Layout: 30 lines Script: Detached Greek minuscules in red and brown ink. Headings in red. Titles in majuscules. Decoration: Five ornamental headpieces in gold and colors at the beginning of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts. Initials in colors in the shape of animals and grotesques. Decoration: The Eusebian Canons are arranged under an arched framework in blue, and are divided by columns in blue. The headpiece for Luke is badly stained and damaged. Binding: Modern crimson velvet, stamped and lettered in gold. Brown morocco case. Two blank parchment fly-leaves. Colophon, translated, reads: "And the writer [was] the humble Theodore Hagiopetrites in the year 6803." Provenance: Owned by Caesar de Missy until 1824(?), the Duke of Sussex until 1844, Payne and Foss, and William Pickering, in whose possession it was last seen by Scrivener in 1845. After 1845 the manuscript was persistently reported lost and only reappeared at the auction of the library of Lord Vernon in 1918. Provenance: With the armorial bookplate of Lord Vernon ("Vernon semper viret") with penciled note "Cabinet 1b." Purchased by Maggs Brothers for Lathrop C. Harper, acting on behalf of Alfred Clark Chapin. Vernon sale, Sotheby's, June 10, 1918, lot 371. The ornamentation in this codex is characteristic of manuscripts written and illuminated on Mt. Athos, and the Monastery of Pantocratoros, Mt. Athos, has in its library a manuscript of the Four Gospels written by the same scribe, dated 1301. The four-lobed or quatrefoil ornament which contains the titles of the text in majuscules is frequently evident in manuscript codices from the same date (e.g. Codex 11, f.2r, Protaton, Mt. Athos, 12th century).
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