Spacing and Proportions

The text looks compact and well spaced because

• The ratio of space between lines to height of the space between headline and baseline is about 5:3. Since the ascenders and descenders are short, this leaves clear space between the lines.
  

• Spacing is fairly though not completely regular, and letters are close to each other.
  

  The flourish on x overlaps adjacent letters and is used for decoration, as in line 6:

  

• Uprights are vertical:
  

• There are very few diagonals, and those that do exist start very near to the base-line:

• For aspect ratios, see previous page

Layout

• The page is left-justified, with a lavish outer margin to balance the page opening. An occasional decorated initial trails into the margin to decorative effect.

• The scribe has also attempted to justify the page to the right. He does this by projecting the head- and cross-strokes of t and e, as in lines 12 and 14:

  In line 4 he appears to have left a large gap between illi and s, which is actually part of the same word, in order to space the line properly.

• At the end of lines 6, 8, and 15 he breaks a word in half without using a hyphen.

• At the bottom of the page he has turned the m of quoniam on its side in order to justify his line.

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Punctuation and Verse Layout

This is a Gospel Book, for display and use in church services. However, unlike the Vespasian Psalter it is not arranged per cola et commata. It is a narrative, though our sense that it is therefore arranged as prose must be tempered by the fact that the Gospel was often sung as part of the liturgy.

• Instead it is divided into larger portions corresponding roughly to two or three verses apiece, marked by dramatic illuminated initials, sometimes an entire short word, sometimes merely the first two of three letters of a phrase. The display letters decrease in size as the word goes on: a familiar feature of Insular manuscript 'capitals'.

  	Verse 41: Adhuc autem (line 4).
  	Verse 44: Et dixit (line 10).
  	Verse 45: Tunc aperuit (line15).

• There are 'full stops' at mid-line height at the end of each of these sections, before the beginning of the next section.

  Line 4	Line 9	Line 14

  Other marks which look like stops are in fact the pricks made by the scribe before ruling his page.

• Internally, smaller syntactical segments are marked by infilling the letters with coloured paint. On this page each of these words is Et, 'And'. These mark syntactic breaks, even if they are sometimes rather close together. See e.g. line 14:

  Et profetis Et psalmis

  and in the prophets, and in the psalms ...

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Word division

• Words are grouped in phrases, not divided individually. This appears to be a guide to reading out loud. However, sometimes it may be for artistic effect: the scribe is attempting to produce a well-justified layout.

  Et dixit ad eos / haec sunt uerba mea / quae locutus sum / ad uos / cum · adhuc · es- sem / uobiscum / quoniam · necesse · est

  And he said to them: / These are the [lit. my] words / which I spoke / to you, / while · I was · yet / with you, / that / [all things] must · needs

  The spacing of the last three words, which are separated in a deceptively modern way, seems due to aesthetic rather than rhetorical considerations. As noted before, the scribe splits words (see es-sem divided between the end of the second line and the beginning of the third line) without indicating that he has done so.

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  © MEG TWYCROSS 1999