The St Cuthbert Gospel, also known as the Stonyhurst Gospel or the St Cuthbert Gospel of St John, is a 7th-century pocket gospel book, written in Latin, which was probably placed in the tomb of Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, a few years after he died in 687. Its finely decorated leather binding is the earliest known Western book-binding to survive, and both the vellum pages and the binding are in outstanding condition for a book of this age. Although it was long regarded as Cuthbert's personal copy of the Gospel, to which there are early references, the book is now regarded as dating from the years after Cuthbert's death in 687, and probably a gift from Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey, where it was written, intended to be placed in his coffin when his remains were placed behind the altar at Lindisfarne in 698. It presumably remained in the coffin through its travels after 875, forced by Viking invasions, but was removed in 1104 when the burial, by then in Durham Cathedral, was once again moved within the building. It was then kept with other relics in the cathedral, although the bishops and important visitors were able to wear the book in a leather bag around their necks.[1] After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, it passed to collectors.
It is now on long-term loan to the British Library, catalogued as Loan 74. On 14 July 2011 the British Library launched a fundraising campaign to buy the book for £9m ($14.3m), two-thirds of which has already been raised. The Library plans to display the Gospel for half the time at the British Library in London, and half the time in Durham. The library describes the manuscript as "the earliest surviving intact European book and one of the world’s most significant books".[2]
At only 3.5 by 5 inches (8.9 × 13 cm) the St Cuthbert Gospel is one of the smallest surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The text is the Gospel of John. It was written at the monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey during the abbacy of Ceolfrith, probably very soon after the very large Codex Amiatinus.
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The original tooled red goatskin binding is the earliest surviving Western binding,[3] and the virtually unique survivor of decorated Insular leatherwork. The front cover includes colour, and the main motif is raised. The panels of geometrical decoration with interlace closely relates to Insular illuminated manuscripts, and can be compared to the carpet pages found in these. Elements of the design also relate to Anglo-Saxon metalwork, and Coptic designs.
The raised pattern was thought to have been produced by gluing cord to the board and tooling the leather over it, in a technique of Coptic origin, of which few early examples survive - one of the closest is a 9th- or 10th-century Islamic binding found in the Mosque of Uqba in Kairouan, Tunisia.[4] However newer research has suggested that building up the shape in gesso before applying the leather is more likely to have been the technique.[5] The stitching however does use "Coptic sewing", "flexible unsupported sewing (produced by two needles and thread looping round one another in a figure-of-eight sewing pattern)"[6] This is also found in the earliest surviving leather bookbindings, which are from Coptic libraries in Egypt from the 7th and 8th centuries; in particular the design of the cover of one in the Morgan Library (MS M.569) has been compared to the Stonyhurst Gospel.[7]
The binding designs include three pigments filling lines engraved with a sharp pointed instrument, which now appear as two shades of yellow, one bright and the other pale, and a blue that now verges on black. These have not been analysed, and a benefit of the intended purchase of the manuscript by the British Library is that more research will be possible.[8]
The manuscript itself has no date but a rather precise dating has been given to it, based mainly on its paleography or handwriting, and also the known facts of Cuthbert's burial. The script is the "capitular" form of uncial, with just a few emphasized letters at the start of sections in "text" uncial.[9] Close examination of details of the forms of letters allows the manuscript to be placed with some confidence within a chronological sequence of the few other manuscripts thought to have been produced at Wearmouth-Jarrow. The Northumbrian scribes "imitate very closely the best Italian manuscripts of about the sixth century",[10] but introduced small elements that gave their style a distinct style, which has always been greatly admired. However there were several scribes, seven different ones working on the Codex Amiatinus, who may not all have developed at the same pace.[11]
Developments in style can be seen within a single manuscript, especially in the key Codex Amiatinus, an almost complete bible, which can also be precisely located as leaving Wearmouth-Jarrow with a party led by Abbot Ceolfrith on June 4, 716, bound for Rome. The codex was to be presented to the pope, a decision only announced by Ceolfrith very shortly before departure, allowing the dedication page to be dated very precisely to probably May 716, though the rest of the manuscript was probably already some years old, but only begun after Ceolfrith succeeded as abbot in 689.[12] The script of the dedication page differs slightly from the main text, but is by the same hand and in the same "elaborated text uncial" style as some pages at Durham (MS A II 17, part ii, ff 103-11). At the other end of the sequence, it may be possible to date the Saint Petersburg Bede to 746 at the earliest, from references in memoranda in the text, although this remains a matter of controversy.[13]
