ABSTRACT
The book and its author are also perplexing for the modern reader in search of an eco-friendly Celtic spirituality which is in harmony with cosmic forces and relatively untrammelled by the discipline, book-knowledge and moral code of a hierarchical Church. The coming of Christianity did not simply mean the transfer of traditional Celtic art to the new medium of the book. The inscribed evangelist portraits in the Lindisfarne Gospels seem partly inspired by Byzantine iconography, quite possibly from a gospel book which had been in the library of Cassiodorus in sixth-century Italy. The Wisdom image was particularly used to comment on the opening of St John’s Gospel and the recognition of Christ as the Creator-Logos. The only figural art in the Book of Durrow consists of highly stylised renderings of the four animal symbols of the evangelists at the beginning of the book and before each gospel.
