The Lindisfarne Gospels
The Men of the North
The Dark Ages: Age of Light
Lindisfarne Monastery
Up in the harsher corners of the Anglo-Saxon world, the Irish monks who converted the north of Britain there are deliberately cutting themselves off
from life’s little comforts. Exiles for Christ, they called themselves.
Lindisfarne up there, where the monastery was founded by St Aidan in 635 A.D., was deliberately out of the way, secluded. When the tide was out,
the only way across was along this path, The Pilgrims Way, it was called, marked out with these wooden stakes. But if you were coming from the
other side of the island, from the sea, then Lindisfarne wasn’t cut off at all. In fact, it was very tempting.
The Viking raids on Britain, which did so much to tarnish the reputation of the Norsemen, began with a raid on Lindisfarne in 793, and for the next
century or so, the Vikings kept coming back.
Monasteries were easy pickings. They were basically undefended, manned by peaceful monks, and they were packed with sumptuous religious treasures
and excellently positioned for Viking raids.
The monasteries of the Dark Ages were Aladdin’s cave is of treasures. Jewel-encrusted relic boxes… golden crosses studded with rubies and pearls.
Lindisfarne Priory, Holy Island
We live in a world in which Louis Vuitton luggage and Jimmy Choo shoes seem precious. In the Dark Ages they knew better.
For the Vikings, the main attraction of the monasteries was obviously all that fabulous Christian gold in them – the rubies, the pearls – but
it’s recently been suggested that there were other reasons why they targeted the monasteries. Religious reasons.
Remember, in 793 A.D. when they raided Lindisfarne, the Vikings were still hard-core pagans, stubborn believers in Odin, Thor and Freya. For
these pagan Vikings, the fierce missionary enthusiasm of the Irish monks and the brutal conversion tactics of Charlemagne constituted an assault on
their religion.
The Vikings liked being pagans. They didn’t like being told they were worshipping the wrong gods, so when they attacked the monasteries, it
wasn’t just to grab all this fabulous Christian loot, it was also a form of religious payback.
“You think our religion’s wrong, we think your religion’s wrong”
The monks on Lindisfarne were also fighting a religious war. Their monastery was a hive of busy missionary activity. But unlike the Vikings
the preferred weapon of the monks wasn’t the sword, but the word.
Gospel Page
If you controlled the word in the Dark Ages, you controlled the world. For me, the most captivating evidence of this immense power that words
had was the great book created here by the monks of Lindisfarne… the Lindisfarne Gospels.
This isn’t just one of the great masterpieces of British art, this is one of the great masterpieces of all art. Written and decorated on
Lindisfarne by a monk called Eadfrith, the Lindisfarne Gospel contains a calligraphic cosmos of exceptional vitality.
It contains the four Gospels of the New Testament – the story of Christ as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and each of these evangelists
gets a portrait to himself. So there is St Matthew writing his gospel, and it says, “Matteus”, Matthew, up here. All the portraits in here are
rather traditional. They could easily be Italian or Byzantine. But then you turn the pages… And you come across this. This certainly isn’t
traditional or Italian. This is a uniquely British contribution to the art of the Dark Ages.
Look at all this amazing Celtic inter-weaving that’s filling all the letters and all these cosmic swirls and twirls and spirals. It’s like a
magnificent garden of paradise that’s erupted across the pages. And yet, it’s got this pagan kick to it as well.
Saint John
This is St John, the writer of the fourth Gospel. That’s his portrait. And they’re above his head, the Eagle. That’s his sign, just so we
know who it is. And this is the actual beginning of St John’s Gospel, and look how astonishingly beautiful it is. Do you know what this says,
what all this amazingly complicated interlacing and all this cosmic calligraphy, do you know what this says? It says, “In pricipio erat
Verbum. Et Verbum erat apud Deum.” “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God.”
In the Lindisfarne Gospel, Christian energy and Celtic inventiveness. Pictures and letters have come together in cosmic adulation of the word.
