page_title: St Augustine Gospels
section_title: Passion scenes
hierarchical_section_title: St Augustine Gospels / Miniatures / Passion scenes
caption_attribution_description: English: Folio 125r of the St. Augustine Gospels (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 286), Scenes from the Passion.
context_page_description: The St Augustine Gospels is an illuminated Gospel Book which dates from the 6th century. It was made in Italy and has been in England since fairly soon after its creation; by the 16th century it had probably already been at Canterbury for almost a thousand years. It has 265 leaves measuring about 252 x 196 mm, and is not entirely complete, in particular missing pages with miniatures.
  This manuscript is the oldest surviving illustrated Latin Gospel Book, and one of the oldest European books in existence. Although the only surviving illuminations are two full-page miniatures, these are of great significance in art history as so few comparable images have survived.
  The Church of England calls the book the Canterbury Gospels, though to scholars this name usually refers to another book, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon gospel book written at Canterbury, now with one portion in the British Library as Royal MS I. E. VI, and another in the Library of Canterbury Cathedral.
context_section_description: A full page miniature on folio 125r prior to Luke contains twelve narrative scenes from the Life of Christ, all from the Passion except the Raising of Lazarus. This was included because, following John 11.46 ff. it was considered the immediate cause of the Sanhedrin's decision to move against Christ. As in the few other surviving cycles of the Life from the 6th century, the Crucifixion itself is not shown, the sequence ending with Christ carrying the Cross. However at least two further such pages once existed, at the start of other Gospels. Luke is the third gospel, so a panel preceding the Gospel of John might well have completed the Passion and Resurrection story, and two others covered the earlier life of Christ. The scenes around Luke's portrait notably avoid the major episodes in Christ's life such as his Nativity, Baptism and Temptation, probably reserving these scenes for other grid pages.
  Compared to other cycles of the time, such as that in mosaic at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, the Passion scenes show an emphasis on the suffering of Christ that was probably influenced by the art of the Eastern Empire and shows the direction Western depictions were to follow in subsequent centuries.
  From top left the twelve scenes shown, some of which have captions, are:
  Christ's entry into Jerusalem
  Last Supper, the earliest Western image to show the moment of the first Eucharist, rather than the betrayal of Judas.
  Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane
  Raising of Lazarus
  Washing of feet
  Betrayal of Christ
  Arrest of Jesus
  Sanhedrin Trial of Jesus
  Mocking of Christ
  Pontius Pilate washes his hands
  Christ led from Pilate,
  Simon of Cyrene helps Christ carrying the Cross
  In contrast to the scenes around the portrait, all of these scenes except Christ led from Pilate were to remain very common in large narrative cycles throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. The difficulty of identifying many of the episodes of the Works from Luke demonstrates one of the reasons why scenes from the period of Christ's ministry became increasingly less common in medieval art. Another reason for this was the lack of feast-days celebrating them. The two scenes at the top of the central column on the Passion page, in contrast, feature in the gospel reading set for Maundy Thursday, and most of the scenes on this page are easily identified. The Raising of Lazarus, with the body in its white winding-cloth, was one miracle that was easily recognised in images, and remained in the usual repertoire of artists. The Hand of God in the Agony in the Garden is the earliest surviving example of the motif in this scene.
caption: Folio 125r contains 12 scenes from the Passion
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