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Rabbula Gospels (Illuminated Manuscript)
Illuminated Syriac Gospel codex (completed 586 CE), produced at the Monastery of St John of Zagba, Syria. Contains the earliest surviving full-page narrative illuminations in Christian manuscript art, including the Crucifixion and Ascension pages. Currently at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. A foundational document of Early Christian and Syrian artistic tradition.
Notes
- ·A colophon identifies the scribe Rabbula of Zagba and the date 586 CE; this makes it one of the very few firmly dated Early Christian manuscripts.
- ·Contains 14 full-page miniatures and a canon table (Eusebian canons) with elaborate decorative arcades.
- ·The Crucifixion page (fol. 13a) is one of the earliest full narrative images of the Crucifixion: Christ is shown alive on the cross, dressed in a purple colobium (robe), flanked by the two thieves, soldiers, holy women, and an angel — a programmatic early Christian iconographic scheme.
- ·The Ascension page (fol. 13b) shows Christ borne aloft in a mandorla by angels while the apostles and the Virgin look on — again an early canonical example.
- ·Written in Syriac Estrangela script; the Peshitta version of the New Testament.
- ·The manuscript reflects the mixed Syriac-Byzantine artistic milieu of 6th-century Syria, with Hellenistic modelling and Oriental flatness coexisting.
- ·Kept at the Laurenziana since at least the late 15th century; first described in Western scholarship in the 18th century.