Lindisfarne Gospels

Lindisfarne Gospels (British Library). Illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels in Latin, named after the island of Lindisfarne (also known as Holy Island), off the coast of Northumberland, where it was produced in the monastery, c.700. Regarded as ‘one of the first and greatest masterpieces of medieval European book painting’ (Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript, 1979), it includes full-page portraits of the four Evangelists but is celebrated mainly for its vigorous ornament, some purely abstract and some including animal and bird life; there are pages devoted solely to ornament (‘carpet pages’) as well as elaborately decorated enlarged initial letters. For a work of its period it is exceptionally well documented, thanks to a colophon (end note) added in the 10th century explaining its origins. According to this note the book was written by Eadfrith (Bishop of Lindisfarne 698–721) in honour of God and St Cuthbert (also named are the binder and the decorator of the binding). Cuthbert (d 687), northern England's most popular saint, was Bishop of Lindisfarne and was buried on the island. In 698 his body was moved to a new shrine and the manuscript may well have been made to mark this event (the body was found to be incorrupted and from this time became the object of special veneration). In 875 Lindisfarne was sacked by the Danes; the monks fled with the saint's shrine, which had no permanent resting place for more than a century until a safe home was found for it in Durham in 995 (Cuthbert's remains are now in the cathedral). The Lindisfarne Gospels shared the wanderings of the shrine, and the colophon was written by a priest called Aldred, who became provost of Chester-le-Street in County Durham. He also added an interlinear Anglo-Saxon translation of the text, the first surviving version of the Gospels in any form of the English language. In 1539, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the book was separated from the shrine and in the early 17th century it was acquired by the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631), who had a collection of manuscripts of European fame. The collection was bequeathed to the nation by his grandson in 1700 and became part of the British Museum on its foundation in 1753. See also Celtic art and Insular art.