New Testament

This Greek-language New Testament, containing the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of Saint Paul, was made in the Byzantine monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Istanbul, then known as Constantinople. A scribe's inscription near the end of the manuscript declares: "This book was finished by the grace of Christ in the year 6641 [1133 A.D.]...by the hand of the sinner Theoktistos." Theoktistos wrote most of the manuscript's text. An anonymous scribe also worked on the manuscript, copying out the less important parts of the text, and an unnamed illuminator produced the manuscript's painted decoration. In the lavishly illuminated codex, ornamented canon tables open the book, portraits of each of the four evangelists open their Gospels, and decorative headpieces open the major sections of the text. All of the manuscript's author portraits are painted on separate leaves of parchment, which suggests that the scribes and the illuminator did not work together closely.