   #copyright

Lindisfarne Gospels

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Religious texts

   Folio 27r from the Lindisfarne Gospels contains the incipit from the
   Gospel of Matthew.
   Folio 27r from the Lindisfarne Gospels contains the incipit from the
   Gospel of Matthew.

   The Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated Latin manuscript of the
   gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The manuscript was produced on
   Lindisfarne in Northumbria in the late 7th century or early 8th
   century, and is generally regarded as the finest example of the
   kingdom's unique style of religious art, a style that combined
   Anglo-Saxon and Celtic themes, what is now called Hiberno-Saxon art, or
   Insular art.

   The Lindisfarne Gospels are presumed to be the work of a monk named
   Eadfrith, who became Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698 and died in 721.
   Current scholarship indicates a date around 715, and it is believed
   they were produced in honour of St. Cuthbert. The Gospels are richly
   illustrated in the insular style, and were originally encased in a fine
   leather binding covered with jewels and metals made by Billfrith the
   Anchorite in the 8th century. During the Viking raids on Lindisfarne,
   however, this cover was lost, and a replacement made in 1852. The text
   is written in insular script.

   In the 10th century an Old English translation of the Gospels was made:
   a word-for-word gloss inserted between the lines of the Latin text by
   Aldred, Provost of Chester-le-Street. This is the first translation of
   the Gospels into the English language.

   The Gospels were taken from Durham Cathedral during the dissolution of
   the monasteries, ordered by Henry VIII, and were acquired in the early
   17th century by Sir Robert Cotton from Robert Bowyer, Clerk of the
   Parliaments. Cotton's library came to the British Museum in the 18th
   century, and from there to the British Library in London.

   A campaign exists to have the gospels brought back to Durham Cathedral
   in the North East of England, a move vigorously opposed by the British
   Library. A modern facsimile copy of the Gospels is now housed in the
   Cathedral Treasury at Durham, which can be seen by visitors.

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