next »
Penitential Canon | MS 232 (1)

PENITENTIAL CANON

MS 232
MS Short Title PENITENTIAL CANON
Text PENITENTIAL CANON, ODE 8, VERSES 3 - 4
Description MS in Greek on vellum, Byzantine Empire, ca. 1100, 1 f., 22x16 cm, single column, (17x12 cm), 6 lines in Greek minuscule, 2 miniatures (ca. 12x12 cm) in gold and colours within a gold frame ruled in blue and red.
Context This MS is one of the missing leaves from the Royal Academy Library, Bucharest, ms.gr.1294, acquired 1951, which may have formed a preface to an illustrated MS of St. John Climachus's Heavenly Ladder.
Provenance 1. Sotheby's 25.6.1985:9; 2. H.P. Kraus, New York. Deaccession May 2010.
Commentary This is probably the earliest of 2 surviving examples of an illustrated Penitential Canon of this period, a testimony to the highly developed Byzantine art of the 11th c. The text is monastic devotion, based on the Heavenly Ladder of St. John Climachus (d. ca. 649), abbot of Monastery of St. Catherine, Mt. Sinai.
Exhibited Oslo Katedralskole 850 år, Jubileumsutstilling 10. - 14. March 2003.
See also MS 662, Horologion, Greece, ca. 1330
Place of origin Byzantine Empire
Dates ca 1100 AD