Stop and Look – “Page from the Lindisfarne Gospels” (700)
We might almost be looking at a Persian carpet, but actually, this is a full-page decoration from one of the most famous of all medieval illuminated books. The Lindisfarne Gospels are among the finest works of the Celtic civilisation that flourished in Ireland and the northern kingdoms just before the full flowering of Anglo-Saxon England.
As a general rule, these productions were the collaborative work of a team of calligraphers and draughtsmen. But the Lindisfarne Gospels have been fairly confidently attributed to a single brilliant scribe and artist, Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne between 698 and around 722 A.D. The monastery had been founded by St Aidan, who had come from his religious foundation on the small Hebridean island of Iona to the even smaller Holy Island off the Northumberland coast, in the seventh century.
The intricate ornament certainly owes something to Middle Eastern design, which we can be sure the monks of Northumbria knew a bit about: civilisation in what we tend to think of as the “Dark Ages” was a richly interwoven international culture, stretching from the Middle East to the farthest corners of the British Isles and Scandinavia. What bound that tightly-knit culture together was the Christian religion.
The Gospels, the canonical lives of Christ, were the central texts of Christian belief. Some of the most sumptuous of all objects made in the period were collections of the four texts presented in the most lavish way skilled scribes and artists could devise. During the service of the Mass (which was to be called Communion or Eucharist in English after the Reformation in the sixteenth century), a passage from one of the Gospels is read.
The reading is a moment of great solemnity. The priest brings the book of the Gospels from its tabernacle on the High Altar down to the lectern, holding it high over his head so that everyone can see it. The whole congregation stands to listen, each person having made the sign of the cross.
The four texts, written by four of Jesus’s disciples, were often collected between richly decorated covers – “treasure bindings” with three-dimensional images in silver-gilt, and encrusted with jewels. The cover of this set of the Gospels has unfortunately been lost, but Eadfrith’s ornamentation makes up for that.
Each Gospel is prefaced by a portrait of the Evangelist who wrote it (though of course, no one knew what any of the apostles really looked like). Each is shown with his symbolic beast: a winged man for St Matthew, a winged lion for St Mark, a winged ox for St Luke and an eagle for St John.
This page doesn’t show a human figure or illustrate any event, but it’s far from being merely decorative. Brought out by a firm red outline is the Cross, the central symbol of the Christians’ faith (someone, using a very modern term, has called it the most successful logo of all time), wrapped up in an almost ineffably mysterious, brilliantly coloured and intricately knotted spiral pattern based on highly stylised birds and beasts.
The labyrinthine linear design looks like a characteristic product of the calligrapher’s art, but at this high point of Celtic civilisation we find similar spirals and tendrils in quite different media: worked in silver jewellery and fastenings for clothes, or carved in stone in the tall graveyard crosses of northern England, or in wood, as in the splendid panelling of the Norwegian “Stave Churches.”
This single page from the Lindisfarne Gospels brings together aesthetic ideas from across the world and could supply the devout contemplator with rich food for the eyes and, through the eyes, the soul.
Andrew Wilton was the first Curator of the Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection at Tate Britain and is the author of many works on the artist.