Evangeliary

A Gospel Lectionary (from the Latin Evangelistarium ) is an ordered according to the feasts of the liturgical year collection specially the Evangelienperikopen, ie those text passages from the Gospels, which were intended for reading in worship.

The originally continuous liturgical reading of the biblical text ( lectio continua ) was replaced with a reference to the feasts of the liturgical year since the 5th century increasingly from the reading of selected sections of text (so-called pericopes ). Make directories so-called Chapter Members ( capitulare Lectionum ) were used to locate the pericopes in the biblical text first in the order of the church year, made ​​and attached to the biblical text. In the early medieval illuminated manuscripts, which contained the full text of the Gospels, such directories were called specifically the Evangelienperikopen capitula evangeliorum. By such directories were created as separate books, and there written out in full to read the biblical text sections, emerged from it since the late 6th or early 7th century lectionaries, which then took the place of the biblical texts as a full presentation of the reading.

A complete lectionary containing the Gospel Lectionary with the collection of Evangelienperikopen and the epistolary with the collection of pericopes from the other biblical writings ( with the exception of Psalm sections that were recorded in the Graduale ). Both parts were made as stand-alone books, among which the Evangelistare often distinguished by particularly magnificent interior.

Well-known examples are the Godescalc - Gospel Lectionary ( 781-783 ), the Codex Egberti ( Reichenau, 980-993 ) and the Egberti Henry II ( Reichenau to 1012).