"In the entire corpus of Slavic literature one may hardly find a manuscript with a more eventful history than the famous Reims Gospel. The manuscript consists of two parts: the Cyrillic section (REcyr) and the Glagolitic section (REgl). The time and place of REcyr’s creation is unknown. Some consider it an East Slavic manuscript of the first half of the eleventh century; others, a Serbian manuscript of the second half of the twelfth century. REgl follows the Catholic rite. From its colophon we learn that (a) this Glagolitic part was written in 1395; (b) it contains readings for solemn masses, during which the abbot of the monastery served in episcopal attire; (c) that the Cyrillic section was, the colophon states, written in Saint Procopius of Sazava’s own hand: Procopius of Sazava died on March 25, 1053 and was, and is, one of the most revered Czech saints, a great champion of the liturgy in Slavonic, at least according to his vitae; and finally, (d) that the manuscript had been donated to the (unnamed) monastery by its founder, Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, for the greater glory of the monastery and in honor of Sts. Jerome and Procopius.

Despite the fact that the monastery in question is not named in the colophon, the mention of Charles IV as its founder, as well as of St. Jerome and St. Procopius as its patron saints, point to this text as having been copied in the Prague Emmaus Benedictine Monastery, founded in 1347 by Charles IV. The monastery was dedicated, among others, to Sts. Jerome and Procopius, its monks worshipped in Slavonic using Glagolitic liturgical texts, and its Abbot served in episcopal attire, a privilege granted to the monastery’s abbots on February 3, 1350 by Pope Clement VI. The scholarly literature on the Reims Gospel is enormous and full of inferences which are, very often, speculative and questionable, occasionally reliable and plausible, and inevitably intriguing. Thus we read in various scholarly accounts suggestions that REcyr was copied in Kiev for Princess Anna Yaroslavna (c. 1030-1075), later the queen consort of France as the widow of Henry I of France and regent for her son Philip I; or that the manuscript was produced in the court of Serbian Despota Helen for St. Louis IX; or that the manuscript was written by Saint Procopius of Sazava, or even by Saint Methodius, Apostle to the Slavs, himself; that it was given by Anna Yaroslavna, queen of France, to Roger, Bishop of Châlons; or that it was delivered to France by crusaders who plundered Constantinople in 1204; or that it was donated to the Reims Cathedral by Cardinal Charles of Lorraine; that it was used in the coronation of French kings, from Henry III to Louis XVI; that it was none other than Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who, while visiting Reims on June 22, 1717, determined the Slavonic origin of the manuscript; or that it was his vice-chancellor Count Shafirov; or the Russian ambassador Prince Kurakin in 1726, etc., etc.

The book (263 pp.) puts aside this mass of divergent secondary literature and offers a completely new perspective on the Glagolitic part of the manuscript"--