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The Lindisfarne Gospels: Detail
The picture below shows a detail from one of the pages in the Lindisfarne
Gospels, the beginning of St. Jerome's Prologue to the Gospels. In the
Latin word Plures 'several' the first two letters are made up from
a number of serpent-like forms with birds' heads (the largest one looks
to me like a mallard with wolf's ears and a long serpent's tongue -- perhaps
this creature is really a dragon). The Latin text is otherwise written
in a script known as
insular majuscule or
insular half-uncial.
Above the words of the Latin
text Aldred wrote his glosses in a more cursive script known as
insular minuscule.
Aldred's glossing technique can be studied here. The name lucas
(third line below Plures) is not glossed, leading to a gap in the
English 'text' (enlarged below). In the edited extracts here such gaps
have been filled with the Latin text in grey.
Transcription:
| & |
|
îe godspellere |
| et |
lucas |
euangelista |
Note that when a Latin word is divided at the end of a line, Aldred
also divides his English word to ensure that the two texts are parallel.
This can be seen in the third and second lines in the large picture above:
uide/runt
©ese/gon
saw,
mi/nistrauerunt
©e/embihtatun
served.
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