The Lindisfarne Gospels Boxed Notecards

A Medieval Masterpiece

The magnificent eighth-century manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels was made at Lindisfarne monastery, in northestern England. In the ninth century, as monasteries up and down the English coast fell to Viking raids, Lindisfarne was abandoned. Having wandered across England, the ex-Lindisfarne monks attempted to cross the Irish Sea, but a ferocious storm washed the Gospels overboard; the monks turned back. Cuthbert, the saint in whose honor the book was made, later appeared to one its erstwhile caretakers in a dream and told him where it could be found, miraculously unharmed on the sands. The party eventually settle in Durham, where in the tenth century the priest Aldred translated the manuscript's ornate Latin into Anglo-Saxon. Except for the loss of its original binding, the Lindisfarne Gospels has survived virtually intact, its glowing colors nearly as bright as they were thirteen centuries ago.

Published with The British Library.