The illustration is the central detail of an illumination on parchment from the Rabbula Gospels, 586 A.D., the oldest surviving depictions of the Crucifixion. The original is at the Laurentian Library, Florence, Italy. Public Domain. Source: 10000 Masterworks: the Yorck Project.
For this Good Friday, readers may wish to re-visit In the Cross of Christ I Glory, a two-part video series revised in A.D. 2018 and accessible on the Digital Library page. Use the links at the top or bottom of the pages, then scroll down (Programs are shown in chronological order on the Anglican Church Calendar)..




This week’s rarely seen illustration is the illumination of Matthew Writing His Gospel from the Lindisfarne Gospels, produced in England around 750 A.D., with perspective correction adjustments, from the British Library by way of the Yorck Project: 10,000 Masterworks.
Episode Two in the revised edition of the AIC Bible Study Video series, The New Testament:Gospels, is now available in both video and podcast formats. The episode, an introduction to the Gospel of St. Matthew beginning with its history and the genealogy of Jesus, includes four images of St. Matthew not often seen by the general public. The best of these, at left, is an illumination of St. Matthew from the Codex Aureus of Canterbury, made around 750 A.D. in England in the region of Canterbury. The Codex Aureus (Golden Gospel) was stolen by Viking raiders in the 9th C. and bought back through a monetary ransom payment later the same century. Where it resided between then and its movement to Spain in the early 16th C. is unclear. Two centuries later, in 1690 A.D. it was bought by the King of Sweden and since then has resided at the Konigliga Bibliotek (Royal Library), Stockholm, Sweden. The Codex is also known as the Codex Aureus of Stockholm. The image is from the Yorck Project’s CD collection, 10,000 Masterworks through Wikipedia Commons. I adjusted the image using perspective and other correction methods in Photoshop.


