The Lindisfarne Gospels: A Book for a Saint

In 687 Cuthbert, monk, hermit and bishop, died on the rocky islet of Inner Farne. He was buried at the monastery of Lindisfarne, the Holy Island off the Northumbrian coast. In 698 his coffin was opened and his body was found, it was said, incorrupt, and his cult took hold. Around the same years, a monk of Lindisfarne began one of the most ambitious books ever made in early medieval Europe: the four Gospels, written and painted in honour of God and St Cuthbert. Two hundred and fifty years later another member of the community wrote in the back of the book who had made it.

The book

• 259 leaves of vellum, made around 715–720, containing the four Gospels in Latin (Jerome's Vulgate), with prefaces and canon tables, the concordance of parallel passages.
• Each Gospel opens with an evangelist portrait, a carpet page of pure ornament built on a cross, and a great decorated initial page. Matthew's account of Christ's birth has a Chi-Rho page.
• It was probably written and painted by one person, a feat of concentration that took years. That person is traditionally Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne (698–721).
• Its pigments came from local minerals and plants, with some that may have been traded from afar. Modern analysis has argued that fewer exotic imports were used than once thought.

Aldred's colophon and gloss

In the mid-tenth century the community, driven from Lindisfarne by Viking raids, was settled at Chester-le-Street, carrying Cuthbert's body and the book. There a priest named Aldred did two things:

1. He wrote an interlinear gloss: an Old English translation of the Latin, word by word, in small letters between the lines. It is the oldest surviving English version of the Gospels, and a major source for the Northumbrian dialect of Old English.
2. He added a colophon naming the book's makers: Eadfrith wrote it, Æthelwald bound it, Billfrith the anchorite made its jewelled cover, and Aldred glossed it.

Aldred wrote about 250 years after the book was made, and scholars take his colophon seriously but not as certain. It may record community tradition rather than documents.

Journey and return

The book travelled with Cuthbert's relics to Chester-le-Street and then to Durham. It was removed from Durham at the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, its jewelled cover lost, and entered the collection of Sir Robert Cotton, which passed to the nation and then to the British Library. In the north-east of England there have been repeated calls for its return, and it has gone back to Durham and Newcastle for exhibitions.

Symbology and sacred encoding

The carpet page as cross. Each carpet page hides a cross within dense interlace. The eye has to find the cross in the knotwork, an act often compared to prayer or meditation.

The evangelists' symbols. A man (angel) for Matthew, a lion for Mark, an ox (calf) for Luke, an eagle for John, from Ezekiel and Revelation. Matthew's portrait is labelled in Greek letters, O AGIOS MATHEUS, "Saint Matthew", a mark of learned devotion.

The book as relic. Made for Cuthbert and kept with his body, the Gospels were a contact relic and a treasure of the saint's shrine as well as a text.

Connections

Early Christianity (ch16), Patristic Christianity (ch22) and Celtic & Germanic (ch14). Compare the Book of Kells (V21), a later relative in the same Insular art, and the Codex Sinaiticus (V18).

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/lindisfarne-gospels.html