Book cover
The content of an Evangeliar preserved in the state library in Berlin is summarized on its cover by a figural representation. It shows frontally and nearly symmetrically Christ sitting on a throne - the throne of an emperor. His feet are resting and his hands merely relieve the strictness of the composition. He is surrounded by six mounted precious stones and four medallions with the Evangelist’s symbols. These symbols, which have their origin in the four beings of the visions in the book of Ezechiel (Ez 1:1-28) and in the Apocalypse (Apc 4:1-11) and illustrate God’s glory, some Fathers of the Early Church understood as symbols of the Gospel beginnings and they assigned them to the Gospels. Hieronymus’s outline became accepted in the Latin west to which the angel belongs to the Gospel, according to St. Matthew, the lion to the Gospel according to St. Mark, the bull to the Gospel according to St. Luke and the eagle according to the Gospel of St. John. As Evangelist’s symbols, the four beings turn to Christ sitting enthroned in the middle in the book cover not - as we have learned from their biblical sources - to illustrate God’s glory, but to emphasize the unity of the Gospels as one Gospel in Christ.