The Lindisfarne Gospels

Abstract

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.