© Catalogue record by National Library of Scotland
Adv. MS 18.5.19
Gospels of Saints Mark and Luke, and part of the prologue of the Gospel of Saint John
This manuscript was produced in Ireland and is an example of a pocket Gospel book. It was possibly written in the 11th century, based on the script. Schenkl has dated the work to the 9th century, and Borland has attributed it to the 13th century.
The manuscript is written in an Insular minuscule script with 23 or 24 lines to a page. There are brief scribal marginal glosses related to the text throughout, although some of these have been lost due to cropping.
There are two sets of foliation. One set is a modern library foliation and the other is in a later medieval hand in Roman numerals. The medieval foliation begins on folio 1r, running from [51] to 135. There are several gaps in this foliation, though the text is continuous. This indicates that the volume may have once been part of a larger set of Gospel texts but was at some point broken up and separated.
The contents are as follows:
1r - 32v . Gospel of St. Mark.
33 , blank, with later medieval numerical equations and inscriptions.
34r - 71r . Gospel of St. Luke.
71v - 72r . Prologue of the Gospel of St. John. Fragment.
72v is blank with later medieval numerical equations and inscriptions.
The manuscript is decorated with four large zoomorphic initials with beast and interlace motifs, present on folios 1r , 32r , 34r , and 71v . The colours used inclulde orange red, blue, brown, and yellow.
New chapters are introduced by initials coloured either red, yellow, or purple. Initials throughout the work are stroked with red and the marginal annotations are boxed with red.
There are various notes in later hands throughout the work, especially on folios 20r , 24rv , 33rv , 55r , 62rv , 71rv , and 72v . Some of these notes include numerical equations although it is unclear to what they relate.
Each folio has been lined and ruled in hardpoint, recto and verso.