page_title: Gundohinus Gospels
section_title: Decorated Initials
hierarchical_section_title: Gundohinus Gospels / Decorated Initials
caption_attribution_description: Initiale E. F° 175v. Autun, Bibliothèque Municipale. Ms 3.
context_page_description: The Gundohinus Gospels is an illuminated Gospel Book of 754–755 named after its scribe Gundohinus. It contains one of the earliest figures in a Frankish manuscript and is now in the town library in Autun. It is often held as an example of the new Frankish-papal alliance's opposition to Byzantine iconoclasm.
  Its colophon on folio 186 gives Gundohinus' name and states he was working at a scriptorium in Vosevio or Vosevium. It also shows it was completed in the third year of Pepin the Short for Fausta and Fuculphus.
  The location of Vosevio Abbey has never been decisively proven. Some identify it with Luxeuil Abbey, previously known as Vosges or Vosego. Others believe it was near Laon and that the monastery of saint Mary and saint John was a former monastery in Laon founded around 650 according to another text by one Salberga, sister of a Gundohinus and a Fuculph. Others locate it in Burgundy near Autun.
  Gundohinus was neither a trained artist nor accomplished in the writing of a formal uncial script – he labels himself "inexpert" – the miniatures are derived from an early Christian model.
context_section_description: Throughout the Gundohinus Gospels, there are a number of decorated initials that appear either as capital letters or as majuscule script, and are largely composed of animals or beast-like creatures that are used to create the lines or curvature of the letter being illustrated. One example of this style (shown to the left) is through the use of a bird to indicate the side of the letter "C". It is thought that this style has its origination with Roman scriptoria and can be seen in other 8th-Century Merovingian manuscripts.
caption: Example of decorated script from Gundohinus Gospels
exif: {}