Nice try, Viking marauders, but we still have most of it!
The Durham
Gospels, an important Latin manuscript, has recently been digitized and made
available online. It is just one of the many manuscripts that can be viewed at
the Durham
Priory Library Recreated website, listed there as Durham
Cathedral Library MS. A.II.17.
The
presentation-format at the website is better than practically any other
manuscript-presentation on the internet; not only can the digital full-color
page-views be magnified, so that viewers can zoom in on fine details,
but by accessing a menu in the left upper corner of the page-views, viewers can
rotate the page, adjust brightness, adjust contrast, adjust saturation, and
more – even invert colors. There is also
an easy-to-navigate Rolodex-style bar of page-views below the main image, allowing
viewers to sift through the entire manuscript.
It may be wished that this will become a new standard in online
manuscript-presentation.
The Durham Gospels had already been
produced (probably by monks at Lindisfarne monastery) well before the Vikings
attacked there in 793. It might have
undergone some damage at the hands of the Vikings: almost all of the Gospel of Matthew is
missing. The last two chapters of John are missing. Several chapters of the Gospel of Luke are missing, too, and have been
replaced with pages from another (very different) manuscript. Presently, when one reads the Durham Gospels,
the text of John appears first, which is highly unusual. This was not how the
manuscript was made; some unknown person re-ordered the pages. Most of the text is neatly written in a semi-uncial
insular script, very similar to the handwriting in the Echternach Gospels.
Here is a basic index for the Durham Gospels:
2r – The Gospel of John begins, with a huge and elaborately
embellished initial.
16r-16v contain the passage about the adulteress.
38v – The text of John ends in 19:32.
38r* – The text on this page is all somewhat damaged; its
text begins in Matthew 25:35.
38v* – The text on this page begins in Matthew 25:45.
38r2 – The text on this page (as a note above the text near
the upper left corner indicates) begins in Matthew 26:13 and continues through Matthew
26:23; the handwriting is different in the final line.
38v2 – The text on this page begins in Matthew 26:24.
38r3 – Centered on the page is the text of Matthew 28:17-20,
within a frame enhanced by knotwork. Although
this is the last page of the Gospel of Matthew, it must have existed adjacent
to 38v2 for some time, because the imprint of some of the lettering on 38v2 is
visible on the page; the intervening pages from chapters 26, 27, and 28 were
absent.
38v3 has a full-page picture of Christ crucified, flanked by
two angels. A heading identifies Him as
Jesus the King; the Greek letters alpha
and omega appear to the left and
right of His head, respectively. A
soldier is offering Him a sponge on the end of a reed (cf. Mark 15:36). There are words on the outside of all four
sides of the frame. This may be the
earliest English depiction of the crucifixion.
38r4 – Introduction to the Gospel of Mark. The introduction begins with an elaborately
decorated title.
394 – More introductory glosses, including a list of some
non-Latin words (beginning with Abba)
40r – The text of Mark begins in 1:12.
(Many of the pages in the Gospel of Mark have been cut at
the bottom of the page, almost as if someone was in very desperate need of
blank parchment.)
66r features a pair of ornate embellished initials in the
text of Mark 14:27.
69r features a particularly beautiful intial E, with
knotwork, at the beginning of Mark 16:2.
69v has the text from Mark 16:3-14a (the last words are illis XI apparuit), but the final page
of Mark is not extant.
70 apparently has been the victim of a thief; someone cut
away the upper half of the page, probably to obtain a particularly beautiful
sample of the copyist’s artistic penmanship.
70r begins the text of Luke 1:9.
71v, a well-executed M (with eagle-heads) begins the
Magnificat, in Luke 1:46.
72v features some nice colorful artistry in the opening letters
of Luke 2:1.
On fol, 75, half of the page has been cut out.
102v ends on the last line in Luke 22:2.
103r begins the supplemental manuscript, written in an
entirely different script (uncial) and different ink, containing text from Luke
21:33ff., cola-and-commata style, in two narrow columns per page.
105r features, I think, an Anglo-Saxon note scrawled in the
upper margin. The name “Aldred” is in
this note, and is repeated on the same page.
This may have been added by the individual known as Aldred the
Scribe, who in the mid-900s inserted an Old English translation in between
the Latin lines of the Lindisfarne Gospels.
This suggests, in turn, that the Durham Gospels were once housed in Chester-le-Street , the town where Aldred resided.
106v includes the text of Luke 22:43-44.
111v ends the last line of its text in Luke 23:44.
An ornamental initial in the Durham Gospels. |
Many initials, especially those with colored interiors
(yellow, green, purple) are surrounded by small red dots of lead, a feature
shared by many initials and decorations in the Book of Kells.
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