The great Ottonian school of manuscript painting on the Monastic island of Reichenau in Lake Constance, which houses a Benedictine scriptorium and artists' workshop that has a claim to having been the largest and artistically most influential in Europe during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, produces another masterful illumination, the lavishly illustrated Pericopes of Henry II, around 1020.

An unrivalled series of liturgical manuscripts is produced at Reichenau under the highest patronage of Ottonian society.

(Other centers include scriptoria at Lorsch, Trier and Regensburg.)

Unlike a Gospel Book, gospel pericopes contain only the passages from the gospels which are to be read during the liturgical year, making it easier for the priest celebrating Mass to find the gospel reading.