Cambridge as part of the collection donated by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1575, some decades after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was traditionally used for the swearing of the oath in the enthronements of new Archbishops of Canterbury, and the tradition has been restored since 1945; the book is taken to Canterbury Cathedral by the librarian of Corpus for each ceremony. The Augustine Gospels have also been taken to Canterbury for other major occasions: the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1982, and the celebrations in 1997 for the 1,400th anniversary of the Gregorian mission. The manuscript was rebound at the British Museum in 1948–49 with plain oak boards and a spine of cream alum-tawed goatskin. Text The manuscript is "more or less the oldest substantially complete copy" of Jerome's translation of the Gospels. His late-fourth century Vulgate gradually replaced the earlier Vetus Latina ("Old Latin") text used by Christians in the Roman Empire. A 1933 analysis of the St Augustine Gospels by Hermann Glunz documented around 700 variants from the standard Vulgate: most are minor differences of spelling or word order, but in some cases the scribe chooses readings from the Vetus Latina. This supports the St Augustine connection, as Gregory the Great, the supposed donor, wrote in his Moralia that he was using the more fluent Vulgate, except for certain passages where he found the Old Latin more suitable, and his Forty Homilies on the Gospels opts for the older translation in the same places as the St Augustine Gospels. Miniatures The manuscript once contained evangelist portraits for all four Evangelists, preceding their gospel, a usual feature of illuminated Gospel books, and at least three further pages of narrative scenes, one following each portrait page. Only the two pages preceding Luke have survived. However the surviving total of twenty-four small scenes from the Life of Christ are very rare survivals and of great interest in the history of Christian iconography, especially as they come from the old Western Empire – the only comparable narrative Gospel cycles from manuscripts in the period are Greek, notably the Rossano Gospels, and Sinope Gospels, or the Syriac Rabbula Gospels. The equivalent Old Testament cycles are more varied however, including the Greek Vienna Genesis and Cotton Genesis, the Latin Ashburnham Pentateuch, the Quedlinburg Itala fragment, and some others. The miniatures have moved further from classical style than those in