Headnote: Quatuor Evangelia
Type: religious
Date: xii
Folia: 345 pages (3 missing)
Place of production: Avesnes
Produced for: Abbey of Saint-Lambert de Liessies, near Avesnes
Illuminated?: yes
Type of illumination: "Miniatures de chaque évangile"
Description from the catalogue: Quatuor Evangelia. A la page 2, on lit : Scriptus est liber iste, anno incarnati Verbi M o C o XL o VI o, indictione VIIIIa concurrente I o, epacta VI a, termino Pascali III o, [kalendis aprilis]. Scriptori benedictio, conservatori beatitudo, dissipatori maledictio, ego Johannes scripsi. » Miniatures de chaque évangile : fol. 14, 113, 169 et 267; à cette dernière page, dans un médaillon, portrait de Wédric (1124-1147), abbé de Liessies, au diocèse de Cambrai, tenant un livre avec cette inscription : Wedricus abbas me fecit. » Cf. une note de M. A. Boinet dans le Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de France, 1919, p. 214-222 XII e siècle. Parchemin. 345 pages. Trois feuillets manquent : le 1 er de la préface, le 1 er et le dernier de la concordance des Evangiles. 355 sur 230 millim. Rel. moderne en velours bleu, avec fermoir (brisé) et avec coins en argent (Salis, n° 4). ; [detailed description here:] [https://archive.org/stream/bulletin1919sociuoft/bulletin1919sociuoft_djvu.txt)
Notes: Remained at the abbey of Liessies in 17th c (cf. ' L’abbaye de Liessies et ses manuscrits' p. 239) Listed in c. 1849 library list of one M. Ducas in Lille. The Gospel of St John starts at f. 269 according to this list, but at 267 in the Metz catalogue, so the losses described in the Metz catalogue likely occured after 1849. The Baron de Salis bought the MS from Ducas c. 1943 for 1000 francs. Two illuminated leaves, likely from this manuscript, are held by the Bibliothèque de la Société archéologique in Avesnes (see Leclercq, J.; 1952). They were given to the society in 1852 by one M. Wallerand who said his aïeul grand père had gotten it during the Revolution. The Metz manuscript was, before its destruction, missing 3 leaves (including one fly leaf and the first and last leaves of the concordance of the Gospels; pp. 7-8 and 11-12). The Avesnes leaves have short summaries on their verso sides and Leclercq raises the possbility that these are the 'concordances' that were missing before the war (p. 54). But the recto sides of the Avesnes leaves contain medallions depicting the evangelists and these leaves are therefore not likely to have been part of the concordance section. Leclercq also notes that L'École des Beaux-Arts contains three leaves of an Evangeliary that match in many ways the description of the Metz Evangeliary; these may be the three leaves that were missing before the war.
Source: Marot P., CGM Tome 48, mss 1030-1475 (1933)
Source 2: The Canterbury School of Illumination, pg. 54
Source 3: les notes de M.A. Boinet
Source 4: https://www.persee.fr/doc/scrip_0036-9772_1952_num_6_1_2395
See the digitised version of the CGM (which the data here draws on): BnF- Catalogue collectif de France. « Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France. » Numérisation et rendu en mode texte réalisés par la société AIS (Paris, France). Données téléchargées sur https://ccfr.bnf.fr/, mise à jour du 21 novembre 2007.