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The Lindisfarne Gospels
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
I Seem to remember Mr Bruce-Mitford telling me that when he was in the Laurentian Library in Florence, he asked to have that monster of all manuscripts, the Codex Amiatinus, weighed for him. I do not know what the result of the operation was. But perhaps he will forgive me if I say that, when faced with the impressive text codex which comes as a companion to the facsimile of the Lindisfarne Gospels, I was seized with the same awed curiosity, so that my first impulse was to put it on the scales. The net result is: eleven and a half pounds. No need to say that such a formidable array of letterpress is difficult to grasp in its entirety, and that only some aspects of it can be dealt with in a short article-perhaps of necessity those closest to the personal preoccupations of the present writer.
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References
(1) The community was to settle eventually at Durham.
(2) In the same way the story of the Book being lost at sea and retrieved undamaged—a standard type of legend, told of many manuscripts—ought not to have been taken seriously.
(3) J. Chapman, O.S.B., Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels (London, 1908), p. 9; F. C. Burkitt, ‘Kells, Durrow and Lindisfarne’, ANTIQUITY, 1935, 34.
(4) Irish Art (London, 1940), 77.
(5) The Arts in Early England, v (London, 1921), 337-41.
(6) The fact that it is to be found in E. G. Millar, The Lindisfarne Gospels (London, 1923), 1-3, did not absolve the present book from giving us something similar.
(7) See: J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland (New York, 1929), 257.
(8) G. F. Browne, St Aldhelm, his Life and Times (London, 1903), 262 sqq.
(9) This contorted way of saying six is found again in the letter to indicate the six arts of physics.
(10) Ehwald suggests for these—from analogy with another text of Aldhelm—the quite likely list: arithmetic, music, astronomy, astrology, mechanics, medicine.
(11) Aldhelm himself had been taught first, as far as we know, by an Irishman, Maeldubh or Maelduin, then by Theodore of Canterbury.
(12) For the journeys of Irish students to Ireland it completes in a very useful way the famous text of Bede (Hist. Eccles., Ill, 27), which relates to the state of affairs at the time of the plague of 664.
(13) Theodore and Hadrian arrived in England in 669. The letter obviously dates from a time when they had been teaching for a good while, probably 680-85.
(14) J. Ussher, The whole Works (Dublin, 1631), IV (Sylloge), 448-453; see p. 453.
(15) Aldhelm uses the same expression, in the letter quoted above, in connexion with Ireland. Oswy, Aldfrid’s father, like his brother Oswald, lived a long time in exile in Ireland, where he became a Christian (‘Osuiu a Scottis edoctus ac baptizatus’, Hist. Eccles., III, 25). There, as Bishop Browne tactfully puts it (op. cit., 271), he ‘married or did not marry’ Fina, a princess of the Northern Ui Néill, a grand-niece of St Columba. Aldfrid, in consequence it seems of his alleged illegitimate birth, was first passed over in the royal succession, his younger brother Egfrid succeeding Oswy. Upon the death of Egfrid, however, St Cuthbert advised calling back Aldfrid from ‘the Islands of the Scots’ and he became king (Bede, Vita S. Cuthberti (prose)). He is called Flann Fina in Irish documents. The Annals of Tigernach mention his death thus (A.D. 704): ‘Alfrith mac Ossu—Fland Fina the Irish call him— Rex Saxon fuit’; at the wrong date of 694, the Annals of Inisfallen have a similar entry; in the Fragments of Irish Annals published by O’Donovan, there is, at the year 704: ‘The death of Flann Fiona, son of Ossa, king of Saxonland, the famous wise man, the pupil of Adamnan.’ Adamnan himself calls him: ‘my friend king Aldfrid’ (Vit. Col., 11, 46). He enjoys the reputation of a famous poet in Irish, though none of the poems attributed to him goes back to his time. Most of what is known about him is summed up in two notes: one in Reeves’s Life of St Columba (185-6), the other in C. Plummer’s edition of the Historical Works of Bede (vol. 11, 263-4).
(16) For other identifications, see: Kenney, Sources, 227.
(17) Also they assume that it was made to order for the translation of the relics in 698, a not very likely procedure.
(18) Vita Col., preface.
(19) Vita Col., end of Book II. See: Kenney, 431-32 for the date of the redaction of the Vita Columbae (mostly before 685, but finished in the following years). A. O. and M. O. Anderson, Adamnan’s Life of Columba (London, etc., 1961), pp. 5-6, favour a slightly later date. Adamnan’s journeys to the court of Aldfrid took place in 686-7 and 688-9.
(20) This is also the time when he got Bede to write his prose Life of St Cuthbert, which is dedicated to Eadfrith and was finished just before his death in 721.
