The Gospels of Lothair ( BNF Lat. 266) is an

evangeliary The Evangeliary or Book of the Gospels is a liturgical book containing only those portions of the four gospels which are read during Mass or in other public offices of the Church. The corresponding terms in Latin are and . The Evangeliary develo ...

made for

Lothair I Lothair I or Lothar I (Dutch and Medieval Latin: ''Lotharius''; German: ''Lothar''; French: ''Lothaire''; Italian: ''Lotario'') (795 – 29 September 855) was emperor (817–855, co-ruling with his father until 840), and the governor of Bavar ...

Saint-Martin de Tours , native_name_lang = , image = Tours Cathedral Saint-Gatian.jpg , imagesize = , caption = Tours Cathedral , country = , osgridref = , osgraw ...

during 849 to 851. Representing the peak of the Carolingian Tours workshop, the manuscript has 221 parchment leaves written in gold ink, with six miniatures, nine incipit pages, twelve

altar cards Altar cards are three cards placed on the altar during the Tridentine Mass. They contain certain prayers that the priest must say during the Mass, and their only purpose is as a memory aid, although they are usually very beautifully decorated. Hi ...

, 18 index pages and five initials. A different Carolingian evangeliary, the so-called Cleves Evangeliary (Berlin Staatsbibliothek Ms. theol. Lat. 260) was completed before 852, likely in a workshop at Lothair's court in

Aachen Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...

. It consists of 241 parchment leaves, written in gold ink. This manuscript was given by Lothair to

Prüm Abbey Prüm Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey in Prüm, now in the diocese of Trier (Germany), founded by the Frankish widow Bertrada the elder and her son Charibert, Count of Laon, in 721. The first abbot was Angloardus. The Abbey ruled over a va ...

. It was acquired by the BNF in 1802 (following the dissolution of the Abbey following the French annexation in 1794) and returned to Germany in 1819. In the course of the negotiations for the manuscript's return, it became mixed up with an unrelated evangeliary of

Cleves Kleve (; traditional en, Cleves ; nl, Kleef; french: Clèves; es, Cléveris; la, Clivia; Low Rhenish: ''Kleff'') is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany near the Dutch border and the River Rhine. From the 11th century ...

, and there is a note in the hand of

Jacob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of th ...

attached to fol. 1r calling it the ''Evangeliar aus Kleve''. The current name of this manuscript is based on this misidentification, but it has been kept because the alternative name "Lothair Evangeliary" would lead to confusion with BNF Lat. 266).''Zimelien. Ausstellungskatalog der Staatsbibliothek Berlin'', Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden 1975, 35–36.

References

{{reflist *Florentine Mütherich, Joachim E. Gaehde, ''Karolingische Buchmalerei'', 1979, 82-87. *Ingo F. Walther, Norbert Wolf, ''Meisterwerke der Buchmalere'', 2005, p. 460. Carolingian illuminated manuscripts Bibliothèque nationale de France collections

See also

References