There survive parts of a gospel book, by coincidence now bound up with the famous Utrecht Psalter, which are identifiable as by the same scribe as the Cuthbert Gospel, and where "the capitular uncial of the two manuscripts is indistinguishable in style or quality, so they may well be very close to each other in date". Since the Utrecht pages also use Rustic capital script, which the Cuthbert Gospel does not, it allows another basis for comparison with further manuscripts in the sequence.[14]
From the paleographical evidence, T. J. Brown concluded that the Cuthbert manuscript was written after the main text of the Codex Amiatinus, which was perhaps finished by 695, though it might be later. Turning to the historical evidence for Cuthbert's burial, this places it after his original burial in 687 but possibly before his elevation to the high altar in 698. If this is correct, the book was never a personal possession of Cuthbert, as has sometimes been thought, but was possibly created specifically to be placed in his coffin, whether for the occasion of his elevation in 698 or at another date.[15] The less precise hints about dating that can be derived from the style of the binding compared to other works do not conflict with these conclusions.[16]
British Library MS Yates Thompson 26 is a manuscript of Bede's prose life of Cuthbert, written c. 721, copied at the priory of Durham Cathedral in the last quarter of the 12th century. The 46 full page miniatures include many miracles associated with Cuthbert both before and after his death.[17]
The book is presumed to have been buried with Cuthbert at Lindisfarne either in 687 or more likely in 698, and to have stayed with the body during the wanderings forced by the Viking invasions two centuries later. Cuthbert's burial was first disturbed eleven years after his death, when his remains were moved to the altar to reflect his recognition, in the days before a formal process of canonization, as a saint. The coffin was opened and his body was said to have been found perfectly preserved or incorrupt.[18] This apparent miracle led to the steady growth of Cuthbert's posthumous cultus, to the point where he became the most popular saint of Northern England. Numerous miracles were attributed to his intercession and to intercessory prayer near his remains. The noted 8th century author Bede wrote both a verse and a prose life of St Cuthbert around 720. He has been described as "perhaps the most popular saint in England prior to the death of Thomas Becket in 1170."[19]
In 875 the Danes took the monastery of Lindisfarne and the monks fled, carrying with them St Cuthbert's body around various places including Melrose. After seven years of wandering it found a resting-place at the still existing St Cuthbert's church in Chester-le-Street until 995, when another Danish invasion led to its removal to Ripon. Then the saint intimated, as it was believed, that he wished to remain in Durham. A new stone church—the so-called 'White Church'—was built, the predecessor of the present grand Cathedral.
In 1104, early in the bishopric of Ranulf Flambard, Cuthbert's tomb was opened again and his relics translated to a new shrine behind the altar of the recently completed Cathedral. According to the earlier of the two accounts of the event that survive, known as "Miracles 18-20", when the inner coffin was opened, "the monks saw a "a book of the Gospels lying at the head of the board", that is, on the inner lid of the decorated coffin now preserved in the Cathedral Library".[20] The account in "Miracle 20" adds that Bishop Flambard, during his sermon on the day the new shrine received Cuthbert's body, showed the congregation "a Gospel of Saint John in miraculously perfect condition, which had a satchel-like container of red leather with a badly frayed sling made of silken threads".[21] For the remainder of the Middle Ages, until 1540, the book was kept as a relic, and there are various records of it being shown to visitors, the more distinguished of which were allowed to hang it round their neck for a while.
Durham Cathedral Priory was one of the institutions ended in the dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540, and some decades later the book was recorded by Archbishop Ussher in the library of the Oxford scholar, antiquary and astrologer, Thomas Allen (1542–1632) of Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College, Oxford). However it is not in a catalogue of Allen's library of 1622, and was not in the collection of Allen's manuscripts that was presented to the Bodleian Library by Sir Kenelm Digby in 1634. Nothing is then known of its whereabouts for a century or so.[22]
According to an 18th century Latin inscription pasted to the inside cover of the manuscript, the St Cuthbert Gospel was given by 3rd Earl of Lichfield (1718–1772) to the Catholic priest the Reverend Thomas Phillips (1708–1774) who donated it to the English Jesuit College at Liège on 20 June 1769. Lichfield was an Anglican, but knew Phillips as the latter was chaplain to his neighbour in Oxfordshire, the recusant George Talbot, 14th Earl of Shrewsbury (1719–1787).[23] The manuscript has been owned since 1769 by the Society of Jesus (British Province) and was formerly in the library of Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, successor to the Liège college. It has been on loan to the British Library since 1979 where it has been (almost) permanently on display in its exhibition gallery, first in the British Museum building, and now in the Ritblat Gallery at the new St Pancras site of the Library.
