trained in the classical illusionist tradition, and is a competent and practiced hand rather than an outstanding talent; but surviving images from this period are so rare that his are extremely valuable for showing the style and iconography of his age. The French Orientalist Edgard Blochet (1870–1937) argued that some of the folios of the manuscript, including the pictorial series, were an interpolation no earlier than the 10th or 11th century. Since the original caption accompanying the miniatures is of the same paleographic character as the main text of the manuscript, this theory was rejected by Giuseppe Furlani and by Carlo Cecchelli in the commentary of the facsimile edition of the miniatures published in 1959. But doubts as to the original unity of the contents continued. More recently, scholars have proposed that the text of 586 was only bound up together with the miniatures in the 15th century, and that the miniatures themselves were taken from at least one other original manuscript, and come from two different campaigns of work. The history of the manuscript after it was written is vague until the 11th century when it was at Maipuc-Byblos, Lebanon. In the late 13th or early 14th century it came to Quannubin. In the late 15th or early 16th century, the manuscript was taken by the Maronite Patriarch to the Laurentian Library in Florence, where it is today. The manuscript has served during Medieval Age as register of Maronites Patriarches (Elias Kattar), Large miniatures fol. 1a Election of the Apostle Mathias by the Eleven fol. 1b Theotokos (Virgin Mary) with the infant Jesus fol. 2a Christ receives a book from two monks (dedication) / The saints Eusebius of Caesarea and Ammonius of Alexandria fol. 3b-12b The canon tables of Eusebius with smaller marginal miniatures fol. 9b Matthew and John fol. 13a Crucifixion of Christ / Three Marys at the tomb fol. 14a Ascension of Christ / Christ with four monks fol. 14b Gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost See also Syriac versions of the Bible Codex Phillipps 1388 Garima Gospels Nestorian Evangelion Depiction of Jesus References Further reading Bernabò, Massimo, ed., Il Tetravangelo di Rabbula. Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, plut. 1.56: L'illustrazione del Nuovo Testamento nella Siria del VI secolo, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008. Weitzmann, Kurt, ed., Age of spirituality : late antique and early Christian art, third to seventh century, no. 445, 1979, Metropolitan