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Gospels: Lindisfarne Gospels
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The Lindisfarne Gospels are masterpieces of early medieval European book painting. The book represents the golden age of design and craftsmanship in Northumbria, and has survived wars and the ravages of time for over one thousand years in almost perfect condition. The freshness, intricacy and beauty of its decoration are outstanding.
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The Lindisfarne Gospels is one of the world's masterpieces of manuscript painting. It is, says British Library curator Michelle P. Brown, "one of those landmarks of human achievement which transcends the local, and even the national, making it a great international focus of that wonderful period of transition from the world of Greco-Roman antiquity into the Middle Ages."
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The Lindisfarne Gospels have a uniquely important place in the art and culture of the North East, and the Christian heritage of the area. The exhibition is part of the celebrations of the Millennium year, marking 2000 years since the birth of Christ.
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Religious differences between the indigenous ‘Celtic’ Church and the new ‘Roman’ Church were settled at the Synod of Whitby in 664, little more than a generation before the Lindisfarne Gospels was made. That religious accommodation is echoed in the design of the manuscript. Native Celtic and Anglo-Saxon elements blend with Roman, Coptic and Eastern traditions to create a sublimely unified artistic vision of the cultural melting pot of Northumbria in the seventh and eighth centuries.
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In 1069, the Lindisfarne Gospels spent a short time back at Lindisfarne to escape the devastating raid on the North mounted by the new Norman king, William the Conqueror. The book was then returned to Durham. In 1104, St Cuthbert's body and other monastic treasures from Lindisfarne were moved to the splendid new Romanesque cathedral at Durham.
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Like most medieval Christian manuscripts, the Lindisfarne Gospels was written in Latin. However, around 970, when it was owned by the Minster of Chester-le-Street, Aldred, the Provost, added an Anglo-Saxon translation in red ink beneath the original Latin. This is the oldest surviving version of the gospels in any form of English - another indication of the manuscript’s importance in the growth of England’s national identity.
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Lindisfarne Gospels