The evangelists, each accompanied by the symbolic animal, usually assigned to him, occupy nearly the whole of their respective pages.  They are taken from Byzantine models, of which, as Westwood points out, nothing remains but the attitudes, the fashion of the dress and the form of the seats.  There can be little doubt that these illuminations were copied from a Ms. brought into England by the missionaries sent from Rome by St. Gregory in the seventh century.

* Facsimiles of the Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts.  P. 35.

Sir Edward Thompson, following Dom Germain Morin,* shows that the Capitula, or tables of sections which accompany each gospel are according to the Neapolitan use, and that Adrian, the companion of the Greek, Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury in his mission to Britain in 668, was abbot of a monastery in the Island of Nisita, near Naples.

* See his articles in the Revue Benedictine line, Nov. and Dec. 1891, pp. 481 and 529.

Bede tells us that these missionaries were both at Lindisfarne, and Sir Edward Thompson gives it as his opinion that the Neapolitan Ms. from which the Durham Book or Lindisfarne Gospel derived its text, had been brought a few years previously from Naples by the Abbot Adrian.*

* English Illuminated Manuscripts,” Bibliographica,” part ii.

The interlineary Saxon gloss was a later addition by the monk, Aldred, and Billfrith, as we have seen, made the sumptuous metal cover.  This binding, needless to say, has long since disappeared, and for many years a shabby morocco covering replaced the gorgeous shrine in which the monks of Holy Island had deposited their treasure.  About sixty years ago, Bishop Maltby of Durham, at the suggestion of Mr. John Holmes, provided a worthy substitute, the design for which was copied from one of the ornamented pages in the book itself.

This magnificent manuscript has been published by the Surtees Society, together with the very inferior Rushworth Gospels, but only one illumination has been reproduced.*

* The Lindisfarne Gospels or Durham Book is described in Planta’s Catalogue (Nero, D 4), as “Liber praeclarissimus, elegantissimis characteribus et curiosissimus pro istius seculi arte picturis et delineationibus ornatus.”  See also Wanley’s Catalogue, Codd.  Ms.  (Anglo-Sax.) p. 250.

Of absolutely authentic history there is little to relate concerning this celebrated manuscript, but Simeon of Durham, or rather Turgot, whose account he copied (and both men lived in the neighbourhood), is responsible for a story which says that it remained at Holy Island till the ravages of the Danes forced the monks to fly, carrying with them their two greatest treasures, the body of St. Cuthbert, and this volume.  But in their flight across the narrow strip of sea which divides the Island from the coast of Northumbria, their boat was thrown so much on one side that the