Manuscripts comprising Greek Psalter and New Testament divided into several volumes are well known. These are the three late antique pandects (gr. πανδέκτης), namely Codices Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, and Sinaiticus. For almost half a millennium, full Bibles went then out of fashion. It was not until the beginning of the tenth century that a Bible manuscript was produced again that combined the Old and New Testaments, namely the so-called Leo Bible (Ra 55).[1] This richly illustrated copy of the Bible, which offers the biblical text in two columns, written in minuscule script, originally consisted of two volumes, with only the first volume surviving, which covers Genesis 1 to Ode 14. The second volume, which comprised the remaining books of the Old Testament and the New Testament, is unfortunately lost. Our next example appears more than three hundred years later, at the end of the thirteenth century, the so-called Bible of Vienna (Ra 130). Like so many Viennese manuscripts, it was brought to Vienna from Constantinople via Venice by Augerius of Busbeck (1522–1592), who was the Habsburg monarchy’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1554–1562.[2] This Bible of Vienna is quite exceptional. Only a century later there is evidence of another full Bible. It is a complete Bible on paper in quarto format from the fourteenth century in three volumes. It was donated to the Carmelite monastery of S. Paolo in Ferrara in 1438 by Cardinal Bessarion (1403–1472) and is known as the Ferrara Bible (Ra 106). As Martin Karrer has recently shown, it is connected with the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438/39).[3] Two other pandects were also in the possession of the famous Cardinal: Ra 68 and Ra 122, both made in the fifteenth century. All in all, the list of full Bibles containing the Greek Psalter is rather short:

List of Pandects including the Psalter

For the sake of completeness, we should also mention Ra 1097, a Psalter (Psalmi cum Odis, s. XII), to which belong the Gospel remains found in Cod. Paris. suppl. gr. 1355, ff. 1–6 [GA 2391].[4]

Also, the combination of Greek Psalter and New Testament in one volume is not a very common phenomenon, given the large number of Psalter manuscripts.[5] Nevertheless, over a dozen Middle Byzantine minuscule manuscripts are known, most of which have miniatures and feature this combination.[6] In the earliest examples from the eleventh century, the New Testament follows the Psalter (Ra 1031, dated to 1084, Ra 1226, and Ra 1429). As a rule, however, the Psalter (Psalmi cum Odis) follows the New Testament or parts of it in these manuscripts.[7] Such codices are mainly from the twelfth century. Seven of them, all from the (late) twelfth century, are written in the so-called ‘epsilon style’, which is usually associated with Cyprus or Palestine (Ra 283; Ra 1011; Ra 1025; Ra 1063; Ra 1087; Ra 1546; Ra 1716).[8] These codices can be divided into two groups according to their size: On the one hand, there is a smaller format to which Ra 283 and Ra 1087 (ca. 19 × 13 cm) as well as Ra 1025 and Ra 1546 (both cropped by 1–2 cm) belong. On the other hand, there is a larger format to which Ra 1011 and Ra 1063 (ca. 21 × 16 cm) as well as Ra 1716 (22 × 17 cm) can be assigned.

List of Psalter MSS with New Testament