Volume / Number: 2 / 177

• London United Kingdom British Library Loan MS 81 [Bankes Leaf; Kingston Lacy Fragment]
• London United Kingdom British Library Add. MS 45025 [Middletown Leaves]
• London United Kingdom British Library Add. MS 37777 [Greenwell Leaf]

Written in the Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow or Wearmouth, and is doubtless one of the three Bibles—the 'tres pandectes novae translationis', as Bede has it—produced at the order of Abbot Ceolfrid (690–716), the one complete surviving copy being the more stately Codex Amiatinus, which was destined for presentation to St Peter's, Rome. The London leaf was found in the binding of a register in a bookseller's shop at Newcastle and given to the Museum by the finder, Canon Greenwell of Durham, in 1909. The Middleton leaves had been used as covers for deeds relating to lands at Middleton and other properties, and are now bound separately and preserved at Birdsall House, Malton, Yorks.

The script is a characteristic, somewhat artificial uncial of the same type, but not so carefully formed, as the text-script of the Codex Amiatinus: the bow of uncial A is compressed to a thin oval; the tail of G is fine, long, and curved to the left; S is distinctly top-heavy; to save space at line-ends the base of L drops below the line, S is compressed and rises above the line, Y does likewise; S in ligature at line-ends has a characteristic shallow form and leans to the right; short horizontals and the ends of upper curves have a forked finial.

☛Originally Lord Middleton's Collection. ☛Brown, In the Beginning No. 41.

• http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_37777
• http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_45025

• Text: MSS containing biblical text (including Gospels)