Western Medieval Manuscripts : Act and Epistles book

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript is an Acts and Epistles book, probably produced in the later 12th or earlier 13th century, possibly in Cyprus or the Levant. This is suggested by the black ink used for the main text, common in that region, and the script's combination of features suggestive of a 13th-century date with others not usually found after the first half of the 12th century. Such a combination would be plausible in a manuscript produced outside the Byzantine mainstream, where features of style could linger after falling from favour in the core of the Greek-speaking world, even while other more up-to-date tendencies were adopted.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>By the standards of such New Testament manuscripts it is a simple production with little ornamentation. It includes introductory hypotheses to the Pauline Epistles, but not to the Catholic Epistles. Its rubricated headings to books and hypotheses include not only the basic title of the text, but also usually some contextual information, which in the case of the hypotheses is normally treated as part of the main text rather than as prefatory material. A number of the epistles are also provided with closing subscriptions, in some cases including a standard count of the number of lines (<i>stichoi</i>). The manuscript has suffered some losses, principally that of the first three quires, while a few of its folios have been rebound out of order.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Christopher Wright</p>