Manchester, John Rylands University Library, Ms. 98

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Folio 1v. des Gospels, initial of the letter Novum Opus of Hieronymus to Pope Damasus I.

Manchester, John Rylands University Library, Cod. 98 is the signature of a medieval manuscript that is one of the most important Ottonian illuminated manuscripts . The work attributed to the Gregor Master influenced numerous works of the Cologne School of Illumination .

The handwriting

The manuscript measures 240 × 193 mm and has 205 sheets. The pages are described with 25 lines in Carolingian minuscule . The binding is from the 16th century and consists of two wooden covers covered with brown leather. Two letters from the 19th century are inscribed in the manuscript. One is from Horace de Viel-Castel to a Bollandist who gave the Gospel to the Italian painter Johannes, who was born under Otto III. painted the Aachen Cathedral, the other assigned to a British art collector by the Bollandist Victor de Buck, to whom he offered the Codex for sale in 1855 for 6,500 francs. The manuscript contains three prefaces to the gospels, canon tables and the four gospels. The book decoration is incomplete, the evangelist pictures and probably a donor picture are missing.

Dating and provenance

Folio 16r., Initial decorative page for the Gospel of Matthew

Since Carl Nordenfalk , the Gospels have been considered the work of the so-called Gregor Master , who worked in Trier under the art-loving Archbishop Egbert (d. 993). The Manchester Gospels, however, came into being after Egbert's death. The most important starting point for the dating of the Manchester Gospel is the entry page to the Gospel of Matthew, which corresponds in structure to the entry page of the same Gospel in the Gospel of the Sainte Chapelle , but differs in the persons in the medallions: In Manchester it is ROMANE at the top. RP DIVI MEM OTTO IMPER. AVG, below D. CORONATVS ROMANE RP OTTO IMPER. AVG., Left PIANE RELIGIONIS ET ROMANE RP OTTO IMP. AVG and on the right XPIANE RELIGIONIS ET ROMANE. RP OTTO IMP. The upper Kaiser is clearly marked as deceased, which certainly I. Otto is meant. The lower emperor, who was given the addition a deo coronatus to distinguish it, would then be Otto II , the ruler on the right and left is called Otto III. viewed, which means that the manuscript was made between his coronation as emperor in 996 and his death in 1002. This is now undisputed.

The Gospels were already in Cologne in the 11th century, where they were copied several times and their decorations influenced Cologne illuminators. The first influences can be found in the Gundold Gospels (Stuttgarter Landesbibliothek, Cod. Bibl. 4 ° 2), the Gospels from St. Gereon (Stuttgarter Landesbibliothek, Bibl. Fol. 21) are considered to be particularly strongly influenced by the Manchester Gospels, as they contain details from initials, text decorative pages and frame decorations were taken directly. Because of this, the evangelist pictures in this manuscript are regarded as copies of the lost evangelist pictures in the Manchester Gospel.

The manuscript came from the possession of a Cologne canon to the Düsseldorf Jesuit College, from there to the Biblioteca Bollandista. The John Rylands Library acquired it in 1901 with the manuscript collection of James Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford .

Art historical classification

Before Carl Nordenfalk assigned the code to the so-called Gregor Master, it was viewed by Arthur Haseloff as the work of the Cologne School of Illumination. Deviating from this, the John Rylands Library described the manuscript as Italian in its catalog published in 1921. Due to the fact that many details of the book decoration of the evangelical are very similar to details in Cologne manuscripts, the question of the relationship between the code and the Cologne school of illumination arose. It was significant that only a few Cologne manuscripts could be precisely dated, while the Manchester Gospels were created either before 982, as it was partially assumed, or between 996 and 1002. Bloch - Schnitzler accepted the Manchester Gospels as the founding work of the Cologne School of Illumination, which is why they started the Cologne School of Illumination after 996. This strong influence is now being put into perspective. The Hitda Codex is now dated to around 970, the Gospels from St. Gereon in the Cologne City Archives, in which an initial decorative page shows the same structure as Fol. 16 of the Manchester Gospels, is dated from 991 to 996. Ulrich Kuder therefore assumes that there is no one-sided effect of the Gregor Master on Cologne book illumination, but rather a mutual exchange.

literature

  • Carl Nordenfalk: The Chronology of the Registrum Master . In: Carlo Bertelli , Artur Rosenauer, Gerold Weber (ed.): Art historical research. Otto Pächt on his 70th birthday . Salzburg 1972, ISBN 3-7017-0027-3 , pp. 62-76.
  • Carl Nordenfalk: The Master of the Registrum Gregorii . In: Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst , 3rd part, Volume 1, 1950, pp. 61–77.
  • Franz J. Ronig (Ed.): Egbert. Archbishop of Trier 877–993. Commemorative publication of the Diocese of Trier on the 1000th anniversary of death (= Trier magazine for the history and art of the state of Trier and its neighboring areas . Supplements. Vol. 18). Trier 1993, ISBN 3-923319-27-4 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Klaus Gereon Beuckers : History, research status and research problems of the Gerresheimer Gospels . In: Klaus Gereon Beuckers, Beate Johlen-Budnik (Ed.): The Gerresheimer Evangeliar. A late Tonic manuscript as a historical source (= research on art, history and literature of the Middle Ages. Vol. 1). Cologne 2016, p. 32.
  2. ↑ Franz J. Ronig (ed.): Egbert. Archbishop of Trier 977–993. Commemorative writing of the Diocese of Trier on the 1000th anniversary of death . Volume 1 (catalog and booklet), self-published by the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, Trier 1993, No. 16.
  3. ^ Ulrich Kuder : The Hitda Codex in connection with the Cologne book painting . In: Klaus Gereon Beuckers (ed.): Abbess Hitda and the Hitda-Codex (University and State Library Darmstadt, Hs. 1640). Research on a major work of the Ottonian Cologne illumination . Darmstadt 2013, p. 92.
  4. ↑ Christoph Winterer, Klaus Gereon Beuckers: Introduction . In: Klaus Gereon Beuckers (ed.): Abbess Hitda and the Hitda-Codex (University and State Library Darmstadt, Hs. 1640). Research on a major work of the Ottonian Cologne illumination . Darmstadt 2013, p. 22.
  5. ^ Ulrich Kuder: The Hitda Codex in connection with the Cologne book painting . In: Klaus Gereon Beuckers (ed.): Abbess Hitda and the Hitda-Codex (University and State Library Darmstadt, Hs. 1640). Research on a major work of the Ottonian Cologne illumination . Darmstadt 2013, p. 92.