St Augustine Gospels

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The evangelist portrait of Luke under the inscription Iura sacerdotii Lucas tenet ore iuuenci from Carmen paschale by Coelius Sedulius. Gospels of Saint Augustine, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Ms. 286, fol. 129v

The St Augustine Gospels (

leaves measuring about 252 x 196 mm,[1] and is not entirely complete, in particular missing pages with miniatures
.

This manuscript is the oldest surviving illustrated Latin (rather than Greek or Syriac) Gospel Book,[2] and one of the oldest European books in existence. Although the only surviving illuminations are two full-page miniatures, these are of great significance in art history as so few comparable images have survived. "When this manuscript was made, Latin was still generally spoken, and Jerome [author of the Vulgate translation, of which this text is a copy], who died in 420, was then no more distant in time than (say) Walter Scott or Emily Brontë are to us."[3]

The Church of England calls the book the Canterbury Gospels, though to scholars this name usually refers to another book, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon gospel book written at Canterbury, now with one portion in the British Library as Royal MS 1 E VI, and another in the Library of Canterbury Cathedral.

History

The manuscript is traditionally, and plausibly, considered to be either a volume brought by

tituli or captions to the scenes around the portrait of Luke, not all of which may reflect the intentions of the original artist.[6]

The book was certainly at

John Paul II in 1982,[10] and the celebrations in 1997 for the 1,400th anniversary of the Gregorian mission.[11] In 2023 the Gospels were carried in the procession at the coronation of Charles III and Camilla. As far as is known it is the first time they have been used in a coronation.[12]
The book was open at the page with the portrait of Saint Luke.

The manuscript was rebound at the British Museum in 1948–49 with plain oak boards and a spine of cream alum-tawed goatskin.[13]

Text

The manuscript is "more or less the oldest substantially complete copy" of Jerome's translation of the Gospels. His late-4th-century Vulgate gradually replaced the earlier Vetus Latina ("Old Latin") text used by Christians in the Roman Empire. A 1933 analysis of the St Augustine Gospels by Hermann Glunz documented around 700 variants from the standard Vulgate: most are minor differences of spelling or word order, but in some cases the scribe chooses readings from the Vetus Latina. This supports the St Augustine connection, as Gregory the Great, the supposed donor, wrote in his Moralia that he was using the more fluent Vulgate, except for certain passages where he found the Old Latin more suitable, and his Forty Homilies on the Gospels opts for the older translation in the same places as the St Augustine Gospels.[14]

Miniatures

The left-hand scenes on the portrait of Luke

The manuscript once contained

Western Empire – the only comparable narrative Gospel cycles from manuscripts in the period are Greek, notably the Rossano Gospels,[16] and Sinope Gospels, or the Syriac Rabbula Gospels. The equivalent Old Testament cycles are more varied however, including the Greek Vienna Genesis and Cotton Genesis, the Latin Ashburnham Pentateuch, the Quedlinburg Itala fragment
, and some others.

The miniatures have moved further from classical style than those in the Greek manuscripts, with "a linear style which not only flattens the figure, but begins to develop a rhythmic quality in the linear design which must be seen as the beginning of a process of intentional abstraction".[17] For another historian, the figures in the small scenes have "a linear form which we immediately perceive to be medieval" and "are no longer paintings, but tinted drawings. The same tendency is exhibited in the treatment of the architecture and ornament; the naturalistic polychrome accessories of a manuscript like the Vienna Dioscurides are flattened and attenuated into a calligraphic pattern."[18]

The subject of the influence of the miniatures on later Anglo-Saxon art has often been raised, though in view of most of the presumed picture pages of this manuscript now being lost, and the lack of knowledge as to what other models were available to form the Continental post-classical aspects of the Insular style that developed from the 7th century onwards (with Canterbury as a major centre), all comments by art historians have necessarily been speculative. It is clear from the variety of styles of evangelist portraits found in early Insular manuscripts, echoing examples known from the Continent, that other models were available, and there is a record of an illuminated and imported Bible of St Gregory at Canterbury in the 7th century.[19] Later works mentioned as probably influenced by the Augustine Gospels include the Stockholm Codex Aureus and the St Gall Gospel Book.[20] In general, though evangelist portraits became a common feature of Insular and Anglo-Saxon Gospel books, the large number of small scenes in the Augustine Gospels were not seen again until much later works like the Eadwine Psalter, made in the 12th century in Canterbury, which has prefatory pages with small narrative images in grids in a similar style to the Augustine Gospels.[21]

Evangelist portrait of Luke

Of the four portrait pages, only that for

evangelist's symbol. The pediment has an inscription with a hexameter from the Carmen Paschale by the 5th-century Christian poet Coelius Sedulius (Book 1, line 357):[22] "Iura sacerdotii Lucas tenet ore iuvenci" – "Luke holds the laws of priesthood in the mouth of the young bull" (iuvencus meaning also "young man").[23]

Right-hand scenes

More unusually, twelve small scenes drawn from Luke, mostly of the Works of Christ (who can be identified as the only figure with a halo), are set between columns in the architectural frame to the portrait. This particular arrangement is unique in surviving early evangelist portraits, though similar strips of scenes are found in ivory book-covers from the same period.[24] The scenes themselves probably drew from a now-destroyed fresco cycle of the Life of Christ in Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome.[25]

The scenes, many of which were rarely depicted in art from later medieval periods,[26] include:

