International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Kathleen Maxwell
Santa Clara University, San Francisco CA, United States; 
[e-mail]
The Evolution of the Illuminated Byzantine Gospel Book 
in the Late Ninth and Tenth Centuries
New Testament text critics and Byzantine art historians study the same object: the Greek 
Gospel book. Art historians have been slow to capitalize on recent gains made in the field of New 
Testament text criticism and New Testament text critics have only recently begun to recognize the 
importance of paratextual evidence for their discipline. My approach to the Byzantine Gospel book 
benefits from two developments: 1) the increase in accessibility to the genealogical data for the texts 
of Byzantine Gospel books on the web; and 2) the availability of growing numbers of manuscripts 
in fully digitized form on the web. In short, the utilization of text relational tools developed by 
New Testament text critics together with art historical methods helps bridge the gap between New 
Testament text critics and Byzantine art historians studying the illuminated Greek Gospel book.
This study traces the evolution of the illuminated Byzantine Gospel book in the 150 years 
immediately following the end of Iconoclasm, focusing on the relationship between the texts 
and decoration of these manuscripts. Traditional art historical methods are used to categorize 
the decoration of these manuscripts while data developed by New Testament text critics will be 
consulted in an effort to gauge the relationship of their texts. This approach utilizes advances in 
the field of New Testament textual criticism, as exemplified by the T&T Mss. Clusters tool of the 
University of Muenster’s Institute for New Testament Research (INTF). This on-line tool lists the 
textual relatives of virtually all Greek Gospel books. I will analyze the data for illuminated Byzantine 
Gospel manuscripts, in an effort to determine the degree to which textual alignment corresponds 
with manuscript groups based upon relationships of their figural and non-figural decoration. This 
multidisciplinary approach will provide insight on the ways in which scribes and artists interacted to 
create the illuminated Greek Gospel book. The goal is a more complete articulation of the evolution 
of the illuminated Byzantine Gospel book, using state-of-the-art technologies developed by New 
Testament text critics in England, Germany, and the U.S., as well as drawing from an ever-increasing 
array of digitized manuscripts on the web. This works builds on previous publications by the author 
on the Gospel books of the ‘decorative style’ manuscripts of ca. 1150 – 1250, and the late thirteenth-
century Byzantine Gospel book, Paris, BnF, gr. 54.

---

345