Codex Amiatinus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Codex Amiatinus, fol. 5r: Ezra while writing

The Codex Amiatinus is one of the oldest surviving Bible manuscripts and contains almost the entire text of the Vulgate . It was made around 700 in Northumbria in the monastery of St. Paul in Jarrow near Newcastle upon Tyne , which was founded under Benedict Biscop . She is now in Florence in the Bibliotheca Laurenziana ( Signature MS Amiatinus 1 ).

description

The codex weighs around 35 kg and has a size of 50 × 34 × 20 cm and consists of 1040 parchment sheets , 1029 of which are described or illustrated. It is a main testimony to the English variant of the Uncial, which Elias Avery Lowe researched more closely .

Dedication page

It is magnificently illuminated and is considered one of the most important Bible manuscripts. The two figurative illuminations are made according to late antique models and are not so reminiscent of the insular style . Despite the old age, the pages look fresh.

The Monastery of St. Paul in Northumbria. The Codex was created here from 692 onwards.

Originally, three copies of the Bible were prepared by Abbot Ceolfrid in 692. Beda Venerabilis was probably also involved in the creation . Ceolfrid brought the book to Rome as a gift for Pope Gregory II. The manuscript appeared in the 9th century in the monastery of San Salvatore di Monte Amiata in Tuscany , where the dedication inscription was reworked. The book was kept here until 1786 before it came to Florence - hence the name Codex Amiatinus . For a long time it was assumed that it came from Benedict of Nursia in the monastery of Monte Cassino . However, after this thesis was increasingly doubted, in 1888 Giovanni Battista de Rossi found the similarity to a fragment in the library of the British Museum and was able to explain the connection.

literature

in order of appearance

  • Konstantin von Tischendorf : Codex Amiatinus. Novum Testamentum Latine interprete Hieronymo . Avenarius, Leipzig 1854.
  • Julian Weiß: The Codex Amiatinus and his Birthplace . In: Studia et Biblica Ecclesiasctica , Vol. 2 (1890), pp. 273-308 ( full text ).
  • Rupert Bruce-Mitford: The art of the Codex Amiatinus. In: Journal of the British Archaeological Association / 3. Series , ISSN  0068-1288 , 32: 1-25 (1969).
  • Günter Bernt: Codex Amiatinus . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 2, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-7608-8902-6 , Sp. 2198 f.
  • Christopher de Hamel: Splendor and grace. Encounters with twelve outstanding manuscripts from the Middle Ages . C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-570-10199-5 , pp. 73-120.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Elias Avery Lowe: English uncial . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1960.

Web links

Commons : Codex Amiatinus  - collection of images, videos and audio files