Lindisfarne Gospels

This amazing religious work, was produced during the time when Eadfrith was Bishop of Lindisfarne (698 - 721). The original is in the British Museum, but an interactive version can now be viewed on the island where the skills of the monks created it. Scribed on two hundred and fifty-eight pages of vellum, this is a version of the four Gospels with the Eusebian Canons and two Epistles.
Written as double columns of twenty four lines, the pages are plain apart from small decorated initials. The illustrated pages, which are of three types, introduce each Gospel. They are of elaborate cruciform design with interlaced patterns of birds and animals; of ornamented text with the initial letters elaborately enlarged; and of portraits of the Evangelists.
The Gospels were at Lindisfarne until 875, when the island was abandoned.

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