bavarikon4UDescription
The Benedictine monastery of Tegernsee, located in southern Bavaria, was founded in 746 and is considered one of the most important imperial abbeys of the Holy Roman Empire. This manuscript was formerly attributed to Tegernsee's famous abbot, Ellinger (1017-26 and 1031-41), who was twice removed from office and spent his last years in exile in Niederaltaich. This is no longer the scholarly consensus, but the codex still maintains a key position in the series of magnificent Gospel books produced in Tegernsee up until the 12th century, a period in which the Bavarian tradition of book illumination passed from the Ottonian to the Romanesque style of illumination. This Gospel book foreshadows the basic type of illuminated Gospel produced by the later Bavarian monastic school. The portraits of the evangelists in architectural frames with facing initials on purple ground as well as the splendid canon tables seen in this manuscript are regularly found in later manuscripts produced in Bavaria.