SMC 18

The so-called ‘Canon Tables’ of the Christian Gospels are an absolutely remarkable feature of the early, late antique, and medieval Christian manuscript cultures of East and West, the invention of which is commonly attributed to Eusebius and dated to first decades of the fourth century AD. Intended to host a technical device for structuring, organizing, and navigating the Four Gospels united in a single codex – and, in doing so, building upon and bringing to completion previous endeavours – the Canon Tables were apparently from the beginning a highly complex combination of text, numbers and images, that became an integral and fixed part of all the manuscripts containing the Four Gospels as Sacred Scripture of the Christians and can be seen as exemplary for the formation, development and spreading of a specific Christian manuscript culture across East and West AD 300 and 800.

In the footsteps of Carl Nordenfalk’s masterly publication of 1938 and few following contributions, this book offers an updated overview on the topic of ‘Canon Tables’ in a comparative perspective and with a precise look at their context of origin, their visual appearance, their meaning, function and their usage in different times, domains, and cultures.

Frontmatter

ContentsV

Canones: The Art of HarmonyVII

Carl Nordenfalk1
by Ewa Balicka-Witakowska

Do the Eusebian Canon Tables Represent the Closure or the Opening of the Biblical Text? Considering the Case of Codex Fuldensis  17
by Matthew R. Crawford

Transmission and Transformation of the Eusebian Gospel Apparatus in Greek Medieval Manuscripts29
by Jeremiah Coogan

The Eusebian Apparatus in Irish Pocket Gospel Books: Absence, Presence and Addition47
by Elizabeth Mullins

An Ethiopian Miniature of the Tempietto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Its Relatives and Symbolism67
by Jacopo Gnisci

Beyond Eusebius: Prefatory Images and the Early Book99
by Jaś Elsner

Eusebian Thinking and Early Medieval Gospel Illumination133
by Beatrice Kitzinger

A Tale of Two Tables: Echoes of the Past in the Canons of the Sainte-Croix Gospels173
by Lynley Anne Herbert 

Saxum vivum and lapides viventes: Animated Stone in Medieval Book Illumination and Sculpture193
by Stefan Trinks

Shifting Frames: The Mutable Iconography of Canon Tables209
by Susanne Wittekind

List of Contributors251

Indices253