Cotton Genesis

Abraham and the Angels

Joseph and his brothers, reproduction 1831

The Codex Cottonianus or Cotton-Genesis (D after Rahlfs ) is a fragment of a manuscript in Greek, probably from the 5th century. It contains parts of the Book of Genesis from the Old Testament. Today 150 charred fragments of 165 vellum leaves are preserved. They were originally 22 cm × 27 cm and described in one column with 27–30 lines in uncials . Some colored miniatures in the ancient illusionist style have been preserved.

The manuscript was probably made in Alexandria in the 5th century . In the 16th century they brought two Greek bishops from Philippi to King Henry VIII in England. It was acquired by Robert Bruce Cotton in the 17th century and added to the collection he had founded. Copies of some pages with miniatures were made. In 1731 the manuscript was badly damaged in a fire and reduced. Most of the sheets are now in the British Library in London , some others in the Baptist College in Bristol and the Bodleian Library in Oxford . The 17th century copies are in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris .

Around 1220, some frescoes were created in the narthex of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice that are very similar to miniatures in the Codex. It is possible that these were used as templates after the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 with crusaders to Venice.

text

• Konstantin von Tischendorf: Monumenta sacra inedita. Nova collectio. II. Leipzig 1857 ( online ).
• FW Gotch: Supplement to Tischendorf's Reliquiae cod. Cotton. London 1881 (additions).

literature

• Johan Jakob Tikkanen : The Genesis mosaics of S. Marco in Venice and their relationship to the miniatures of the Cotton Bible. In addition to a discrepancy about the origin of the medieval representation of Genesis, especially in Byzantine and Italian art . Societas scientiarum Fennica, Helsingfors 1889 ( digitized version ).
• Kurt Weitzmann , Herbert L. Kessler: The Cotton Genesis: British Library, Codex Cotton Otho B VI . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1986.

Web links

• Codex Cottonianus (134) in An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek

See also

• Major works of late antique illumination
• Major works of Byzantine book illumination
• Otho Corpus Gospels
• List of Septuagint manuscripts

Remarks

1. ↑ as An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (134) , other specifications are 35 sheets or 18 sheets ( Cotton Genesis WP)
2. ↑ Genesis 1. 13-14, 18. 24-26, 43. 16.
3. ↑ 29?