St. Riquier Gospels

The Gospel Book in Abbeville (also Gospel Book of Saint- Riquier ) is an early medieval illuminated manuscript. It originated during the lifetime of Charlemagne, probably shortly before 800, at the Palace School at Aachen royal palace and one of the outstanding testimonies of the early Carolingian illumination.

The Gospel book consists of 198 purple parchment leaves in the format 355 x 247 mm. The text pages are written with gold ink; while the texts of the four Gospels ( fol. 1-188 ) in uncial script, the capitula evangeliorum are held in minuscule script at the end ( fol. 189v - 198r ). To book decoration in addition to the full-page portraits of the four Evangelists are Matthew ( fol. 17v ), Markus ( fol. 66v ), Luke ( fol. 101v ) and John ( fol. 153V ) the elaborately decorated canon tables ( fol. 10r - 16v ), and each full-page, richly decorated initials.

The manuscript was intended as a gift for Angilbert († 814), the lay abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Saint- Riquier and lover of Charlemagne's daughter Bertha. Angilbert gave the gospel book along with many other manuscripts in the library of his monastery, where it is 831 detected in a collection catalog. Today the manuscript is kept in the near Abbeville ( Abbeville, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 4).

The Gospel Book, the text and structure close relationship has also arisen for the so-called palace school in Aachen Krönungsevangeliar, influenced notably the West Frankish scriptoria of the ninth century.