History
The manuscript is traditionally, and plausibly, considered to be either a volume brought by St Augustine to England with the Gregorian mission in 597, or one of a number of books recorded as being sent to him in 601 by Pope Gregory the Great – like other scholars, Kurt Weitzmann sees "no reason to doubt" the tradition. The main text is written in an Italian uncial hand which is widely accepted as dating to the 6th century - Rome or Monte Cassino have been suggested as the place of creation. It was certainly in England by the late 7th or early 8th century when corrections and additions were made to the text in an insular hand. The additions included tituli or captions to the scenes around the portrait of Luke, not all of which may reflect the intentions of the original artist.
The book was certainly at St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury in the 11th century, when documents concerning the Abbey were copied into it. In the late Middle Ages it was "kept not in the Library at Canterbury but actually lay on the altar; it belonged in other words, like a reliquary or the Cross, to Church ceremonial". The manuscript was given to the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge as part of the collection donated by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1575, some decades after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was traditionally used for the swearing of the oath in the enthronements of new Archbishops of Canterbury, and the tradition has been restored since 1945; the book is taken to Canterbury Cathedral by the librarian of Corpus for each ceremony. The Augustine Gospels have also been taken to Canterbury for other major occasions: the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1982, and the celebrations in 1997 for the 1,400th anniversary of the Gregorian mission.
The Church of England likes to call the book the Canterbury Gospels, though to scholars this name usually refers to another book, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon gospel book written at Canterbury, now with one portion in the British Library as Royal MS I. E. VI, and another in the Cathedral Library at Canterbury.
Read more about this topic: St Augustine Gospels
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