The captions in the margins, added later, probably in the 8th century from the handwriting,[29] name the scenes or are quotations or near-quotations from the Vulgate text of Luke identifying them.[32] For example, the top right caption reads: "legis peritus surrexit temptans illum" or "[a] lawyer stood up, tempting him", from Luke 10, 25. The caption two below this one may misidentify the scene depicted, according to Carol Lewine. Even those, like Francis Wormold, who support the caption, admit the scene could not be so identified without it. The caption reads:"Ih[esu]s dixit vulpes fossa habent", a paraphrase of the start of Luke 9, 58 (and Matthew 8, 20): "et ait illi Iesus vulpes foveas habent et volucres caeli nidos Filius autem hominis non habet ubi caput reclinet" – "Jesus said to him: The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests: but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." The image shows Jesus blessing a bent figure, which could match the quotation, or a miracle.[33]

Passion scenes

Folio 125r contains 12 scenes from the Passion

A full-page miniature on folio 125r prior to

Raising of Lazarus. This was included because, following John 11.46 ff. it was considered the immediate cause of the Sanhedrin's decision to move against Christ. As in the few other surviving cycles of the Life from the 6th century, the Crucifixion itself is not shown, the sequence ending with Christ carrying the Cross.[34] However at least two further such pages once existed, at the start of other Gospels.[35] Luke is the third gospel, so a panel preceding the Gospel of John might well have completed the Passion and Resurrection story, and two others covered the earlier life of Christ. The scenes around Luke's portrait notably avoid the major episodes in Christ's life such as his Nativity, Baptism and Temptation
, probably reserving these scenes for other grid pages.

Compared to other cycles of the time, such as that in mosaic at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, the Passion scenes show an emphasis on the suffering of Christ that was probably influenced by the art of the Eastern Empire and shows the direction Western depictions were to follow in subsequent centuries.[5]

From top left the twelve scenes shown, some of which have captions, are:[36]

In contrast to the scenes around the portrait, all of these scenes except Christ led from Pilate were to remain very common in large narrative cycles throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.

winding-cloth, was one miracle that was easily recognised in images, and remained in the usual repertoire of artists. The Hand of God in the Agony in the Garden is the earliest surviving example of the motif in this scene.[40]

Notes

  1. ^ The manuscripts of Sedulius, Carl P. E. Springer Google books
  2. ^ [1], Lewine, 489
  3. ^ De Hamel, Christopher (2017). Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts. Penguin. p. 19.
  4. Rule of St Benedict.[2]
  5. ^ a b Schiller, II 14
  6. ^ See Lewine, 487
  7. ^ De Hamel (2016), p.18 The first abbey-related entry is in a tenth-century Old English hand – the ninth-century bequest of Ealhburg, who, in exchange for the monks' daily singing of psalm 20 on behalf of her husband, granted the abbey various products from her estate at Bradbourne, Kent. Among other documents pertaining to the abbey are a land charter in the name of Wulfric, abbot of St Augustine's (989–1005) and a twelfth-century list of holy relics kept in the abbey which include fragments of the Virgin Mary's cloak and the True Cross, the hair of St. Cecilia, and a finger of St. Gregory the Great.
  8. ^ Pacht, 11. In the same way the Book of Kells was stolen from the sacristy, not the library, at Kells in the 11th century.
  9. ^ Archbishop of Canterbury official website Archived 2009-12-03 at the Wayback Machine.
  10. ISBN 978-0-86012-404-7
  11. ^ Independent, 1997
  12. ^ "Fit for a King". Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  13. ^ De Hamel (2016), p.18
  14. ^ De Hamel (2016), p.33-6
  15. ^ Weitzmann, 18–19, Beckwith, 143. Other writers think the full complement of two pages, a portrait and a grid of scenes from the gospel, preceded each gospel.
  16. ^ These were created in Byzantine Italy in a Byzantine style. Beckwith, 143 mentions comparable ivories.
  17. ^ Weitzmann, 22
  18. ^ Hinks, 69. See also Beckwith, 143
  19. ^ Wilson, 94
  20. ^ Alexander, J. J. G., Insular Manuscripts, 6th to the 9th Century, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 1 (London, 1978) – see comments on Parker Library Bibliography below.
  21. ^ Page from the Morgan Library Archived 2009-02-19 at the Wayback Machine. These leaves are dispersed, though most of the manuscript, one of the copies of the Utrecht Psalter, is at Trinity College, Cambridge. See Parker Bibliography, comments, passim.
  22. ^ Springer, same page and link
  23. ^ Translation by Peter McBrine Archived 2011-07-15 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ^ Hinks, 69–70
  25. ^ a b Schiller, I 155
  26. ISBN 978-0-521-29017-3
  27. ISBN 978-0-521-62153-3
  28. ^ Unambiguously labelled with the text, though once the accuracy of the tituli is doubted, the scene might be the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes (Luke 9, 10–17). Similar round loaves piled on an apostle appear in the depiction of this scene in the Rossano Gospels (Schiller, Vol 1, fig. 479.
  29. ^ a b Lewine, 489
  30. ^ According to Wormald in the Cambridge History cited above, the "parable of the fig tree" (Luke 13, 6–9), which precedes the miracle of the bent woman (Luke 13, 11–13).
  31. ^ Schiller, I 156. Brubaker, 383, says this is the earliest known example of this as a separate image.
  32. ^ Vulgate Latin/English side by side text of Luke.
  33. ^ The meaning of the image is the subject of Lewine's article
  34. ^ Schiller,I 183, II 14
  35. ^ Weitzmann, 18–19, see also Grove
  36. ^ Schiller, II 14, 64–5 & passim
  37. ^ Schiller, II 33
  38. ^ Schiller, II 64-5
  39. ^ For a comparable "extra" scene around the meeting with Pilate, see the 4th-century Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus.
  40. ^ Schiller, II, 49

References

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Alexander, J. J. G., Insular Manuscripts, 6th to the 9th Century, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, Vol 1 (London, 1978).
  • Wormald, F., The Miniatures in the Gospels of St Augustine (Cambridge UP, 1954).

External links

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