Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 197B: The Northumbrian Gospels
Abstract/Contents
- Summary
- This manuscript constitutes the surviving portion of the 'Cotton-Corpus' Gospels; the larger part, now London, BL MS Cotton Otho C. V, was badly damaged in the Cottonian fire of 1731 and only burnt fragments remain. A bifolium of canon tables, probably also from this manuscript, survives as London, BL MS Royal 7. C. XII, ff. 2-3. The original manuscript was a lavish Insular Gospel Book with elaborate decoration; in the Corpus part the eagle symbol of St John the evangelist still survives, and elaborate decorative initials incorporating a range of interlace and other ornament. It belongs in a group with the Durham Gospels, the Echternach Gospels, and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Both Parker and Cotton recorded on their respective parts of the original book that it was believed to have been owned by St Augustine, first archbishop of Canterbury, who was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to England in 597. The date of the manuscript rules this out: it seems to be from late seventh- or early eighth-century Northumbria. However it is possible that this tradition arose in the Middle Ages, as one of the volumes which Thomas Elmham (d. c. 1427) recorded among those revered as sent from Gregory to Augustine was probably an early Insular Gospel-book of this type. The same provenance was attributed anachronistically to other early Anglo-Saxon manuscripts at St Augustine's, Canterbury.
- Contents
- The Northumbrian Gospels
Description
| Alternative title | Fragments of Gospels |
|---|---|
| Type of resource | mixed material |
| Extent | ff. 36 |
| Date created | [ca. 700 CE - 799 CE] |
| Language | Latin |
| Material | Vellum |
| Height (mm) | 285 |
| Width (mm) | 219 |
| Colation | 1 (two separate leaves) 2 (a pair of leaves: leaves lost between them) 3 (a pair of leaves: interior sheets gone) 4 (4) || 5 (10?) (wants 5, 6) (gap) 6 (8?) (wants 1, 8: or 10 wanting 1, 2, 9, 10) 7 (six leaves: as last) 8 (a pair of leaves, consecutive) 9 (a pair of leaves not consecutive) 10 (a pair of leaves not consecutive). |
| Foliation | ff. i-ii + pp. 245-316 + ff. iii-iv. |
| Research | Edited by James Goodwin, Cambridge Antiquarian Society (text of John only) 4to, 1847: facsimiles there, and in Westwood, Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS. In Gregory's Prolegomena, p. 995, it is no. 20: the number is given wrongly as 297. It is no. 24 in Westcott's list in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, art. Vulgate., The view has often been expressed that the Cotton MS. Otho C. V (of which only burnt fragments remain) once formed a portion of this manuscript. Tanner supposed it to be, the Red Book of Eye (see my Sources, p. 6). |
Bibliographic information
| M.R. James Date | viii ? |
|---|---|
| Augmented James Record | |
| Original James Record | |
| Contains |
|
| TJames | 152 |
| Stanley | M. 14 |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/qw038wz9710 |
| Location | MS 197B |
| Repository | UK, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Parker Library |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- Images courtesy of The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For higher resolution images suitable for scholarly or commercial publication, either in print or in an electronic format, please contact the Parker Library directly at parker-library@corpus.cam.ac.uk
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Collection
Parker Manuscripts
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