Manuscripts

London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D iv Lindisfarne Gospels

  • Latin
  • s. viiiin
  • English manuscripts
  • parchment
Identifiers
Location
Collection: Cotton manuscripts
Shelfmark
Cotton Nero D iv
Title
Lindisfarne Gospels
Type
gospelbooks
Provenance and related aspects
Language
Latin
Date
s. viiiin
Origin, provenance
Origin: Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne
Northumberland

Monastery founded by St Aidan on a tidal island (Holy Island or Lindisfarne) in northeast Northumbria. For some time, it also served as an episcopal seat.


See more
The gospelbook is traditionally thought to have been produced at Lindisfarne.
Hands, scribes
Codicological information
Material
parchment

Sources

Primary sources This section typically includes references to diplomatic editions, facsimiles and photographic reproductions, notably digital image archives, of at least a major portion of the manuscript. For editions of individual texts, see their separate entries.

[dig. img.] British Library: digitised manuscripts, Online: British Library. URL: <http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts>.

Secondary sources (select)

British Library: archives and manuscripts, Online: British Library. URL: <https://searcharchives.bl.uk>.
Breay, Claire, “Exhibiting the Lindisfarne Gospels”, in: Rachel Moss, Felicity OʼMahony, and Jane Maxwell (eds), An Insular odyssey: manuscript culture in early Christian Ireland and beyond, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2017. 302–319.
Gameson, Richard (ed.), The Lindisfarne Gospels: new perspectives, Library of the Written Word, 57, Leiden, Boston: Brepols, 2017.  
abstract:
Masterpiece of medieval manuscript production and decoration, its Latin text glossed throughout in Old English, the Lindisfarne Gospels is a vital witness to the book culture, art, and Christianity of the Anglo-Saxons and their interactions with Ireland, Italy, and the wider world. The expert studies in this collection examine in turn the archaeology of Holy Island, relations between Ireland and Northumbria, early Northumbrian book culture, the relationship of the Lindisfarne Gospels to the Church universal, the canon table apparatus of the manuscript, the decoration of its Canon Tables, its systems of liturgical readings, the mathematical principles underlying the design of its carpet pages, points of comparison and contrast with the Book of Durrow, the Latin and Old English texts, the nature of the glossator’s ink, and the meaning of enigmatic words and phrases within the vernacular gloss. Approaching the material from a series of new perspectives, the contributors shed new light on numerous aspects of this magnificent manuscript, its milieux, and its significance.
Netzer, Nancy, “The Book of Durrow and the Lindisfarne Gospels”, in: Richard Gameson (ed.), The Lindisfarne Gospels: new perspectives, 57, Leiden, Boston: Brepols, 2017. 166–182.
OʼLoughlin, Thomas, “The Eusebian apparatus in the Lindisfarne Gospels: Ailerán’s Kanon euangeliorum as a lens for its appreciation”, in: Richard Gameson (ed.), The Lindisfarne Gospels: new perspectives, 57, Leiden, Boston: Brepols, 2017. 96–111.
Brown, Michelle P., The Lindisfarne Gospels: society, spirituality and the scribe, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
Marx, Susanne, “The miserable beasts — animal art in the Gospels of Lindisfarne, Lichfield and St Gallen”, Peritia 9 (1995): 234–245.
Bruce-Mitford, R. L. S., “The Lindisfarne gospels”, in: s.n. (ed.), Great books of Ireland: Thomas Davis lectures, Dublin, London: Clonmore & Reynolds, Burns & Oates, 1967. 26–37.
Contributors
Dennis Groenewegen
Page created
November 2020, last updated: July 2022