St Cuthbert Gospel - Dating

Dating

The manuscript itself carries no date but a rather precise dating has been given to it, based mainly on its palaeography or handwriting, and also the known facts of Cuthbert's burial. The script is the "capitular" form of uncial, with just a few emphasized letters at the start of sections in "text" uncial. Close analysis of the changing style of details of the forms of letters allows the manuscript to be placed with some confidence within a chronological sequence of the few other manuscripts thought to have been produced at Wearmouth-Jarrow. The Northumbrian scribes "imitate very closely the best Italian manuscripts of about the sixth century", but introduced small elements that gave their script a distinct style, which has always been greatly admired. However there were several scribes, seven different ones working on the Codex Amiatinus, whose scripts may not all have developed at the same pace.

Key to this sequence is the Codex Amiatinus, an almost complete bible for which we have a very precise terminus ante quem, and within which, because of its size, developments in style can be seen in a single manuscript. The Codex Amiatinus can be precisely located as leaving Wearmouth-Jarrow with a party led by Abbot Ceolfrith on 4 June 716, bound for Rome. The codex was to be presented to the pope, a decision only announced by Ceolfrith very shortly before the departure, allowing the dedication page to be dated with confidence to around May 716, though the rest of the manuscript was probably already some years old, but only begun after Ceolfrith succeeded as abbot in 689. The script of the dedication page differs slightly from that of the main text, but is by the same hand and in the same "elaborated text uncial" style as some pages at Durham (MS A II 17, part ii, ff 103-11). At the end of the sequence, it may be possible to date the Saint Petersburg Bede to 746 at the earliest, from references in memoranda in the text, although this remains a matter of controversy.

There survive parts of a gospel book, by coincidence now bound up with the famous Utrecht Psalter, which are identifiable as by the same scribe as the Cuthbert Gospel, and where "the capitular uncial of the two manuscripts is indistinguishable in style or quality, so they may well be very close to each other in date". Since the Utrecht pages also use Rustic capital script, which the Cuthbert Gospel does not, it allows another basis for comparison with further manuscripts in the sequence.

From the palaeographical evidence, T. Julian Brown concluded that the Cuthbert manuscript was written after the main text of the Codex Amiatinus, which was finished after 688, perhaps by 695, though it might be later. Turning to the historical evidence for Cuthbert's burial, this places it after his original burial in 687 but possibly before his elevation to the high altar in 698. If this is correct, the book was never a personal possession of Cuthbert, as has sometimes been thought, but was possibly created specifically to be placed in his coffin, whether for the occasion of his elevation in 698 or at another date. The less precise hints about dating that can be derived from the style of the binding compared to other works do not conflict with these conclusions.