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ОглавлениеCodex Argenteus – the ‘Silver Bible’
Inscribed 2011
What is it
The Codex Argenteus – the ‘Silver Bible’ – is a remnant of a liturgical book of the four Gospels written in the Gothic language for Arian Christian Church services in the early 6th century.
Why was it inscribed
The ‘Silver Bible’ contains the most comprehensive extant text in the Gothic language and is one of the world’s best-known remaining artefacts from Gothic culture. Its historical value lies in its contribution to the spread of Christianity.
Where is it
Uppsala University Library, Uppsala, Sweden
The Codex Argenteus is a book for use in religious liturgy that contains the selected portions of the Gospels to be read during church services. The book was written in the early 6th century in northern Italy, probably in the city of Ravenna.
At that time, Ravenna was the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom which stretched from modern-day southern France across to Serbia and took in all of Italy. However, in AD 553 the Ostrogoths were defeated after a long and costly war by the forces of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire which was then at almost the greatest extent of its power. As a result, Gothic language and culture largely disappeared.
The Codex Argenteus contains the most comprehensive still existing text in the Gothic language. It is part of the 4th-century translation of the Bible from Greek into Gothic by Bishop Wulfila, an Arian preacher who had converted the Germanic tribes and was said to have constructed the Gothic alphabet specifically for the translation. Wulfila is also the oldest known non-mythical constructor of an alphabet.
Codex Argenteus – the ‘Silver Bible’
Christ’s baptism, depicted on the ceiling of King Theodoric’s Arian Baptistry in Ravenna.
A beautiful and impressive object in its own right, the Codex Argenteus was thought to have been made for the Ostrogoth King Theodoric the Great (AD 454–526) and intended to be admired in a central place in a church, probably the Gothic Arian cathedral in Ravenna. The pages are high-quality coloured vellum inscribed in a decorative script in silver and gold ink – a degree of ostentation and decoration that suggests a royal connection.
Today the Codex Argenteus is held at Uppsala University Library. Its whereabouts after the fall of the Ostrogothic Kingdom were unknown until it emerged in the 17th century in the Benedictine Abbey of Werden in Essen; from there, via the royal library in Prague, it arrived in Sweden as a donation to the university library in 1669. The Codex was bound in silver by the royal court’s goldsmith in Stockholm.
