The Lindisfarne Gospels is one of the world's masterpieces of manuscript painting. It is, says British Library curator Michelle P. Brown, "one of those landmarks of human achievement which transcends the local, and even the national, making it a great international focus of that wonderful period of transition from the world of Greco-Roman antiquity into the Middle Ages." 
An opulent and richly decorated Gospel book, the Lindisfarne Gospels was created in the early eighth century CE for ceremonial use at the monastery of Lindisfarne in the northeast of England. The manuscript's main text, which was written out by a single scribe, is a Latin version of the Four Gospels known as Saint Jerome's Vulgate. This is a revision of the Latin Bible made in the late fourth century CE and widely used throughout the western world.
The Gospels contains 15 elaborate fully decorated pages, featuring ornament of extraordinary intricacy. Astoundingly complex patterns are plaited and knotted across these pages and intertwined with fanciful birds and animals. At the start of each of the Gospels is an illustration of its author with his symbol, and throughout the text pages of the manuscript are numerous decorated initials. In addition, there are 16 pages of Eusebian canon tables, which detail the locations of parallel passages within the four Gospels.
In conversation, Michelle Brown introduces the Gospels and the context of its creation, in honour of St Cuthbert, in the world of early Christianity in Britain. She considers the making of the Gospels and reveals her recent research into both the dating of the manuscript and the ways in which it was created. She explains how such a book would have been used and by whom, and she eloquently reveals the meanings and mysteries of one specific opening in the book.
