Medieval Manuscripts
A Selection of Medieval Manuscripts
The Fisher Library has a small but representative selection of early manuscripts, with a focus on those with significant texts, as well as manuscripts valued for their illumination and aesthetic appeal. Many of the manuscripts are viewable online - please visit our Digitized Manuscripts page.
One example from our collection of Medieval Manuscripts is the Codex Torontonensis (below), the four Gospels in Greek, ca. 1100.
This small Greek manuscript was most likely transcribed at Constantinople around the year 1070. The four Gospels compose the main portion of the volume, with the last thirty-five leaves containing the synaxarium and menology (essentially the martyrology) of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The New Testament was originally written in a common form of Greek known as ‘koine’, and it was to volumes such as this one that the Renaissance humanists turned in their quest to provide the first modern vernacular copies of the Christian Scriptures. The binding of the book is essentially contemporary with black leather over wooden boards. The text is written on coarse, thick vellum in a Greek minuscule script which displays Syrian influence; decoration, though restrained, is colourful with four partially illuminated headpieces in the Byzantine style at the beginning of each Gospel.
Interestingly, the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) is omitted from the main text, but is supplied by a thirteenth-century hand in the margin. This purposeful omission reflects the fact that as late as the eleventh century there was unease with the authenticity of this particular Gospel story which does not appear in the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament and certainly does not originally belong to the Gospel of John. In fact some ancient New Testaments actually place it after Luke 21:38.
The critical process of determining which Greek families of texts, with their divergent readings, should form the basis for modern recensions of the Scriptures led to the development of the Textus Receptus, the printed editions of the Greek New Testament which appeared in the late Renaissance and provided the translation base for Luther, Tyndale, and other Reformation-era Biblical scholars. The Gospels presented here have their own unique internal structures with Matthew divided into sixty-eight chapters, Mark into forty-eight, Luke into eighty-three, and John into eighteen. The Codex was purchased from an English antiquarian book dealer by the Toronto Anglican priest and scholar, Henry Scadding (1813-1901) about 1890. Scadding in turn bequeathed the book, together with his whole library, to the University of Toronto upon his death. This particular volume formed part of the exhibition commemorating the tercentenary of the King James Bible sponsored by the Upper Canada Bible Society held from 13-25 February 1911 in Toronto. It has the added distinction of being the first Greek manuscript of the four Gospels to appear in Canada.
