Lindisfarne Gospels set for return to the North East

They will be on public display at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery from September 17 to December 3.

This will be the first time the ancient book, the most spectacular manuscript to survive from Anglo-Saxon England, has been displayed in the city since 2000, and its first showing in the region since the major exhibition in Durham in 2013.

The Lindisfarne Gospels will feature in an exhibition about its meaning in the world today and exploring its relationship with themes of personal, regional, and national identity.

The manuscript will be open at the page of Gospel of John, ff. 210v-211. The cross-carpet page and major initial introducing St John's Gospel are the last major decoration in the manuscript – they demonstrate all the different elements of its creator’s decorative vocabulary within a single final tour de force.

A monk named Eadfrith, who became the Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698, is believed to have created the Gospels in the scriptorium of the monastery on the island.