Ένα εικονογραφημένο τετραευάγγελο του 12ου αιώνα στο Βυζαντινό Μουσείο Αθηνών (πίν. 77-82)
Part of : Δελτίον της Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας ; Vol.28, 1981, pages 289-306
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Pages:
289-306
Parallel Title:
An Illustrated Gospel of the Twelfth Century in the Byzantine Museum of Athens (pl. 77-82)
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Articles
Abstract:
The illuminated Byzantine gospel book discussed here for the first time is distinguished among the museum's recent acquisitions by its age and quality. Purchased in 1962, the codex now consists of 254 parchment leaves, 155 χ 122 mm., arranged in quires, of which the first seven are missing. Most of the illustrations, which must have included four fullpage miniatures with portraits of the evangelists and a large headpiece to each gospel, are also missing. Only the illustration for the Gospel of St. Mark is preserved. This consists of a full-page miniature of the evangelist, who is shown seated inside an elaborate ornamental frame, that includes a pediment supported on columns. On the pediment, set in a rectangular frame, is a medallion depicting the Baptism of Christ. On the opposite page, a large, square, ornamental headpiece shows a medallion with the evangelist's symbol, the lion, holding an open codex. On fol. 35r, a later entry reads: "This gospel was written ,ζχις' years (1108) after the creation of the world, which is a αψ^(;)ο years from the birth of Christ to this day, and is six hundred and seventy-five years old, as humble Ignatios set down in writing". Further down we read a name, which is presumably that of the writer of this entry: "the monk Ioannikios Fouros". The discrepancy in the chronological data of Ioannikios Fouros's entry is best explained by assuming that he took his information not from the manuscript's colophon, which presumably was already lost, but from the source he mentions, namely a certain Ignatios, also a monk, but not the scribe of the codex. This Ignatios, seven years earlier (if the years from the birth of Christ are correctly read as 1790) wrote down somewhere his information, which Ioannikios copied uncritically. Whatever the reason for the discrepancy, it hardly alters the final date of the manuscript (AD 1108), which, as we intend to show, can be confirmed by the arrangement of its illustrations and the style of its miniatures. The most distinctive iconographie trait of this illustration is that the evangelist's portrait is faced by his symbol and associated with a feast scene. The association, in manuscripts of the four gospels, of the evangelist's portrait with a feast scene has been recognized, with good reason, as due to the influence exercised by the illustration of the lectionary and, in general, of the liturgy. Quite apart from this influence, however, the selection of a specific feast scene - in most cases the same one - for each evangelist, which is linked with the feast-day on which the beginning of his gospel is read, also depends, as recent investigations have shown, on two sets of supplementary, introductory texts which ussually precede the gospels and refer to them as a whole or give information about their authors. To the same source of inspiration we now attribute the association of the portraits of the evangelists with their apocalyptic symbols (man, lion, calf, eagle). The fact that these sets of texts in all probability were added to the gospels after the iconoclastic controversy gives the first clue towards establishing a date for the Athens manuscript, a date which can be verified by comparing the manuscript with examples well known for their iconographie similarities. By this method, we see that the general arrangement of subjects in the Athens manuscripts was in use, with slight variations, chiefly at the end of the eleventh century and the first decades of the twelfth. More specifically, in a group of manuscripts, at present still very small, we find not only the same choice and general arrangement of iconographie components, especially in the pages depicting the evangelists, but the same technique and style. We refer to the manuscripts Megalospelion no. 8 and the codex Maurocordatianus in the Lycaeum Augustanum of Bratislava, which, although they bear no colophon, have been established as dating to the beginning of the twelfth century. This date has been corroborated for the Megalospelion ms. no. 8, in particular, by its close affinity in ornament, execution and figure style - an affinity that suggests a common workshop - with the Praxapostolos ms. in the Paris Bibl. Nat. cod. gr. 1262 dated in the year 1101, and the illustrated Psalter at the Harvard College Library, ms. gr. 3, which on the basis of its Paschal tables must be dated to the year A.D. 1104/5. A direct comparison of the Athens manuscript and the codex at Harvard, also with regard to script, initials and the influence of liturgy on the illustrations, leaves no doubt of their close general affinity, and not only confirms a date of A. D. 1108 for the former but suggests the possibility of an association with the same Gonstantinopolitan workshop.
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