The text is a good copy of the single Gospel of John from what has been called the "Italo-Northumbrian" family of texts, other well-known examples of which are several manuscripts from Wearmouth-Jarrow, including the Codex Amiatinus, and in the British Library the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Gospel Book MS Royal 1. B. VII. This family is presumed to have derived from a hypothetical "Neapolitan Gospelbook" brought to England by Adrian of Canterbury, a companion of Theodore of Tarsus who Bede says had been abbot of Nisida, an equally hypothetical monastery near Naples. In the rubrics of the Lindisfarne Gospels are several that are "specifically Neapolitan", including festivals which were celebrated only in Naples such as The Nativity of St. Januarius and the Dedication of the Basilica of Stephen. The Neapolitan manuscript was probably at Wearmouth-Jarrow.[24]
Four passages are marked in the margin, which correspond to those used as readings in Masses for the Dead in the Roman lectionary of the mid-7th century. This seems to have been done hastily, as most left offsets on the opposite page from the pages being closed before the ink was dry.[25] This seems to indicate that the book was used at least once as the gospel book for a Mass for the Dead, perhaps on the occasion of Cuthbert's elevation in 698.[26] In the example illustrated at right, the start of the reading at line 8 is marked with a cross, and pro de/functis ("for the dead") written above. The reading ends on the next page, which is also marked.
Saint Boisil (d. 664), abbot of Melrose Abbey in modern Scotland, was Cuthbert's teacher. Bede's prose life of Cuthbert (he wrote two, one in prose and one in verse) records that during Boisil's last illness, he and Cuthbert read daily one of the seven gatherings or quaternions of Boisil's manuscript of the Gospel of John.[27] The sermon in Miracle 20 identifies this manuscript with the one at Durham, and says that both saints had worn it round their necks, ignoring that it has twelve gatherings rather than seven. There are further references from Durham to Boisil's book, such as a list of relics in the cathedral in 1389.[28] In the 11th century Boisil's remains had also been brought to Durham, and enshrined next to those of Cuthbert; around the same time Bede's own remains were stolen from Monkwearmouth-Jarrow for Durham, by a "notably underhand trick", and placed in Cuthbert's coffin, where they remained until 1104.[29]
There was a long and somewhat controversial tradition of using manuscripts of the gospel of John, or extracts such as the opening verse, as a protective or healing amulet or charm, which was especially strong in early medieval Britain and Ireland. Manuscripts containing the text of one gospel only are very rare, except for those with lengthy explanatory glosses, and all the examples known to Brown were of John.[30] Disapproving references to such uses can be found in the writings of Saints Jerome and Eligius, and Alcuin, but they are accepted by John Chrysostom, Augustine, who "expresses qualified approval" of using manuscripts as a cure for headaches, and Gregory the Great, who sent one to Queen Theodelinda for her son.[31] Bede's prose Life mentions that Cuthbert combated the use of amulets and charms in the villages around Melrose.[32] However, like many other leading figures of the church, he may have distinguished between amulets based on Christian texts and symbols and other types.[33]
The size of the Cuthbert Gospel places it within the Insular tradition of the "pocket gospels", of which several survive, including the Book of Dimma, Book of Mulling, and Book of Deer, although all the others are or were originally texts of all four gospels, with the possible exception of a few pages from the Gospel of John enshrined with the Stowe Missal in its cumdach or book-reliquary. There was a tradition of even smaller books, whose use may have been seems to have been often amuletic, and a manuscript of John alone, with a page size of 72 x 56 mm, was found in a reliquary at Chartres Cathedral in 1712. It is probably Italian from the 5th or 6th century, and the label it carried in 1712 saying it was a relic of St Leobinus, a bishop of Chartes who died in about 556, may be correct. The other examples are mostly in Greek or the Coptic language and contain a variety of biblical texts, especially psalters. Brown concludes that the three Latin manuscripts of John "seem to attest an early medieval practice of placing a complete Gospel of St. John in a shrine, as a protective amulet; and it seems reasonable to conclude that our manuscript was placed in St. Cuthbert's coffin to protect it".[34]
The agreement with the Jesuit British Province requires the agreed price of £9 million to be raised by March 2012. In the early stages of the appeal the emphasis has been on raising large individual donations, which have included £250,000 pledged by the Art Fund.[35] In 2012 a phase targeted at the wider public is likely.
