Gospel Book

Where a Missal or lectionary serves a Catholic or Orthodox priest as a practical text to read from during the liturgy, the Gospel Book, called the Evangeliary in Western usage or Evangelistarion in Greek Orthodox practice, occupies a different role: it is handled, displayed and venerated as an object of reverence independent of whether it is being read from at that moment. In the Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy, the Gospel Book is carried in the Little Entrance procession, held aloft by the deacon or priest as it passes through the congregation, and kissed by the clergy before and after the Gospel reading; in many parishes it rests permanently on the altar between services, in the position of greatest honor, functioning almost as an icon of Christ the Word alongside painted icons of Christ the person. Catholic practice retains a related but generally less elaborate custom, incensing and kissing the Book of the Gospels at a solemn Mass and processing it to the ambo for the reading.

This treatment sets the Gospel Book apart functionally from a Missal, Breviary or ordinary Bible used chiefly to be read from, and places it instead alongside other scripture objects venerated as much for what they represent as for their textual content, comparable in that specific respect, though not in doctrine or history, to the Torah scroll's status in Jewish worship or an illuminated Quran manuscript's status in some Islamic devotional contexts, three traditions independently arriving at the practice of treating a physical scripture object as worthy of ceremonial handling distinct from private reading.

Because the Gospel Book was designed to be seen, carried and kissed rather than merely read privately, its physical production historically received investment ordinary reading texts did not. Byzantine and medieval Western scriptoria produced Gospel Books with lavish illumination, gold leaf, purple-dyed parchment for the most prestigious commissions, and jeweled metal covers worked by goldsmiths, some of which survive as treasury pieces independent of the manuscript pages they once protected; the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells, both early medieval insular Gospel manuscripts, remain among the most studied objects of medieval Christian art precisely because of this tradition of ceremonial rather than purely functional book production.

The custom continues in modern liturgical practice in reduced form: contemporary Gospel Books used in Orthodox and Catholic parishes are typically bound with metal covers bearing an image of Christ or the four evangelist symbols, distinguishing them visually on the altar from an ordinary printed Bible even where the interior text is a standard modern translation rather than a hand-copied manuscript. Eastern Orthodox usage in particular preserves the object's older ceremonial weight: some parishes maintain a Gospel Book reserved solely for liturgical display and procession, kept separate from any copy used for study, a practical division that keeps the object's function as a venerated scripture object distinct from its function as a text to be read, exactly the distinction that separates this category from the liturgical books already catalogued for Christianity.