For elegance and beauty, the Constantinopolitan scribes set standards rarely surpassed. The Gospel lectionary was among the books that attracted the most enthusiastic attention of scribes, illuminators, and their patrons. As an important liturgical item, the lectionary was often exquisitely decorated. The subject of this study, the lectionary in the Pierpont Morgan Library, is unusual even among such luxury manuscripts because its scribe laboriously copied every page of text in the shape of a cross. It is one of just three such manuscripts made in Constantinople around the middle of...