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The
London Canon Tables are two folios from a Byzantine manuscript of the 6th or 7th century, showing the typical arcaded frame.
Canon table from the
Book of Kells; the tables in the book were effectively unusable, as they were over-condensed and the corresponding sections were not marked in the main text. This is either because it is unfinished, or because it was a display book not meant for study.
Eusebian canons or
Eusebian sections, 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 thirteenth and sixteenth 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 (see below). 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.
Until the nineteenth century it was mostly believed that these divisions were devised by
Ammonius of Alexandria, at the beginning of the third century (
c. 220), in connection with a
Harmony of the Gospels, now lost, which he composed. It was traditionally believed that he divided the four Gospels into small numbered sections, which were similar in content where the narratives are parallel. He then wrote the sections of the three last Gospels, or simply the section numbers with the name of the respective
evangelist, in parallel columns opposite the corresponding sections of the Gospel of Matthew, which he had chosen as the basis of his Harmony. Now it is believed that the work of Ammonius was restricted to what
Eusebius of Caesarea (265-340) states concerning it in his letter to
Carpianus, namely, that he placed the parallel passages of the last three Gospels alongside the text of Matthew, and the sections traditionally credited to Ammonius are now ascribed to Eusebius, who was always credited with the final form of the tables.
The
Harmony of Ammonius suggested to Eusebius, as he himself tells us in his letter, the idea of drawing up ten tables (
kanones) in which the sections in question were so classified as to show at a glance where each Gospel agreed with or differed from the others. In the first nine tables he placed in parallel columns the numbers of the sections common to the four, or three, or two, evangelists; namely: (1) Matt., Mark, Luke, John; (2) Matt., Mark, Luke; (3) Matt., Luke, John; (4) Matt., Mark, John; (5) Matt., Luke; (6) Matt., Mark; (7) Matt., John; (8) Luke, Mark; (9) Luke, John. In the tenth he noted successively the sections special to each evangelist.
The usefulness of these tables for the purpose of reference and comparison soon brought them into common use, and from the fifth century the Ammonian sections, with references to the Eusebian tables, were indicated in the margin of the manuscripts. Opposite each section was written its number, and underneath this the number of the Eusebian table to be consulted in order to find the parallel texts or text; a reference to the tenth table would of course show that this section was proper to that evangelist. These marginal notes are reproduced in several editions of
Tischendorf's New Testament.
Eusebius's explanatory letter to Carpianus was also very often reproduced before the tables.
The tables themselves were usually placed at the start of a
Gospel Book, and in
illuminated copies were placed in round-headed arcade-like frames of which the general form remained remarkably consistent through to the
Romanesque period. This form was derived from
Late Antique book-painting frames like those in the
Chronography of 354. In many examples the tables are the only decoration in the whole book, perhaps other than some initials. In particular, canon tables, with
Evangelist portraits, are very important for the study of the development of manuscript painting in the earliest part of the
Early Medieval period, where very few manuscripts survive, and even the most decorated of those have fewer pages illuminated than was the case late.