You will be doing yourself a favour by clicking to enlarge these images - the detail is exquisite (the manuscript measures 32cm x 30cm [13 x 12 inches]).
This late 12th century illuminated manuscript in Armenian script is online in the Digital Library of Poland. [or: direct link to 800+ thumbnails = big pageload] {Thanks to Tomasz for the translation help!}
Whilst this exceptional Gospel work is in the Armenian language, it was actually produced in a Lviv scriptorium (in the west of modern Ukraine, not too far from the Polish border) in 1198. [modern Armenia is on the opposite side of the Black Sea] [wikipedia: Ukraine, Armenia, Lviv]
The complex history of the region is fairly baffling - the Kingdom of Armenia (which was the Kingdom of Cilesian Armenia at the time the manuscript was produced) never extended further west than the eastern side of the Black Sea as far as I can tell. Conflating language and country perhaps? Please enlighten me via a comment or email.
I feel fairly confident that this work is known (at least in Germany) as the Lemberg Gospel (Lemberg was the German name for Lviv). The manuscript was rediscovered at the end of hostilities in 1945. [Das Lemberger Evangeliar - translation]
Ornamental Arts in Armenian Manuscripts is an excellent site from Hayknet which is associated with the Yerevan Academy of Fine Arts and has a large gallery of manuscript decoration motifs and if I'm understanding correctly, plates 41-45 are indicative of the style of the probable illuminator of the Lemberg Gospel (Grigor). [see the essay]
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10 comments:
god, it's beautiful.
Excellent. Nice coincidence: just minutes after seeing this, I ran into a Arabic cosmographical treatise [via (in Greek)].
I remember the Book of Curiosities. I liked it so much I posted it here AND at Metafilter.
Wow.
Gorgeous (not to mention I love the Armenian script, which one doesn't run across too often). The Lviv/Lemberg link was a surprise since of course Armenians bring to mind Turks, not Poles/Ukrainians.
Karla, what I didn't put in the post - because I am on very very shaky ground as to the facts - is that I got an inkling from the sites that I visited (not linked for various reasons) that the scribes/illuminators from Armenia 'got around'. After thinking about it the last day or so, I think that Grigor might have been visiting Lviv (and I'm sure there are Turkish/Islamic motifs and patterns in the pages we see here).
About all this I'm not certain but *I think* that the manuscript was actually made for a Polish bishop or high clerical figure so Poland/Ukraine are not essentially contributory influences, if you follow.
Sounds like a dissertation waiting to be written, if you follow me. Or just a fun sleuthing job! (and now back to the salt mines of my own dissertation... why can't I do all these other things too??? why don't I know Armenian? or Polish? or Turkish?)
History of the Armenian Manuscript from National Library in Warsaw
http://www.dziedzictwo.ormianie.pl/index.php?option
Thanks very much Waldemar! That's a very worthwhile link here. english version.
The political background to this manuscript is quite interesting, as it was composed during a time of intensified negotiations between Roman Catholics and Armenian Catholics (not to be confused with the Armenian Apostolic church) which led to a formal union between the Kingdom of Cilicia (on the Turkish south coast) and the Roman Catholic church in 1195.
Why this manuscript originated in Lviv, I can't say - probably the city already had a sizeable Armenian Catholic community. At least it had so in later centuries, after the fall of the Kingdom of Cilicia in 1375. The Armenian Catholic community in Lviv numbered up to 5,000 people. The Armenian Catholic church of Poland was constituted here (by the "Union of Leopolis" (the Latin name of Lviv) in 1620), and the Catholic diocese of Lviv celebrated mass according to Armenian and Roman rites.
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