The Lindisfarne Gospels
In Our Time
BBC
4.6 • 9.8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2003
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Lindisfarne Gospels. In 597 Pope Gregory the Great ordered that a mission of monks be sent from Rome to convert Britain to its own brand of Christianity - lest it be submerged by the pagan beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon overlords. Just over 100 years later, the Lindisfarne Gospels were produced - lavish and ornate manuscripts, central to the story of how Britain came to be unified by the flag of the Roman Church – and they came to embody a set of beliefs and ideas that dominated Britain for a thousand years. Was the Rome mission in the 6th century the only strand of Christianity to sweep through Britain? Why did Northumbria become a key battleground for ideological dispute? How successful were the Lindisfarne Gospels in unifying the different strands of Christianity? To what extent did they serve as a founding statement of Christian identity in Britain?With Dr Michelle Brown, Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library and author of A Guide to Western Historical Scripts: From Antiquity to 1600; Dr Richard Gameson, Reader in Medieval History at Kent University and editor of St Augustine and the Conversion of England; Professor Clare Lees, Professor of Medieval Literature at King's College London and author of Tradition and Belief: Religious Writing in Late Anglo-Saxon England.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use |
| 0:05.4 | Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program |
| 0:11.6 | Hello in |
| 0:13.2 | 597 Pope Gregory the Great ordered that a mission of monks be sent from Rome to reconvert Britain to its own brand of Christianity |
| 0:21.0 | And to rescue it from the pagan beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon overlords |
| 0:25.5 | Then from my owner the Celtic Christians came to Northumbria just over a hundred years later |
| 0:30.6 | The Lindisfarne Gospels were produced lavish and on eight manuscripts central to the story of how Britain came to be unified by the flag of the Roman church |
| 0:39.4 | They came to embody a set of beliefs and ideas that dominated Britain for a thousand years |
| 0:45.4 | Why did Northumbria become so rich in culture and then a key battleground for ideological dispute between Roman Lindisfarne? |
| 0:52.9 | How successful were the Lindisfarne Gospels in unifying the different strands of Christianity and to what extent did they serve as a founding statement of Christian identity in Britain? |
| 1:02.5 | With me a professor Claire Lee's professor of medieval literature at King's College London |
| 1:07.2 | Dr. Michelle Brown, curator of illuminated manuscripts at the British Library and Dr. Richard Gamston reader in medieval history at Kent University |
| 1:15.5 | Richard Gamston |
| 1:16.6 | Let's go to the background first |
| 1:18.2 | What kind of country was Britain at the time of the evangelizing mission from Rome at the end of the sixth century? |
| 1:24.4 | It was a very complicated country and in fact |
| 1:26.4 | It's probably more realistic to talk about it as countries in the sense that |
| 1:32.6 | The British community that had been left by the Romans in 410 411 have been systematically overrun by invaders from |
| 1:41.3 | Frisia from Normandy from Northern Germany and from southern Scandinavia and |
| 1:47.0 | Different patterns of settlement different compositions were gradually forming up into a series of independent kingdoms in the 5th and 6th century and |
| 1:56.2 | By the time good documentary sources are giving us a clear view of this |
| 2:00.1 | We can see seven clear kingdoms emerging |
... |
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