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The Rossano Gospels, designated by 042 or Σ (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), ε 18 (Soden), located at the Cathedral of Rossano in Italy, are a 6th century Gospel Book written following the reconquest of Italian peninsula by Byzantine Empire. Also known as Codex purpureus Rossanensis due to the reddish (purpureus in Latin) appearance of its pages, the codex is one of the oldest surviving illuminated manuscripts of the New Testament.
[edit] Description
The now incomplete codex has the text of the Gospel of Matthew and the majority of the Gospel of Mark, with only one lacuna (Mark 16:14-20).[1] A second volume is apparently missing. Like the Vienna Genesis and the Sinope Gospels, the Rossano Gospels are written in silver ink on purple dyed parchment.[2] The large (300 mm by 250 mm) book has text written in a 215 mm square block with two columns of twenty lines each. There is a prefatory cycle of illustrations which are also on purple dyed parchment.
The codex was discovered in 1879 in Italian city Rossano by Oskar von Gebhardt and Adolf Harnack, in the cathedra Santa Maria Achiropita.[1]
The text of the Codex is generally the Byzantine text-type in close relationship to the Codex Petropolitanus Purpureus. The Rossano Gospels, along with manuscripts N, O, and Φ, belong to the group of the Purple Uncials (or purple codices). Aland placed all four manuscripts of the group (the Purple Uncials) in Category V.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] Gallery
[edit] References
- ^ a b C. R. Gregory, "Textkritik des Neuen Testaments", Leipzig 1900, vol. 1, p. 92.
- ^ Bruce M. Metzger, and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, New York - Oxford 2005, Oxford University Press, p. 84.
- ^ Kurt Aland et Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism, transl. Erroll F. Rhodes, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1995, p. 118.
[edit] Further reading
- A. I. T. Jonker, Studien, Groningen 1880, Bd. 6, S. 405-412;
- Zucker, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, Göttingen 1881, Heft 30,
- S. Lamprecht, Jahrbuch des Vereins von Alterhumsfreunden im Rheinland, Bonn 1880, Heft 69, S. 90-98;
- S. A. Usow, Die Miniaturen zu. dem in Rossano entdeckten Evangeliencodex aus dem 6. Jahrh. Moskau 1881;
- William Sanday, The Text of the Codex Rossanensis (Σ) Studia biblica, [vol. 1] Oxford 1885, S. 103-112.
- Walther, Ingo F. and Norbert Wolf. Codices Illustres: The world's most famous illuminated manuscripts, 400 to 1600. Köln, TASCHEN, 2005.
- Kurt Weitzmann. Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination. New York: George Braziller, 1977.
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