The Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated manuscript gospel book probably produced around the years 715–720 in the monastery at Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, which is now in the British Library in London. The manuscript is one of the finest works in the unique style of Hiberno-Saxon or Insular art, combining Mediterranean, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic elements.
Tables games are a class of board game that includes backgammon and which are played on a tables board, typically with two rows of 12 vertical markings called points. Players roll dice to determine the movement of pieces. Tables games are among the oldest known board games, and many different varieties are played throughout the world. They are called 'tables' games because the boards consist of four quadrants or 'tables'. The vast majority are race games, the tables board representing a linear race track with start and finish points, the aim being to be first to the finish line, but the characteristic features that distinguish tables games from other race games are that they are two-player games using a large number of pieces, usually fifteen per player.
Mak-yek is a two-player abstract strategy board game played in Thailand and Myanmar. Players move their pieces as in the rook in Chess and attempt to capture their opponent's pieces through custodian and intervention capture. The game may have been first described in literature by Captain James Low a writing contributor in the 1839 work Asiatic Researches; or, Transactions of the Society, Instituted in Bengal, For Inquiring into The History, The Antiquities, The Arts and Sciences, and Literature of Asian, Second Part of the Twentieth Volume in which he wrote chapter X On Siamese Literature and documented the game as Maak yék. Another early description of the game is by H.J.R. Murray in his 1913 work A History of Chess, and the game was written as Maak-yek.
The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript and Celtic Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created in a Columban monastery in either Ireland or Scotland, and may have had contributions from various Columban institutions from each of these areas. It is believed to have been created c. 800 AD. The text of the Gospels is largely drawn from the Vulgate, although it also includes several passages drawn from the earlier versions of the Bible known as the Vetus Latina. It is regarded as a masterwork of Western calligraphy and the pinnacle of Insular illumination. The manuscript takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, County Meath, which was its home for centuries.
Tafl games are a family of ancient Northern European strategy board games played on a checkered or latticed gameboard with two armies of uneven numbers. Most probably they are based upon the Roman game Ludus latrunculorum. Names of different variants of Tafl include Hnefatafl, Tablut, Tawlbwrdd, Brandubh, Ard Rí, and Alea Evangelii. Games in the tafl family were played in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Britain, Ireland, and Sápmi. Tafl gaming was eventually supplanted by chess in the 12th century, but the tafl variant of the Sámi people, tablut, was in play until at least the 18th century. The rules for tablut were written down by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in 1732, and these were translated from Latin to English in 1811. All modern tafl games are based on the 1811 translation, which had many errors. New rules were added to amend the issues resulting from these errors, leading to the creation of a modern family of tafl games. In addition, tablut is now also played in accordance with its original rules, which have been retranslated.
Many games can be played with Go equipment: a supply of white and black stones and a board with 19×19 intersections, other than Go and many more can be played with minor modification.
Fox games are a category of asymmetric board games for two players, where one player is the fox and tries to eat the geese / sheep, and the opposing player directs the geese/sheep and attempts to trap the fox, or reach a destination on the board. In another variant, Fox and Hounds, the fox merely tries to evade the hounds. There are several versions known:
Fidchell or gwyddbwyll was a board game popular among the ancient Celts. Fidchell was played between two people who moved an equal number of pieces across a board; the board shared its name with the game played upon it.
British Library, Add MS 11848 is an illuminated Carolingian Latin Gospel Book produced at Tours. It contains the Vulgate translation of the four Gospels written on vellum in Carolingian minuscule with Square and Rustic Capitals and Uncials as display scripts. The manuscript has 219 extant folios which measure approximately 330 by 230 mm. The text is written in area of about 205 by 127 mm. In addition to the text of the Gospels, the manuscript contains the letter of St. Jerome to Pope Damasus and of Eusebius of Caesarea to Carpian, along with the Eusebian canon tables. There are prologues and capitula lists before each Gospel. A table of readings for the year was added, probably between 1675 and 1749, to the end of the volume. This is followed by a list of capitula incipits and a word grid which were added in the Carolingian period.
The Otho-Corpus Gospels is a badly damaged and fragmentary 8th century illuminated manuscript. It was part of the Cotton library and was mostly burnt in the 1731 fire at Ashburnham House. The manuscript now survives as charred fragments in the British Library. Thirty six pages of the manuscript were not in the Cotton collection and survived the fire. They are now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Eusebian canons, Eusebian sections or Eusebian apparatus, also known as Ammonian sections, are the system of dividing the four Gospels used between late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The divisions into chapters and verses used in modern texts date only from the 13th and 16th centuries, respectively. The sections are indicated in the margin of nearly all Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Bible, and usually summarized in canon tables at the start of the Gospels. There are about 1165 sections: 355 for Matthew, 235 for Mark, 343 for Luke, and 232 for John; the numbers, however, vary slightly in different manuscripts.
The Gospels of Máel Brigte is an illuminated Gospel Book, with glosses.
Minuscule 1424, δ 30 is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, written on 337 parchment leaves. It has been dated paleographically to the 9th or 10th century).
Minuscule 157, ε 207, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament Gospels, on vellum. According to the colophon it is dated to the year 1122. Formerly the date was wrongly deciphered as 1128. It has complex contents and full marginalia.
Minuscule 439, Scrivener 439, ε 240, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. It is dated by a colophon to the year 1159. The marginal apparatus is complete. The text represents the Byzantine tradition.
Minuscule 528, ε 147, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on a parchment. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 11th century. Scrivener labelled it by number 483.
Codex Marshall Or. 6, is a Bohairic, uncial manuscript of the New Testament, on a paper. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 16th century.
Minuscule 714, ε1392, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 13th century. The manuscript is lacunose. Scrivener labelled it as 563e.
The Fifty Bibles of Constantine were Bibles in the original Greek language commissioned in 331 by Constantine I and prepared by Eusebius of Caesarea. They were made for the use of the Bishop of Constantinople in the growing number of churches in that very new city. Eusebius quoted the letter of commission in his Life of Constantine, and it is the only surviving source from which we know of the existence of the Bibles.
Israel the Grammarian was one of the leading European scholars of the mid-tenth century. In the 930s, he was at the court of King Æthelstan of England (r. 924–39). After Æthelstan's death, Israel successfully sought the patronage of Archbishop Rotbert of Trier and became tutor to Bruno, later the Archbishop of Cologne. In the late 940s Israel is recorded as a bishop, and at the end of his life he was a monk at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Maximin in Trier.
