geometric interlace.
• 
  Folio 45v. A miniature portrait at the beginning of Mark of a stylised man with an eagle head in an interlace border.
• 
  Folio 46r. A decorated initial 'I' at the beginning of Mark with animal heads and interlace.
• 
  Folio 77v. The beginning of the preface to John, with a decorated initial 'H' and with colored letters.
• 
  Folio 78v. A miniature portrait before the beginning of John of a standing winged figure with a bird head in an interlace border.
• 
  Folio 79r. The beginning of John has a zoomorphic word with the initials 'IN' with bird heads and interlace.

See also

• List of Hiberno-Saxon illuminated manuscripts
• List of illuminated later Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

Further reading

• List of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1836-1840 (London: British Museum, 1843), 1836, p. 42.
• [E. Maunde Thompson and G. F. Warner], Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1881-84), Part II Latin, p. 30.
• Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th edn, ed. by Edward Miller, 2 vols (London: George Bell & Sons, 1894), II, 76.
• John Chapman, Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), pp. 49, n. 1, 280 (as 'E').
• P. McGurk, 'The Gospel Book in Celtic Lands before AD 850: Contents and Arrangement', in Ireland and Christendom: The Bible and the Missions, ed. By Proinseas Ni Chathain and Michael Richter, (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987) pp.165-89. (pp. 176, 189)
• A Guide to the Exhibition of Some Part of the Egerton Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1929), no. 50.
• Edward Kennard Rand, A Survey of the Manuscripts of Tours, Studies in the Script of Tours, 1, 2 vols (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mediaeval Academy of America, 1929), I, no. 140, II, pl. 15 [with additional bibliography].

• C. R. Morey, ‘The Gospel-Book of Landevennec: The Illumination of the Landevennec Gospels’, Art Studies: Medieval Renaissance and Modern (1931), 258-62 (p. 260 n. 3).
• H. H. Glunz, History of the Vulgate in England from Alcuin to Roger Bacon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), no. 31.
• Wilhelm Koehler, ‘The Fragments of an Eighth-Century Gospel Book in the Morgan Library (M. 564)', in Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. by Dorothy Miner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 238-65 (p. 256, as ‘E’).
• Francis Wormald, An Early Breton Gospel Book, ed. by Jonathan Alexander (Cambridge: Roxburghe Club, 1977), pp. 14 n. 6, 19 n. 3.
• Patrick McGurk, ‘The Disposition of Numbers in Latin Eusebian Canon Tables’, in Philologia Sacra: Biblische und patristische Studien für Hermann J. Frede und Walter Thele zu ihrem siebzigsten Geburtstag, ed. by Roger Gryson (Freiburg: Herder, 1993), pp. 242-58 (p, 252 n. 26, 255 n. 37).
• Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2007), p. 39, fig. 26.
• Martin McNamara, The Bible and the Apocrypha in the Early Irish Church (A.D. 600-1200), Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia, Research on the Inheritance of the Early and Medieval Christianity, 66 (Turnhout, Brepols, 2015), pp. 279-80, 321-24, 530.
• Kenney, James F., “Chapter VII: Religious literature and ecclesiastical culture”, in: Kenney, James F., The sources for the early history of Ireland: an introduction and guide. Volume 1: ecclesiastical, Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies 11, Revised ed. (1929), New York: Octagon, 1966. 622–744.
• Lindsay, W., & Bains, D. (1963). Notae latinae: An account of abbreviation in Latin MSS. of the early minuscule period (c. 700-850). Hildesheim: Georg Olms.
• O'Reilly, Jennifer, Carol A. Farr, and Elizabeth Mullins. Early Medieval Text and Image II. The Codex Amiatinus, the Book of Kells and Anglo-Saxon art., 2019. Print.
• Smith, Julia M. H. Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians. Cambridge [England: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Print.
• Fernández, Cuesta J, and Sara M. Pons-Sanz. The Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context. , 2016. Print.

Citations