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Miroslav Gospel – manuscript from 1180

Inscribed 2005

What is it

An illuminated manuscript from around AD 1180 and the product of a fusion of styles from West and East.

Why was it inscribed

The Miroslav Gospel is a unique fusion of styles and iconography from Italy and Byzantium. Its text combines the Serbian script with the style of miniature illustrations, ornamentation and illumination from the West.

Where is it

National Museum, Belgrade, Serbia

The Miroslav Gospel was made around 1180, according to an inscription in the book itself, for Prince Miroslav of Hum (an area equating roughly to present-day Herzegovina), and is assumed to have been used in the church of St Peter in Bijelo Polje. It is the oldest surviving Serbian illuminated manuscript.

The manuscript has 181 sheets of parchment and is an evangelistary – that is, a book containing passages from the Gospels by the four evangelists, and from which priests read in church services. The text is arranged according to the reading plan for the liturgical or church year and is possibly modelled on the type of evangelistary that was used in Hagia Sophia, seat of the patriarch of Constantinople and the central church of the Orthodox Catholic Church. It is illustrated with 296 coloured miniatures decorated with gold; a monk named Gligorije is mentioned in the book as the illuminator of the miniatures.

The Gospel is written in the old Slavic language and proved highly influential in the development of the Cyrillic alphabet whose use spread across the Central and Eastern Balkans in the medieval period.

Serbia’s geographic position meant the country was well placed to absorb cultural influences from both East and West, and this too is evident in the Gospel, which used a radical new blend of artistic and decorative styles from Byzantium and Italy. Elaborate initial letters were the main decorative devices in Eastern manuscripts, and miniature illustrations covering the page were rare. However, this style of miniature illustration painting was the preferred method of decoration in the scriptoria of Central Italy. The Miroslav Gospel used both, and this new fusion influenced the development of manuscript illumination in the region into the 15th century.

Art historians have traced mutual Eastern and Western influences in the ornamentation, with Byzantine and Roman influences alongside techniques from Syrian, Bithynian, Coptic and other Western styles.

By the mid-19th century the Gospel was in the library of Hilandar, the Serbian monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. Unusually, a page of the book (folio 166) was taken by a visiting Russian churchman: he took it to St. Petersburg where it is still kept in the National Library of Russia. The rest of the Gospel was given to the Serbian king some years later and its fate was at times precarious during the regional upheavals of the 20th century. After the Second World War it was transferred into the keeping of the Arts Museum, now the National Museum in Belgrade.