This is the oldest extant translation of the Gospels into the English language.

In the 10th century an Old English translation of the Gospels was made: a word-for-word gloss of the Latin Vulgate text, inserted between the lines by Aldred, Provost of Chester-le-Street. The text is written in insular script, and is the best documented and most complete insular manuscript of the period. During the Viking raids on Lindisfarne this jewelled cover was lost and a replacement was made in 1852. The Gospels are richly illustrated in the insular style and were originally encased in a fine leather treasure binding covered with jewels and metals made by Billfrith the Anchorite in the 8th century.

However, it is also possible that Eadfrith produced them prior to 698, in order to commemorate the elevation of Cuthbert's relics in that year, which is also thought to have been the occasion for which the St Cuthbert Gospel (also British Library) was produced. Current scholarship indicates a date around 715, and it is believed they were produced in honour of St. 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. The Lindisfarne Gospels is a religious and creative book. The manuscript is one of the finest works in the unique style of Hiberno-Saxon or Insular art, combining Mediterranean, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic elements. The Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D.IV) is an illuminated manuscript gospel book produced around the year 700 in a monastery off the coast of Northumberland at Lindisfarne and which is now on display in the British Library in London. I could not have written a better work of what I would call 'faction', that is, factually based fiction. Brown, writes: A well-researched account of what we can retrieve, through scholarship, of the making of one of the world's great cultural landmarks and its age - and a sensitive evocation of what we cannot know. Leading academic expert on the subject, Professor Michelle P. This is an imagining of his life, his loves, his work, and his world, by an author who, in her academic alias, is well-versed in researching and sharing her passion for the transformative, scintillating ‘not so Dark Ages’. In an age of battle-hardened Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and British warriors, all vying for power after the Roman Empire’s collapse, a hero unsung by bards took up his pen and entered the desert of the book to change the world. This is the tale of the making of a masterwork, a landmark in the human journey - the Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the world’s most beautiful and intriguing illuminated manuscripts.

Eadfrith by Michelle Treeve