Amanda and I spent a day here at Lindisfarne. "Connie, would you Google Lindisfarne and check the tide times." Amanda said in the morning before we left home. Lindisfarne is a tidal island and subsequently visits can only be made between tides. It's quite a magical place; so steeped in history, dedication and suffering.
Here is some information about it from Wikipedia:
The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish born Saint Aidan, who had been sent from Iona off the west coast of Scotland to Northumbria on the North East coast of England at the request of King Oswald around AD635. Monks from the community of Iona also settled on the island.
At some point in the early 700s, the famous illuminated manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, an illustrated Latin copy of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was made, probably at Lindisfarne.
In 793, a Viking raid was made on the island. This raid is now often taken as the beginning of the Viking Age.
(Aidan of Lindisfarne, from the Lindisfarne Gospels).
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations.
The significance of these works (illuminated manuscripts) lies not only in their inherent art history value, but in the maintenance of a link of literacy offered by non-illuminated texts as well. Had it not been for the monastic scribes of Late Antiquity, the entire literature of Greece and Rome would have perished. The very existence of illuminated manuscripts as a way of giving stature and commemoration to ancient documents may have been largely responsible for their preservation in an era when barbarian hordes had overrun continental Europe and ruling classes were no longer literate.
