Gospel Book

Even though this volume contains the continuous text of the four Gospels, it is written in two columns, like a Gospel lectionary (e.g., W.520 and W.535). The leaves with Evangelist portraits are dyed red, in imitation of the very expensive purple-dyed parchment occasionally used in the fifth through ninth centuries. The style of the script, ornament, and images is a bit unusual, which makes it unclear whether the book was produced in the capital, Constantinople, or in some other part of the Byzantine Empire. A somewhat similar manuscript (Bucharest, Library of the Romanian Academy, Greek 1175) is now available in digitized form at www.e-corpus.org/fre/notices/141347-Tetraevangile.html. Unfortunately W.529 is too fragile to be fully digitized at this time, therefore only the binding has been imaged.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem,1522 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre, Constantinople [no. 520/275, seen there by E. Ioannidis, 1864, by C. R. Gregory, September 6, 1886, and by A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, 1891]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, by purchase [date of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.