Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/33

Rh the exception of the figure representing St. Matthew, habited as a bishop in that singular MS., the Sacramentarium of Gelloni, I know no other early figures in which the Evangelists are represented as ecclesiastics; nor do I believe that any earlier representations of the pastoral staff exist than those here figured.

In several instances these copies of the Gospels, in addition to the figures of the Evangelists, are ornamented with representations of their ordinary symbols, generally arranged in the four open spaces of a cruciform design. Such is the case in the Book of Kells, the Gospels of St. Chad, those of Mac Durnan, and the autograph Gospels of St. Columba, at Dublin; whilst, in a few rare instances, the same symbols were separately represented opposite the commencement of each of the Gospels instead of its respective Evangelist, as in the last- named Gospels of St. Columba, the Gospels in the National Library at Paris (of which fac-similes have just been published in Lacroix's "Le Moyen Age et la Rénaissance"), and also in the Harleian Gospels, MSS., Nos. 1023 and 1802. Nothing can be more singular than some of these representations, even of the Ox and Eagle, which bird is, however, splendidly represented in the fragment in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, whilst the Lion, in the Paris Gospels, is a really respectable delineation of the king of beasts. Some- times these symbols are represented wingless, but occasionally they are tetrapterous, according with the Vision of Ezekiel, as in the Book of Armagh, or are only furnished with a pair of wings. Sometimes, also, they are represented over the separate figures of the Evangelists of which they are the symbols. (Gospels of St. Chad and Mac Regol, the Duke of Buckingham's Missal, and the figure of St. Mark, in the Gospels of Mac Durnan.)

With scarcely an exception, the illuminators of these ancient copies of the Gospels appear to have contented themselves with the delineation of the Evangelists, or their symbolical emblems, which of course prevented all attempt at composition or grouping in the picture. I am, in fact,