Rabbula Gospels
Rabbula Gospels | |
---|---|
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. I, 56 | |
Type | Gospel Book |
Date | 586 |
Place of origin | Monastery of St. John of Zagba, Northern Mesopotamia or Syria |
Language(s) | Syriac |
Scribe(s) | Rabbula |
Size | 34 cm × 27 cm |
Script | Syriac |
Contents | Four Canonical Gospels (Peshitta version) |
The Rabbula Gospels, or Rabula Gospels (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, cod. Plut. I, 56) is a 6th-century illuminated Syriac Gospel Book. One of the finest Byzantine works produced in West Asia, and one of the earliest Christian manuscripts with large miniatures, it is distinguished by the miniaturist's predilection for bright colours, movement, drama, and expressionism. Created during a period from which little art survived, it nevertheless saw great development in Christian iconography. The manuscript has a significant place in art history, and is very often referred to.
Recent scholarship has suggested that the manuscript, completed in 586 AD, was later partly overpainted by restorers and bound together with miniatures from other sources in the 15th or 16th century.[1]
Description
The Gospel was completed in 586 at Monastery of St. John of Zagba (Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܙܓܒܐ, Bēṯ Zaḡbā), which, although traditionally thought to have been in Northern Mesopotamia, is now thought to have been in the hinterland between
The manuscript is illuminated, with the text framed in elaborate floral and architectural motifs. The Gospel canons are set in
The French Orientalist Edgard Blochet (1870–1937) argued that some of the folios of the manuscript, including the pictorial series, were an interpolation no earlier than the 10th or 11th century. Since the original caption accompanying the miniatures is of the same paleographic character as the main text of the manuscript, this theory was rejected by Giuseppe Furlani and by Carlo Cecchelli in the commentary of the facsimile edition of the miniatures published in 1959.[2] But doubts as to the original unity of the contents continued.[3] More recently, scholars have proposed that the text of 586 was only bound up together with the miniatures in the 15th century, and that the miniatures themselves were taken from at least one other original manuscript, and come from two different campaigns of work.[1]
The history of the manuscript after it was written is vague until the 11th century when it was at
The manuscript has served during Medieval Age as register of Maronites Patriarches (Elias Kattar),[4]
Large miniatures
- fol. 1a Election of the Apostle Mathias by the Eleven
- fol. 1b Theotokos (Virgin Mary) with the infant Jesus
- fol. 2a Christ receives a book from two monks (dedication) / The saints Eusebius of Caesarea and Ammonius of Alexandria
- fol. 3b-12b The canon tables of Eusebius with smaller marginal miniatures
- fol. 9b Matthew and John
- fol. 13a Crucifixion of Christ / Three Marys at the tomb
- fol. 14a Ascension of Christ / Christ with four monks
- fol. 14b Gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
See also
- Syriac versions of the Bible
- Codex Phillipps 1388
- Garima Gospels
- Nestorian Evangelion
- Syriac Bible of Paris
- Depiction of Jesus
References
- ^ a b Peers, Glenn, Review of Bernabò (see Further reading)
- ^ Miniatures from the Rabbula Gospels ms.
- ^ Wright, David H. "The Date and Arrangement of the Illustrations in the Rabbula Gospels." Dumbarton Oaks Papers 27 (1973): 197-208. Web., JSTOR
- ^ "Holy Spirit University of Kaslik | لبنان الوسيط عهد السلاطين المماليك". www.usek.edu.lb. Retrieved 2017-11-23.
Further reading
- Bernabò, Massimo, ed., Il Tetravangelo di Rabbula. Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, plut. 1.56: L'illustrazione del Nuovo Testamento nella Siria del VI secolo, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008.
- ISBN 9780870991790; full text available online from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries
- Walther, Ingo F.; Wolf, Norbert (2005), Codices Illustres: The world's most famous illuminated manuscripts, 400 to 1600, Köln: Taschen.
- Weitzmann, Kurt (1977), Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination, New York: George Braziller.