Coming across Greek New Testament manuscripts that have not yet been registered in the Kurzgefasste Liste is not a rare occurance. Hundreds of new witnesses have been identified in recent years, and others still await registration. Many of these consist of single leaves or small fragments, often preserved in private collections or libraries where access has historically been limited, and often come to light when collections are catalogued or newly digitized.
It is somewhat more surprising, however, to find two more substantial Tetraevangelia in a collection as well known and extensively studied as the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris, which already holds nearly 380 registered Greek New Testament witnesses.
This was my experience today while working on another research project with the BnF’s manuscripts. I came across two 14th-century Gospel manuscripts in the Supplément grec collection, which itself contains 100 registered Greek NT witnesses. Neither of these MS appear in the Liste, and surprisingly little has been written about either one. Both have been digitized in color and are available on Gallica, so I thought it would be worth drawing attention to them here.
Supplément grec 1388
Supplément grec 1388 is a 14th-century tetraevangelion on parchment (ca. 183 × 127 mm). Its 52 surviving leaves preserve parts of Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew is lost in its entirety. The first surviving leaf begins with Mark 9:12.
Four leaves are missing between Luke 5:15 and 7:8, and another is missing just before Luke 8:34. The Lukan portion ends with 11:31 on fol. 39v and the next surviving leaf, fol. 40, begins at John 2:15. The BnF estimates that three complete quires were lost between these two leaves, along with leaves from the adjoining quires. The surviving text of John runs through 8:21.
Between fols. 48v and 49r are two narrow strips of parchment used in the binding, with a little writing still visible on each. Christian Förstel has identified traces of John 9:4, 9:15–16, 9:23, and 9:35 on the strips. Curiously, the Gospel text continues without a break at John 6:53 across the two folios.
According to the BnF’s published account of its acquisitions, the manuscript was a gift from Ernest Florian, received on 13 April 1997.
Supplément grec 1392
The second manuscript, Supplément grec 1392, is another 14th-century parchment tetraevangelion measuring ca. 165 x 130 mm. About 30 folios survive, all from Matthew. The text begins with Matt 1:20 and breaks off at 18:29, with several gaps in between, including those between Matt 7:4 and 7:28 and between 14:35 and 15:21. The first quire has about 29 lines per page. Most of the remaining leaves have 23 lines.
The manuscript was offered for sale in Paris on 25 June 2011. Curiously, the auction catalogue dated it to the 18th century. In their 2012 article on GA ℓ793, which was offered at the same sale, André Binggeli, Marie Cronier, and Didier Lafleur mentioned Supplément grec 1392 in a footnote, dating this MS of Matthew to the 14th century instead of the 18th and noting that it had been acquired by the BnF.1
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Supplément grec 1392 is the presence of four illuminations that the BnF identifies as modern forgeries, apparently dating to the 19th or early 20th century. The first three paintings are faintly visible through the parchment when you turn the page. The fourth was pasted over the writing on a leaf moved from later in the manuscript, leaving only a few words visible.
It is unclear who added these miniatures and why but they may have been intended to make the manuscript more valuable as an illuminated Gospel book.2
Folio 2r (below) has John the Baptist with an inscription quoting Matt 3:3.
Folio 8r depicts a wooden beam sticking out of the eye of the man on the left, which the auction catalogue calls a scene of Christ healing the lame man. The inscription quotes Matt 7:3, the same verse visible on the facing page.
Folio 17r seems to be a woman who touches Christ’s cloak, though the inscription is difficult to read.
Folio 27r shows the feeding of the four thousand with an inscription that mentions the seven loaves and a few small fish (Matt 15:34).
Much about these two manuscripts remains a mystery. Where were they before they were acquired by the BnF? Who added the four forged illuminations to Supplément grec 1392, and when? And might other leaves from either manuscript still survive elsewhere? I hope that drawing attention to the two manuscripts and their digital images will make it a little easier for others to pursue these questions.
- See p. 89 n. 1 of “À propos d’un évangéliaire byzantin (Aland ℓ793) récemment mis en vente à Paris,” Scriptorium 66 (2012), pp. 89–108. The note also records the BnF’s acquisition of lot 3, a fifteenth-century Pentecostarion now catalogued as Supplément grec 1393. The lectionary from lot 1 is now MSS 05316 at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Ulrich Schmid cited the article in his 2013 post on the INTF website, when he reported that ℓ793 had resurfaced in Toronto. ↩︎
- Gary Vikan, “A Group of Forged Byzantine Miniatures”, Aachener Kunstblätter 48 (1978–1979), pp. 53–70, esp. pp. 53–54 and figs. 1–2. Adding modern paintings to genuine Byzantine manuscripts was a regular practice in the early twentieth-century workshop that Vikan, following an identification by Manolis Chatzidakis, links to the icon painter Demetrios Pelekasis. The painters could use the parchment and script already there, and the old manuscript helped the new illuminations pass as original. In GA 2222 (Chicago, Goodspeed MS 138), the workshop fitted a portrait of John into the margin beside John 12. In the Scheide lectionary at Princeton, it erased the heading for the Pentecost Sunday reading to make room for a portrait of Prochoros. The Princeton example offers a parallel for Supplément grec 1392, where a pasted illumination covers part of the Gospel text. ↩︎