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302 The Canon Tables in Boulogne, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 10 ELIZABETH MULLINS Boulogne, Bibliothèque Muncipale MS 10 stands apart as the only surviving Anglo-Saxon gospel book from the first half of the tenth century. Despite its importance, it is a relatively neglected manuscript. This paper offers a more detailed, if still preliminary, study of one feature of its contents, its Eusebian canon tables. It opens with a brief introduction to the manuscript and a summary of previous scholarship. It then moves to focus on the Eusebian series, analysing the layout and decoration of the manuscript’s numerical tables and its textual citations from the canons. The contribution’s approach is informed by many aspects of the work of Jennifer O’Reilly, in particular by her demonstration of the exegetical significance of gospel book prefatory texts.1 I would like it to act as a small token of my gratitude to her for the encouragement and support she has given to me in the years since I first began to study medieval history at University College Cork.2 The Manuscript and Its Scholarship Currently in two volumes, Boulogne 10 contains the texts of the four Gospels and their accompanying prefatory material. The manuscript opens with copies of Jerome’s Novum Opus and Plures Fuisse prefaces. These are followed by the first of its individualized prefaces, Matthew’s argumentum. The book’s canon tables follow, occupying a total of 31 pages, fols. 5r–20r. Twelve of these pages contain the numerical text of the ten canons. The remaining pages contain a much rarer version of the series, which supplies textual citations for each of the Eusebian parallels. Boulogne 10’s unusually extended canons are followed by the capitula for Matthew and the opening of his Gospel. Argumenta and capitula specific to each evangelist preface their respective Gospel texts. The Canon Tables in Boulogne . . . 303 The manuscript’s decoration is confined to the decorated arches at the opening of the book, which frame the numerical canons, and to a series of illuminated initials which begin each Gospel and a number of the prefatory texts.3 A faint drawing of the evangelist John, included before the opening of Matthew’s Gospel, was added to the manuscript at a later stage.4 While we know that the manuscript was in the possession of the monastery of St Vaast at Arras in 1628 before it was transferred to the library in Boulogne, its exact date and place of origin are unknown. The book is generally thought to be the product of a southern English scriptorium and is dated to sometime in the first four decades of the tenth century.5 It is the only gospel book to survive in Anglo-Saxon square minuscule script. David Dumville, who has worked most extensively on this script, dated the version present in Boulogne 10 to the script’s canonical phase during the reign of Aethelstan (924–39).6 Boulogne 10’s place within ‘a recognizably insular tradition of book making’ has been highlighted in previous codicological and art historical discussion.7 Patrick McGurk has demonstrated the distinctiveness of the manuscript’s prefatory material in the context of the other gospel books produced in Anglo-Saxon England in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Boulogne 10 does not agree with any of these books in the layout of its prefatory material and in its unusual set of canon tables. In addition, its chapter lists to Luke and John preserve some of the liturgical notes which featured two centuries earlier in the Lindisfarne Gospels.8 This strongly links Boulogne to a small group of earlier Insular manuscripts. One of these, Royal 1.B.vii, is particularly significant, as its presence in southern England in the early tenth century is attested by the insertion of a manumission by King Aethelstan on a blank space on fol. 15v.9 The art historical attention which has been paid to the manuscript has also recognized its strong Insular character. McGurk has drawn attention to the ‘emphatic Xpi autem’ announcing the beginning of Matthew 1:18 on fol. 23r.10 Jonathan Alexander, in a brief discussion from 1975, used the decoration of Boulogne’s tables and initials to demonstrate the ‘continuation of Insular tradition into the tenth century’.11 His discussion complemented previous research on the book’s illuminated initials. Francis Wormald classified these as belonging to the Type I initial style, which had its origins in the secondary calligraphic decoration of earlier Southumbrian...

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