Why spend a small fortune and countless hours to make a manuscript of Holy Scripture beautiful? It’s a silly question, really. It’s like asking, “Why make supper tasty when it only needs to be functional? Why go to the trouble to bake a pizza when I could throw flour, tomato sauce, olive oil, cheese, pepperoni, and seasonings into a blender, press frappe, and have in an instant something resembling what the pizza would look like moments after I’ve eaten it anyway?” The answer is simple: because the pizza is obviously better! We hate settling for merely functional food; we want food to be delightful. Why put money and effort into beautifying a Bible manuscript? Because it’s better. It’s more delightful.
But there’s more to the answer. I can’t really argue that pizza is worthy of being made well. My taste and tongue want it to be made well, but what of that? My appetite is no more worthy of satisfaction than some Platonic ideal of pizza is worthy of being glorified. But to state the obvious (and to keep my line of reasoning from devolving into utter nonsense), the Word of God is absolutely worthy of being beautified and glorified to the utmost. The Scriptures are valuable in and of themselves. They are precious, whether copied in sloppy handwriting or illuminated with gold leaf. The sloppy handwriting does not take away from the treasure that is the Word of God, though my sloppy handwriting might make the reader less inclined to see it as a treasure. The gold leaf does not add anything to the Word of God, no more than a creature can improve its Creator. But the Word of God deserves better than sloppy handwriting—indeed, deserves better than the gold leaf! It is worthy of all money and effort that helps man see it for what it is: a treasured possession, the dearest thing on earth.
The junior high students took calligraphy during the first half of the school year, and now the high school students have it. We looked together at the Lindisfarne Gospels, a manuscript of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that dates from AD 720. There’s some fascinating history here. Around AD 563, Columba, an Irish missionary, traveled to what is now Scotland. He’s the author of the hymn “Christ Is the World’s Redeemer” (LSB 539), which the students are currently singing as they gather for chapel in the morning. Columba founded an abbey on Iona, an island on the western coast of Scotland. When the Northumbrian royalty converted to Christianity in 627, King Oswald of Northumbria sent Aidan, an Irish missionary, from Iona to Lindisfarne to preach to the Anglo-Saxons. Aidan founded a monastery at Lindisfarne around AD 635. Christianity became firmly established there, and in 715-720 Eadfrith, the Bishop of Lindisfarne, made the Lindisfarne Gospels. Ethelwald, Bishop of the Lindisfarne islanders, did the binding. Billfrith made the metal casing for the manuscript. Aldred, a later priest, glossed the Latin text with Anglo-Saxon. You can browse a full scan of the Lindisfarne Gospels here. Here’s one page that we recently studied:
It’s the text of Matthew 1:18, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph…” In Latin, the word Christi, “Christ,” begins the verse, and Eadfrith very ornately wrote that divine title and name, abbreviating it as a Greek chi-rho (XP) plus the Latin noun ending. There’s almost an infinite level of detail in those three letters, confessing that Christ always holds new delight for us and further knowledge and insight.
The Anglo-Saxon glosses add their own level of interest. At the top of the page the second dark Anglo-Saxon word from the left is godspell (the “s” looks like a lowercase “r”). It’s from the Anglo-Saxon verb spellian “to announce” and god, “good,” put together, “good news.” This is where we get our modern English word “gospel.” In the last line of text on the page, above the Latin mater eius are the Anglo-Saxon words moder his, which haven’t changed too much over the last 1,300 years.
The junior high students recently completed their final projects for the calligraphy class, for which they had to write out a Scripture passage using an Uncial script and adorn it with Celtic knot work. They colored their pieces using egg tempera paint made with yolk (the yolk is part of what gives the colors of medieval manuscripts their glow; the egg whites, plus what was left of the carton, became a snack of scrambled eggs later in the day). Below are pictures of some students and their pieces. The Word of God is our dearest treasure, and it’s fitting that it look like it. The students did wonderful work, following in the footsteps of Eadfrith and many unnamed medieval scribes who adorned the Word of God and left the Church some of her greatest works of art.
In Christ,
Pastor Richard
P.S. If you would like a modern Bible that is beautiful, made of good materials, and is a fraction of the price of the Lindisfarne Gospels, I highly recommend evangelicalbible.com.
