Evangeliar - Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg, Cod.I.2.4.2

Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg

Description

The Anglo-Saxon monk Willibrord (b. around 658 in Northumbria), who had moved with eleven companions to the Continent in 690 to proselytise, founded the monastery of Echternach in today's Luxemburg in 697/698. The Abbey quickly developed into an important school of Irish-Anglo-Saxon culture and of the Northumbrian art of writing on the Continent. Echternach also made the Irish and Northumbrian art of illumination known on the Continent. Part of the decoration of the manuscript composed in ca. 705 consists of a cruciform maze, formed of the words "Evangeliae veritatis", of canon tables and of a poem by Ailerán of Clonard (d. 664), a page of interlace tapestry, of interlace initials as well as of the characteristic insular minuscule. According to a non-verifiable entry in the manuscript, the codex was already by 1790 in the hands of Jean-Baptist Maugerard (1735-1815), who had been commissioned by France to steal and sell important manuscripts and prints from monasteries in the occupied German areas. Via the Bruchsal monastic canon Adam Gärtler (1731-1818), Prince Ludwig von Oettingen-Wallerstein (1791-1870) was able to acquire the manuscript in 1816 for his museum. Of particular importance are the glosses in Old High German incised with a sharp metal stylus, which are hardly visible to the naked eye. These additions, which are only a little younger than the manuscript itself, were placed at the side of single Latin words as the equivalent in the popular language and are considered the oldest written evidence of Old High German. // Datum: 2017

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