(21) Another fragment (canon-tables) in the British Museum (Royal MS 7.C.XII) may also have belonged to the same manuscript. See: E. A. Lowe, Codices Latini Ant., 11, no. 125.
(22) That style was probably not fully developed at the time (A.D. 680-85?) when he may have gone to Ireland. But he would be likely to keep in touch.
(23) Celtic Art (London, 1904), 272-76.
(24) R. Gabrielsson, Kompositionsformer i senkeltisk orneringstil (Stockholm, 1945).
(25) Also probably as far as the grids are concerned, as I hope to show in a coming publication.
(26) E. M. Jope and B. C. S. Wilson, ‘The Decorated Cast-Bronze Disc from the River Bann near Coleraine’, Ulster Journ. Archaeol., 1957, 95 sqq.
(27) This, of course, has a bearing on the Book of Durrow. It is assumed all through the volume under review that it is ‘a Northumbrian manuscript’, by which is probably meant that it is ascribed to the Lindisfarne scriptorium, though the question is not discussed in detail (the clearest statement on its being Northumbrian is probably the footnote 3, page 90). Nobody, so far, has ever demonstrated conclusively that it is (see on the subject, inter alia: the articles of A. Clapham and F. C. Burkitt in ANTIQUITY, 1934 and 1935, and F. Masai, Essai sur les Origines de la miniature dite irlandaise (Bruxelles-Anvers, 1947) (Lowe’s opinions on it seem to have varied greatly (Cod. Lat. Ant., 11, no. 273 and Preface)). The main reasons which have been advanced are of various types: A, the presence of a page with animal-interlacing of Anglo-Saxon type; B, the comparatively pure Vulgate text, thought to be of Italo-Northumbrian type; C, the orderly appearance of the script. Of these, A is part of the strong Anglo-Saxon influence which is manifest in all Irish metalwork at the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth and may be a consequence of the Irish missions in England and the presence of numerous English students in Ireland, B is open to discussion, as the Gospel text is not so very pure Vulgate (see: H. J. Lawlor, ‘The Cathach of St Columba’, Proc. R.I.A., 1916), may not be of Italo-Northumbrian type (see: Evangeliorum Quattuor Codex Durmachensis (Olten-Lausanne-Fribourg, 1960), Introduction by A. A. Luce, pp. 3 sqq.) and is accompanied by pre-Vulgate preliminaries; as for C, why assume that when a luxury book has an orderly appearance it is necessarily Northumbrian? In fact there, the implied reason is that it would show an influence from these very orderly scriptoria of Jarrow and Wearmouth; but in that case the Book of Durrow would have to be dated very late: one cannot at the same time date it of around 675 and see in it an influence of Wearmouth, founded the previous year, or of Jarrow which did not exist then. Apart from that it looks a bit odd to assume without discussion that it is Northumbrian when there is now a volume in the same collection where Dr Luce is at great pains to show that it is really Irish. Slight lack of co-ordination. . . .
(28) The coffin of St Cuthbert having been opened at the time of the exodus of the monks from Lindisfarne and several relics, including perhaps books, having been stuffed into it at that time, the presence of the volume now in Stonyhurst College on a ledge above the head of St Cuthbert when the coffin was opened in 1104 does not prove anything (see: The Relics of Saint Cuthbert (Oxford, 1956), 27 and 356; see also: E. A. Lowe, English Uncial (Oxford, 1960), and D. Wright, ‘Some notes on English Uncial’, Traditio, 1961, 441).
(29) Milan, Ambrosian Library, Ms.C.5.inf.
(30) Schaffhausen, Town Library, Generalia, Ms.1.
(31) A comparison of the minuscule script of the Vita Columbae with that of the Echternach Gospels would show a great analogy in the script, and even, taking into consideration the very different purpose of the books, in the small initials surrounded with dots.
(32) See: G. S. M. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera (Dublin, 1957).
(33) The Antiphonary is dated to the middle of the seventh century by the poem on the abbots of Bangor which it contains. See: F. Warren, The Antiphonary of Bangor (London, 1893-95).
(34) P. Grosjean, S.J., ‘Sur quelques exégètes irlandais’, Sacris Erudiri, 1955, 67 sqq. ; see also K. Hughes, ‘An Irish Litany of Irish Saints compiled c. 800’, Analecta Bollandiana, 1959.
(35) E. A. Lowe, ‘A key to Bede’s Scriptorium’, Scriptorium, 1958, 182 sqq.
(36) No need to say that if this view be adopted, there is no more room for the nice little piece of science-fiction by which the Ardagh chalice and the Tara brooch are annexed to Lindisfarne (pp. 250 sqq.).