The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander, Tetraevangelia of Ivan Alexander, or Four Gospels of Ivan Alexander (Bulgarian: Четвероевангелие на (цар) Иван Александър, transliterated as Chetveroevangelie na (tsar) Ivan Aleksandar) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel Book, written and illustrated in 1355–1356 for Tsar Ivan Alexander of the Second Bulgarian Empire. The manuscript is regarded as one of the most important manuscripts of medieval Bulgarian culture, and has been described as "the most celebrated work of art produced in Bulgaria before it fell to the Turks in 1393".
The manuscript, now in the British Library (Add. MS 39627), contains the text of the Four Gospels illustrated with 366 miniatures and consists of 286 parchment folios, 33 by 24.3 cm in size, later paginated with pencil. The language of the text is variously described as Bulgarian, Middle Bulgarian, Slavonic, and Church Slavonic.

The book contains the four Gospels and some other texts, so is a true gospel book rather than an evangeliary, but there are markings showing which passages were to be read in the liturgy, as well as a list at the end of the book.

The gospels are very heavily illuminated by the standards of the West European Late Middle Ages, following Byzantine traditions, going back to Early Byzantine luxury manuscripts of the scriptures such as the Vienna Genesis. Most pages have small "frieze" images in a landscape format taking the width of the written page. These are interspersed in the text, with between none and three per page, the number and placement in the text depending on the story at that particular point. Other images are near-squares, with the text wrapping round them, and there are larger or whole page miniatures at a few key points.

Several scenes are shown more than once as they appear in the different gospels. Many images contain more than one scene side by side, or sometimes one above the other. The images probably follow closely a lost Greek model, perhaps of the 11th or 12th century. The miniatures are mostly very close to those in a Greek manuscript made in the 11th century in the Monastery of Stoudios, the largest in Constantinople (now in Paris as BnF, cod grec 74), and were probably very largely copied from this or another Byzantine exemplar in the same tradition.

The text of the manuscript was all written by a monk named Simeon in 1355–1356 on the orders of Ivan Alexander, probably for use in his private chapel. Simeon gives his name in the colophon on f. 275.[17] It is not certain whether Simeon also illuminated the Tetraevangelia or simply was a scribe and calligrapher, or indeed whether he devised the magic square. Probably at least three different artists worked on the miniatures, but as was usual no names are given. The handwriting of the manuscript shows definite similarity with that of the Manasses Chronicle (1344–1345), a product of the Tarnovo Literary School of the time.

After the fall of Tarnovo to the Ottomans in 1393, the manuscript was transported to Moldavia possibly by a Bulgarian fugitive, marking the last time for nearly half a millennium it would be in its native Bulgaria. It spent a number of years there and was later bought on the orders and with the resources of Prince Alexander I of Moldavia (also a "John Alexander"), which is evidenced by a red-ink marginal note on folio 5. The later fate of the manuscript until its arrival in monastery of Agiou Pavlou (St Paul) on Mount Athos is uncertain, but the document was recorded as part of the monastery's collection in the 17th century.
Inscription on f. 5.r., recording the purchase by Prince Alexander in Moldavia

The English traveller and collector Robert Curzon (later 14th Baron Zouche, 1810-1873), who visited the monastery in 1837, was given the Tetraevangelia as a present by the abbot. This was to his surprise and delight, according to his own account; Milner-Gulland describes it as "shamelessly cadged" from the abbot.[20] This probably saved the manuscript from being destroyed by the fire that burnt down the monastery library in 1905. Curzon released an inventory of his collection of manuscripts in 1849, the first time the Tetraevangelia was presented to the academic world. Direct work with the original was, however, impossible, which caused speculation, supposition and rumours related to the manuscript. His son placed his collection on permanent loan in the British Museum in 1876, and after her death, his entire collection was given to the museum in 1917 by his daughter Darea, 16th Baroness Zouche (1860–1917), which enabled more detailed examination of the book. When the British Library was created in 1973, the manuscript was transferred to the British Library.

In 2017 the manuscript has been added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register as a world heritage document.

Bulgarije - 14e eeuw - Byzantijnse manuscripten - miniaturen