The expression, "give to thy Christ," is an allusion to the Hebrew usage of calling the king the "anointed" or the "Christ."
Besides the interest possessed by this MS. as a monument of the art of its own time, it has a special value resting in the fact that its illuminations were copied from the famous Emmeram Golden Gospels of Charles the Bald, written by Linthard and Berenger, and sent as a present to Regensburg. Another illumination in it, representing the enthronement of the Emperor, is extremely interesting as showing how the later artist renders the work of the earlier one. The general composition is precisely the same, the lower figures in the same attitudes and bearing the same insignia. But in the details of costume, and in the significant position of the Emperor, there are alterations. In the miniature of the Emmeram Gospels the two angels above are simply winged messengers of the usual biblical type; in the Missal they are cloaked and crowned and bear horns in their hands. In the older MS. the two crowned figures with horns on either side wear simple mural crowns; in the later one they are regal like those of the Emperor. The details also of the canopies are different. But the remarkable difference is that while Charles the Bald is beardless and bears nothing in his hands, merely sitting as if addressing an assembly, Henry II. holds in his right hand a sceptre and in his left an orb and cross. Here is a distinctly new feature with a meaning. Here are the symbols of authority in the Emperor's own hands, and not merely in those of his attendants.[27] These two MSS. are worthy of careful study.
In another Missal in the library at Bamberg is a miniature of the Emperor presenting the book to the Virgin. In the great Evangeliary presented by the Emperor Henry II. to the Cathedral of Bamberg there is a grand picture of the Emperor and his consort the famous saint Cunegunda being crowned by Christ, with SS. Peter and Paul standing at the sides. Here also, as in the Carolingian MS. already mentioned, are the nations bringing tribute, but not in the same order. Here Germany stands upright between two figures of Gaul and Rome, while six others appear simply as busts (Munich, Cimel. 60. 4456).