The Codex Amiatinus, also called the Jarrow Codex, is widely regarded as the best-preserved manuscript of the Latin Vulgate Bible. It was produced around AD 700 in northeast England at the Benedictine monastery of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow in the Northumbrian kingdom (now South Tyneside). It was one of three enormous single-volume Bibles made there, and it is the earliest complete one-volume Latin Bible that survives (with only the León palimpsest representing an older witness in another form). It is also the oldest surviving Bible in which the books of the canon appear in what are essentially their Vulgate texts.
In 716, the manuscript was taken to Italy as a gift intended for Pope Gregory II. Its modern name comes from Monte Amiata in Tuscany, where it was later identified at the Abbey of San Salvatore. Today it is housed in Florence at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (the Laurentian Library).
Scholars designate the manuscript with the siglum A (or am) and often treat it as the most reliable surviving witness to Jerome’s Vulgate text for the New Testament and much of the Old Testament. In keeping with early Vulgate practice, it lacks the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, and Lamentations follows Jeremiah without a break. Ezra–Nehemiah appears as a single continuous book, and the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are each presented as single unified works.
Physical and Textual Features
Codex Amiatinus is a massive volume—about 49 cm (19¼ in) tall, 34 cm (13⅜ in) wide, and 18 cm (7 in) thick—weighing more than 34 kg (75 lb). It contains roughly 1,040 vellum leaves, arranged primarily in quires of four sheets. The text is written in large, regular uncial script in two columns per page, typically with 43–44 lines per column. Word spacing is minimal, making the writing appear nearly continuous.
Instead of punctuation, the text is laid out in sense-units (often described as cola et commata), which visually guide the reader through clauses and sentence structure. The manuscript’s formatting and some aspects of its presentation likely reflect influence from the Codex Grandior associated with Cassiodorus, which the Jarrow community is thought to have possessed and used as a model.
The Psalms are notable: Amiatinus presents Jerome’s Hebrew-based Psalter (his third version) rather than the older Roman Psalter or Jerome’s later Gallican Psalter that became dominant in many medieval Vulgates. Even so, the Amiatinus Psalms are often viewed as a weaker textual witness than some other manuscripts, and certain headings suggest an Irish psalter tradition as part of its background.
Although it includes limited decoration—most notably two full-page miniatures—it shows little of the distinctive “Insular” artistic style, suggesting that its imagery was copied from late antique models.
History and Later Importance
The production of the great pandect Bibles at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow is traditionally connected to Abbot Ceolfrith, with AD 692 often cited as the start of the project. The Venerable Bede may have been involved in compilation and correction, and some scholars have proposed that traces of his handwriting could be present.
Ceolfrith personally accompanied the copy later known as Codex Amiatinus in 716, but he died on the journey in Burgundy. The manuscript later appears at the Abbey of San Salvatore at Monte Amiata, where it is recorded in an 11th-century inventory, and it remained there until it was transferred to the Laurentian Library in Florence in 1786.
For a time, the codex was mistakenly believed to be an Italian production from the 6th century, but in the late 19th century scholars demonstrated its English origin and connected it to the Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Bibles mentioned by Bede. Even with this corrected dating, it remains the oldest surviving complete text of the Vulgate.
During the Counter-Reformation, the manuscript acquired major symbolic importance in debates over textual authority. It was consulted in Rome when Pope Sixtus V pursued a revised Vulgate edition, though later official Vulgate editions did not consistently adopt its readings. In modern scholarship, however, Codex Amiatinus became a cornerstone witness: it served as a primary source for the Oxford critical edition of the Vulgate New Testament and strongly influenced subsequent critical work on the Vulgate, including editions prepared by Benedictine scholars in Rome.
Today, Codex Amiatinus is preserved at the Laurentian Library under the shelfmark Amiatino 1 and remains one of the most important manuscripts for the study of the Latin Bible.
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