ABSTRACT

The manuscript of the four Gospels commonly known in English scholarship concerning Carolingian art as the Vienna Coronation Gospels, is officially Die Krnungs-Evangeliar der deutschen Reichsinsignien, and has been preserved since 1801 among the imperial regalia in the Weltliche Schatzkammer der Hofburg in Vienna. In the scholarship of the last half-century, the Vienna Coronation Gospels has continued to be in exalted company, albeit of a different kind, a different sort of enshrinement. The gist is that the Vienna Coronation Gospels was made in the late eighth or early ninth century, the date often given as c. 800, at and for the court of Charlemagne. As many scholars have recently discussed, we have four eleventh-century sources for Otto III opening the tomb of Charlemagne in 1000. The best and best-known and earliest source for the burial of Charlemagne is in Einhard's Vita Karoli.