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Canones: the Art of Harmony Canones: The Art of Harmony Studies in Manuscript Cultures Edited by Michael Friedrich Harunaga Isaacson Jörg B. Quenzer Volume 18 Canones: The Art of Harmony The Canon Tables of the Four Gospels Edited by Alessandro Bausi, Bruno Reudenbach, Hanna Wimmer ISBN 978-3-11-062576-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-062584-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-062644-5 ISSN 2365-9696 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Alessandro Bausi, Bruno Reudenbach, Hanna Wimmer, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. The book is published with open access at degruyter.com. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Contents The Editors Canones: The Art of Harmony VII Ewa Balicka-Witakowska Carl Nordenfalk 1 Matthew R. Crawford Do the Eusebian Canon Tables Represent the Closure or the Opening of the Biblical Text? Considering the Case of Codex Fuldensis 17 Jeremiah Coogan Transmission and Transformation of the Eusebian Gospel Apparatus in Greek Medieval Manuscripts 29 Elizabeth Mullins The Eusebian Apparatus in Irish Pocket Gospel Books: Absence, Presence and Addition 47 Jacopo Gnisci An Ethiopian Miniature of the Tempietto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Its Relatives and Symbolism 67 Jás Elsner Beyond Eusebius: Prefatory Images and the Early Book 99 Beatrice Kitzinger Eusebian Thinking and Early Medieval Gospel Illumination 133 Lynley Anne Herbert A Tale of Two Tables: Echoes of the Past in the Canons of the Sainte-Croix Gospels 173 Stefan Trinks Saxum vivum and lapides viventes:Animated Stone in Medieval Book Illumination and Sculpture 193 Susanne Wittekind Shifting Frames: The Mutable Iconography of Canon Tables 209 Beatrice Kitzinger Eusebian Reading and Early Medieval Gospel Illumination Abstract: This paper proposes that patterns of reading from Irenaeus to Jerome and Augustine—not to mention fundamental to the Eusebian apparatus also structure Eusebius himself. Patristic scholars repeatedly consid- aspects of figural illumination in early medieval gospel ered the meaning(s) of diversity and consensus (or con- books. Beginning with in-depth discussion of the St sensus in diversity) as they worked to define the scriptural Augustine Gospels (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, canon. The development of a relatively standardized form MS 286) and extending into several Carolingian and for the gospel book evinces no weaker commitment in Anglo-Saxon examples, the essay explores the idea that Late Antique and early medieval communities to arguing Eusebian principles of textual segmentation, cross-refer- for concurrent coherence and individuality in the texts of ence, harmony, and diversity define a number of elaborate the four evangelists. This argument proceeded by mate- visual programmes—both within and beyond illuminated rial and visual- as well as by verbal means. As is by now canon tables themselves. The resonance between Euse- well established, the selection and subsequent exegesis bian attitudes to text and the selected artists’ approach of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s accounts as the Four to the visual setting of the Gospels suggests a complex Gospels is not to be taken for granted in the story of the interplay in the manuscripts’ programmes between trans- early Church; nor is the Gospels’ ultimate identity as a mitting the four evangelists’ texts and representing the written text.1 The very practice of copying the four gospels distinct entity of the gospel book itself. as a materially integral textual set constitutes a statement on the nature of the Gospels in and of itself. The mate- rial definition of the gospel genre consists in crafting con- Quite apart from the great exegetes’ interest in the four nective visual tissue for the four gospels that ranges from evangelists’ individual texts, the identity of the Gospels as formulaic Incipit statements to a full set of author por- a plural unity was a subject of vivid importance to writers traits to additional imagery. It also consists in furnishing connective verbal tissue such as a full set of prologues or This essay owes a great deal to scholarly community: some argu- Jerome’s syncretic preface texts. The physical statement of ments were seeded in discussion; others could not have been de- diverse unity and development of a relatively standard set veloped without the generosity of colleagues near and far. Several of accompanying texts to constitute a gospel book should essential thanks are due up front and others appear in the notes. be taken for granted no less than the establishment of the A conversation with Benjamin Diego renovated the way I see the Au- gustine Gospels Passion narrative. I warmly thank Diego for allowing scriptural canon. me to include his