The Longleat Zacharias Chrysopolitanus
Super Unum Ex Quattuor Seu Concordia Evangelistarum by Zacharias Chrysopolitanus
Decorated manuscript in Latin on vellum
England, Pershore Abbey (?), mid-12th century
460 x 310 mm
223 leaves ed rubrics, simple initials in blue, green, red or dark yellow (to look like gold), many of these terminating in foliate sprays, larger initials in complex foliate and geometric multi-coloured designs, with elaborate penwork foliage. Complete. English 19th-century brown leather over pasteboards, with the boards tooled with black fillets with a palmette motif in each corner (scuffed, light-faded, and water-stained), the spine lettered in gilt capitals ‘Zacharias / Chrysopolitanus, / De / Concordia / Evangelistarum // Sæc. XII.’, with 19th-century marbled endpapers, the binding by Tuckett, binder to Queen Victoria. Presentable, solid condition.
This codex was likely made in Worcestershire at Pershore Abbey, (probably founded 7th century) or another monastery who supplied them with books. It was almost certainly written for use in a monastic context, and for a community of some wealth and standing and still in use in that community in the 15th century, when additional readings were added to a few margins.
The author of the text contained in this tome is Zacharius Chrysopolitanus (d. c. 1155), a Premonstatensian monk and Biblical scholar, who served as master of the cathedral school at Besançon in southern France, before entering the Abbey of St. Martin in Laon in north-eastern France to concentrate on his own studies and writing. On initial inspection, this manuscript holds a bewilderingly complex text, set out in 181 chapters, and these subdivided by three prefaces on
(i) the relations of the Gospel to the Jewish Law, to philosophy, and to the Evangelist’s symbols,
(ii) the Evangelists and their view of Christ’s mission, and
(iii) a lengthy enumeration of the authors and their works that he had drawn on.
In an attempt to help navigate this complexity, it has an extensive textual apparatus, with chapter lists of each of the Gospels (using the ancient divisions of the Gospels which were compiled to accompany the Canon Tables; ff. 3r-7v here), Canon Tables (ff. 8v-10v) and a list of Mass readings for the liturgical year (again, using the Eusebian divisions; here f. 1r-2r).
This manuscript was acquired by Sir Thomas Thynne in the 16th century and belonged to the glorious library of Longleat House, seat of the Marquesses of Bath (their MS. 8).
