Canones: the art of harmony : the canon tables of the four gospels The so called Canon Tables of the Christian Gospels are an absolutely remarkable feature of the early late antique and medieval Christian manuscript cultures of East and West the invention of which is commonly attributed to Eusebius and dated to first decades of the fourth century AD. Intended to host a technical device for structuring organizing and navigating the Four Gospels united in a single codex and in doing so building upon and bringing to completion previous endeavours the Canon Tables were apparently from the beginning a highly complex combination of text numbers and images that became an integral and fixed part of all the manuscripts containing the Four Gospels as Sacred Scripture of the Christians and can be seen as exemplary for the formation development and spreading of a specific Christian manuscript culture across East and West AD 300 and 800. In the footsteps of Carl Nordenfalks masterly publication of 1938 and few following contributions this book offers an updated overview on the topic of Canon Tables in a comparative perspective and with a precise look at their context of origin their visual appearance their meaning function and their usage in different times domains and cultures Frontmatter Contents Canones: The Art of Harmony Carl Nordenfalk Do the Eusebian Canon Tables Represent the Closure or the Opening of the Biblical Text Considering the Case of Codex Fuldensis Transmission and Transformation of the Eusebian Gospel Apparatus in Greek Medieval Manuscripts The Eusebian Apparatus in Irish Pocket Gospel Books: Absence Presence and Addition An Ethiopian Miniature of the Tempietto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Its Relatives and Symbolism Beyond Eusebius: Prefatory Images and the Early Book Eusebian Reading and Early Medieval Gospel Illumination A Tale of Two Tables: Echoes of the Past in the Canons of the Sainte Croix Gospels Saxum vivum and lapides viventes: Animated Stone in Medieval Book Illumination Shifting Frames: The Mutable Iconography of Canon Tables List of Contributors Index of Manuscripts