The fine initials, executed in gold and costly pigments, in this Gospel book are characteristic of the high-quality work found in books made for St Albans Abbey. The scholarly commentaries or glosses accompanying the Gospels are written in a smaller script and the page layout is organised to facilitate study.
Discover the meanings behind the evangelist symbols featured in this text.
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This audio tour is narrated by the curator of The Medieval Imagination, Professor Emeritus Margaret Manion AO. Margaret’s specialist area of research is medieval and Renaissance art history and she has published a substantial number of books and articles, especially on illuminated manuscripts.
Illustration
Glossed Gospels (detail), England, c. 1200, Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B.5.3, fols. 4v-5 (cat. no. 3)
Transcript
Biblical books were the principal texts studied in centres of learning in the Middle Ages, first the monasteries and then the universities. In this large book, which comes from St Albans, one of the great English medieval abbeys, the Gospel texts are accompanied by commentaries, or glosses. These are authoritative interpretations by the Fathers of the Church and other earlier scholars. The carefully planned page layout is not dissimilar to the presentation of many web pages today, where the central text is given prominence and supplementary information is presented adjacently in script of contrasting size and, sometimes, colour. A copy of the glossed Epistles of St Paul from Italy appears next to the Gospels in this exhibition.
Each of the Gospels in this book is introduced with an illustration of the four evangelist symbols, with that of the particular author being more highly profiled in each case. These symbols – the man or angel for Matthew, the lion for Mark, the ox for Luke, and the eagle for John – are based on a description of the throne of God in the Apocalypse, which in turn relates to the prophecies of Isaiah, and Ezeckiel. Irenaeus associated them with the visionary authors of the Gospels and the interpretation has endured throughout the centuries.
Exquisite foliage medallions fill the staff of the initial ‘L’, which terminates in elegant leaves and buds. The gold-leaf background of the initial, together with the enamel-like quality of its colours, reflects the influence of Byzantium on this great period of English illumination.
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