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Add MS 39626
- Record Id:
- 040-002059248
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002059203
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001215.0x0001b7
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165149260.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 39626
- Title:
- Gospel book ('The Serres Gospels')
- Scope & Content:
-
A manuscript of the Four Gospels, illuminated in 1354-1355 for Jacob, metropolitan of Serres. Each Gospel text is preceded by a table of kephalaia (numbered chapters) and followed by a colophon providing the traditional date and number of stichoi (lines). Included at the end of the manuscript are the Synaxarion and Menology (lists of Gospel readings for the liturgical year), and the octoechos cycle (weekly cycle of hymns).
Contents:
ff. 2r-3v: Kephalaia to the Gospel of St Matthew.
f. 4r: half-leaf with a note concerning the Gospel lessons for the Royal Hours in the Holy Week.
ff. 5r-85v: The Gospel of St Matthew.
ff. 87r-88r: Kephalaia to the Gospel of St Mark.
ff. 89r-141r: The Gospel of St Mark.
ff. 142r-144r: Kephalaia to the Gospel of St Luke.
ff. 145r-227v: The Gospel of St Luke.
f. 228v: Kephalaia to the Gospel of St John.
ff. 229r-291v: The Gospel of St John.
f. 293r-v: Inscription stating that the manuscript was made in 1355 for Jacob in his Metropolitan church at Serres, in the time of Tsar Stefan Dusan (r. 1331-1355), his wife Helena, a sister of Tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria, their son the Kral Uros, and the Patriarch Joanikije (d. 1354). The name of the scribe is written in the shape of a cross at the end: Калист Расодер (Kallist Rasoder).
ff. 294r-299v: The Synaxarion.
ff. 299v-302r: The Menology.
f. 302v: A table relating the lessons to the Octoechos cycle.
Decoration:
1 full-page miniature in colours with gold background, surrounded by a red frame with foliate decoration at the corners. The image depicts the patron, Jacob, the metropolitan of Serres, standing in a supplicant posture. His manuscript, bound in a jewelled cover, is placed before him on a book stand. Inscriptions in red are written to either side of him: that on the left identifies him as Jacob of Serres, and that on the right identifies the Gospel-book which he offers to Christ. In the top right, Christ emerges from the heavens making a gesture of blessing. The upper part of the image is separated from the rest of the scene by a red border, and is filled with a lattice and foliate pattern along with a roundel containing an inscription concerning the judgement of the soul and requesting salvation (f. 292v). (For transcriptions and translations of the inscriptions, see Gavrilović, ‘The Gospels of Jakov of Serres’ (2000), p. 136).
10 head-pieces: 5 with coloured vine scrolls on gold backgrounds, sometimes inhabited by birds, occupying around half a page at the beginning of each of the Gospels (ff. 5r, 89r, 145r, 229r) and around a fifth of the page at the beginning of the Synaxarion (f. 294r); 5 in colours with foliate decoration occupying around one text line at the beginning of the kephalaia and colophon (ff. 2r, 87r, 142r, 228v, 293r).
4 large initials in gold and colours with interlace and foliate decoration at the beginning of the Gospels (ff. 5r, 89r, 145r, 229r).
3 small marginal drawings accompanying colophons: hand holding a staff drawn in red ink (f. 85v); star in gold (ff. 141r, 227v).
1 framed table in red and gold with arches and foliate decoration (f. 302v).
Border of small crosses in red and gold at either side of text (f. 293r-v).
Numerous headings, running titles, punctuation marks, index numbers and text initials written in red, gold or blue.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002059203
036-002059246
040-002059248 - Is part of:
- Add MS 39583-39671 : PARHAM MANUSCRIPTS. These eighty-nine MSS., 39583-39671, were bequeathed, with Oriental MSS. 8729-8855, by Darea Curzon,…
Add MS 39625-39628 : PARHAM MSS. XLIII-XLVI. For previous descriptions of these MSS. see Curzon Cat., pp. 31-33; Th. Uspenski, "o nekoto…
Add MS 39626 : Gospel book ('The Serres Gospels') - Hierarchy:
- 032-002059203[0043]/036-002059246[0002]/040-002059248
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Add MS 39583-39671
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
Parchment codex.
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165149260.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Old Church Slavonic
- Scripts:
- Cyrillic (Old Church Slavonic variant)
- Start Date:
- 1354
- End Date:
- 1355
- Date Range:
- 1354-1355
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 315 x 225 mm (text space: 210 x 125 mm)
Foliation: ff. ii + 302 (ff. i-ii are modern paper flyleaves; f. 1 is a medieval parchment flyleaf; plus one unfoliated paper flyleaf at the end of the volume).
Script: Semi-uncial
Binding: Post-1600. Covered with red velvet and stamped ‘Bound by J. Clarke’ (f. ii).
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Serres.
Metropolitan Jacob of Serres (b. 1300, d. 1365): represented in a full-page miniature (f. 292v), and recorded as patron in the colophon (f. 293r-v).
The monastery of St Paul, Mount Athos, 19th century: recorded as there by Robert Curzon in 1837 (see below).
Robert Curzon (b. 1810, d. 1873), fourteenth Baron Zouche of Harringworth, traveller and collector of manuscripts: inscribed on upper inside cover that he brought the manuscript from the monastery of St Paul on Mount Athos, 1837; the acquisition of the manuscript is described in his book (Curzon, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (1849), pp. 423-24).
Loaned to the British Museum in 1876 by the Curzon family and bequeathed by Darea Curzon, Baroness Zouche, in 1917 (see Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1916-1920 (1933), pp. 54-55).
- Information About Copies:
- Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
Robert Curzon, Catalogue of Materials for Writing, Early Writings on Tablets and Stones, Rolled and Other Manuscripts and Oriental Manuscript Books in the Library of the Honourable Robert Curzon, at Parham in the County of Sussex (London: William Nicol, 1849), pp. 31-32.
Robert Curzon, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (London: John Murray, 1849), pp. 423-24.
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1916-1920 (London: British Museum, 1933), p. 99.
Mara Harisiadis, 'Les miniatures du Tétraevangile du Métropolite Jacob de Sèrres’, Actes du XIIe Congrès International d’études Byzantines (Beograd, 1964), pp. 121-30.
Iohannis Spatharakis, The Portrait in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts (Leiden: Brill, 1976), pp. 89-90.
A. Džurova and I. Dujčev, Slavjanski răkopisi ot Britanskija Muzej i Biblioteka (Sofia, 1977).
D. Stefanović, ‘Palaeografske belske o starim srpskim i nekim drugim rukopisima u Velikoj Britaniji’, Archaeografski prilozi 6-7 (Belgrade, 1984-85).
The Anne Pennington Catalogue: A Union Catalogue of Cyrillic Manuscripts in British and Irish Collections, compiled by Ralph Cleminson, ed. by Veronica Du Feu and W. F. Ryan (London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1988), pp. 119-21.
Zaga Gavrilović, ‘The Gospels of Jakov of Serres (London, B.L., Add. MS 39626), the Family Branković and the Monastery of St Paul, Mount Athos’, in Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium Through British Eyes. Papers from the Twenty-ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, London, March 1995, ed. by Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jeffreys (Aldershot; Burlington, VT; Singapore; Sydney: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 135-44.
Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), ed. by Helen C. Evans [exhibition catalogue] (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 54.
Преображенский А.С. Иаков, митр. Серрский. Иконография. In: Православная энциклопедия 20 (2009), pp. 502–503.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)