New York, Morgan Library and Museum, M499 + Chicago, University of Chicago Joseph Regenstein Library, 125

Images: Morgan Library; Regenstein Library

Other shelfmark(s): none

Physical description: roll, vellum, 3337 × 93 mm.; includes 21 miniatures

Language(s): recto in Greek, verso in Arabic

Date: 14th cent.; Arabic dated 1363

Provenance: Istanbul or Trabzon

Contents:

Epistles of Christ and Abgar

Additional Contents: portions of Mark, Luke, and Matthew; Psalms 86, 91, and 35, verses in praise of various martyrs from the collection of Christopher of Mitylene. Arabic text on reverse is on Cyprian the Magician.

Studies:

Karaulashvili, Irma. “The Abgar Legend Illustrated: The Interrelationship of the Narrative Cycles and Iconography in the Byzantine, Georgian, and Latin Traditions.” Pages 220–43 in Interactions: Artistic Interchange between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period. Edited by Colum Hourihane. Princeton: Department of Art & Archaeology, 2007 (esp. 236–38, includes images).

Nersessian, Sirarpie der. “La légende d’Abgar d’après un rouleau illustré de la bibliothèque Pierpont Morgan à New York.” Bulletin de l’Institut Archéologique Bulgare 9 (1935): 98–106.

Peers, Glenn, with Barbara Roggema. Orthodox Magic in Trebizond and Beyond: A Fourteenth-Century Greco-Arabic Amulet Roll. Seyssel: La Pomme d’or, 2018.

Peers, Glenn A. “Magic, the Mandylion, and the Letter of Abgar on a Greco-Arabic Amulet Roll in New York and Chicago.” Pages 163–74 in Intorno al Sacro Volto. Genova, Bizansio e il Mediterraneo (secoli XI–XIV). Edited by Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, Colette Dufour Bozzo, and Gerhard Wolf. Venice: Marsilio, 2007.

__________. “Art and Identity in an Amulet Roll from Fourteenth-Century Trebizond.” Church History and religious Culture 89.1–3 (2009): 153–78 (includes several images).

Other online databases: Pierpont Morgan Library; Pinakes (MML M499; Chicago 125)

Entry created by Tony Burke, York University ([email protected]), 16 December 2020.