observation of structural resonance between grid- By the early Middle Ages, the Eusebian apparatus ded canon tables and the Passion image of CCC 286. In his 2016 Stan- was indispensable to the gospel genre: it appears in man- ford University BA thesis, ‚Where the Word Dwells: Architecture and uscripts of widely varying provenance, on every grade „Architexture“ in Insular Gospel Books, 600–900 CE‘, Diego empha- of production. Significantly, the apparatus became an sizes the integrated spatial and mensural qualities of gospel books as a theme staged by the canon tables. I thank Marcia Kupfer for her essential component of gospel manuscripts’ architecture, prompt to coordinate my ongoing work on early medieval narrative regardless of whether the tables as copied in any given with consideration of canon tables; and I thank Bruno Reudenbach instance are in fact useable as Eusebius designed.2 The and Hanna Wimmer for the fruitful occasion of the Hamburg confe- fact of including the apparatus in the first place marks rence. I heartily thank keeper Anne McLaughlin for answering my a separate function from its actual utility as a concord- questions about the codicology and offsets of CCC MS 286 before I ance. As traditions of exegesis on the tables themselves was able to examine the manuscript, and for her kind permission to do so before the article went to press. I am indebted to Mildred Bud- also attest, the canons play a critical representational role ny for sharing the working chart of the quire structure she prepared while authoring her 1997 catalogue, which was essential for thinking 1 On the subject of the Gospels’ written form, see Larsen 2018. For through the structure of the manuscript from Princeton. I thank Ste- recent addresses to the subject of Gospel canon, see Watson and fan Trinks for valuable bibliography; and Jaś Elsner, Christoph Winte- Parkhouse 2018. rer, Susanne Wittekind, and the volume’s peer reviewer for clarifying 2 See e.g. Netzer 1994b; on the consequent representational function remarks about the text. of the apparatus: Reudenbach 2018. Open Access. © 2020 Beatrice Kitzinger, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Non- Commercial -NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110625844-007 134 Beatrice Kitzinger wherever they appear.3 The Eusebian apparatus embod- ples, elements of the design suggest that the kind of think- ies several arguments about the nature of the Gospels.4 In ing about the four gospels embodied by the Eusebian turn, the canon tables’ swift and lasting integration into canon tables was also important in the choices made by the material tradition suggests an ongoing affirmation artists when crafting visual programmes for particular of the power in the tables’ arguments to shape the rep- gospel books. The canon tables, often characterized as resentational qualities of gospel books. an entranceway, state a theme of unity in diversity and In this paper I synthesize some working observations a set of principles for thinking about the relationships concerning how a conception of the Gospels in the Euse- between gospel narrative and the text of gospel books. In bian tradition was elaborated and enforced by the visual the cases I will describe, figural illumination elsewhere in design of illuminated gospel manuscripts in the Latin west. gospel manuscripts sustains both this theme and these I cannot tell a stepwise narrative of development here, but I principles. In short: by the seventh century at least, ideas begin with a close look at what, by virtue of survival, must continuous with the Eusebian principles for reading the count as the beginning of this story—a book whose text, Gospels enumerated above—segmentation, cross-refer- codicology, and visual programme all richly show the con- ence, unity in diversity—became guiding principles for ceptual work needed to forge a book form that at once pre- representing the Latin gospels such that the texts could sents and represents the Gospels. I then proceed to a more be read in various ways, or such that they could stand as glancing treatment of a network of examples from various representative of their genre in liturgical or teaching situ- cultural contexts in the Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon ations. It follows that the central preoccupation of Latin spheres. These later cases suggest that characterization of Gospel illumination in the early Middle Ages—which one the Gospels in the Eusebian tradition remained a steady might assume to be primarily the life of Christ, or his spine in the evolving imagination of the gospel book as a person—is the definition of the gospel book itself. This visual genre, even while bookmen and -women exercised definition turns on the tenet that the gospel book—like the creative muscle that varied expression of its themes.
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