Gundohinus Gospels

Christ in Majesty with cherubim surrounded by the tetramorph (fol. 12v)

The Gundohinus Gospels is an illuminated Gospel Book of 754–755 named after its scribe Gundohinus. It contains one of the earliest figures in a Frankish manuscript and is now in the town library in Autun. It is often held as an example of the new Frankish-papal alliance's opposition to Byzantine iconoclasm.[1]

Its colophon on folio 186 gives Gundohinus' name and states he was working at a scriptorium in Vosevio or Vosevium. It also shows it was completed in the third year of Pepin the Short (c. 754–755) for Fausta (a woman in Pepin's court) and Fuculphus (a monk of a monastery of Saint Mary and Saint John).[2]

The location of Vosevio Abbey has never been decisively proven. Some identify it with Luxeuil Abbey, previously known as Vosges or Vosego. Others believe it was near Laon and that the monastery of saint Mary and saint John was a former monastery in Laon founded around 650 according to another text by one Salberga, sister of a Gundohinus and a Fuculph. Others locate it in Burgundy near Autun.

Gundohinus was neither a trained artist nor accomplished in the writing of a formal uncial script – he labels himself "inexpert" – the miniatures are derived from an early Christian model.[3] The last four pages (f.186-188) portray the evangelists contained in architectural roundels similar to those in the St Augustine Gospels and Stockholm Codex,[4] although Nees places them apart from the insular tradition, speculating that they were instead derived from a Ravenna manuscript.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Nees 2002, p. 149
  2. ↑ Noble, p. 139
  3. ↑ Nees 2002, p. 150
  4. ↑ Brown, p. 93
  5. ↑ Nees 2002, p. 150

Sources

  • "Initiale - Manuscrit". initiale.irht.cnrs.fr. Retrieved 2017-01-03.
  • Maître, Claire; Bondéelle-Souchier, Anne; Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes (Paris) (2004). Catalogue des manuscrits d'Autun: Bibliothèque Municipale et Société Eduenne. Turnhout: Brepols. ISBN 978-2-503-51708-7.
  • Nees, Lawrence (1987). The Gundohinus Gospels. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Medieval Academy of America. Retrieved 2017-01-02.
  • Nees, Lawrence (2002). Early Medieval Art. Oxford University Press. pp. 150–. ISBN 978-0-19-284243-5.
  • Bibliothèque nationale (France); Département des manuscrits; Porcher, Jean; Lessing J. Rosenwald Reference Collection (Library of Congress) (1954). Les manuscrits à peintures en France du VIIe au XIIe siècle. Paris.
  • Noble, Thomas F. X. (2012). Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 139–. ISBN 0-8122-0296-1.
  • Brown, Michelle P. (1996). The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage, and Power in Ninth-century England. University of Toronto Press. pp. 93–. ISBN 978-0-8020-4113-5.
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