Coronation Gospels (British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A.ii)

Folio 24 recto. Evangelist portrait of Saint Matthew
Folio 162 recto, the start of the Gospel of John
Folio 24 verso, showing the names of Otto the Great and his mother Matilda

The Athelstan Gospels, or British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A. ii is a late 9th or early 10th-century Ottonian illuminated Gospel book which entered England as a gift to King Athelstan, who in turn offered it to Christ Church, Canterbury. It is also referred to as the Coronation Gospels (as are other manuscripts) on account of an early modern tradition that it had been used as an oath-book at English coronations.[1]

The page size is 235 x 180mm. The manuscript "is a concrete example of the type of Continental illuminated manuscript, imported into England in the early tenth century, which was available to the artists who laid the foundations of the Winchester school" of illumination.[1] The manuscript was divided by Sir Robert Cotton when it was in his Cotton Library, who removed Papal bulls and Anglo-Saxon charters from the end of the book.

  1. ^ a b Backhouse, "The Coronation Gospels", p. 20.