The Lindisfarne Gospels and civilized art

Show me the Moslem equivalent.

The Lindisfarne gospels were created in the late 7^th century by Catholic monks in their north-eastern England retreat. One monk in particular Eadfrith, is credited with the astonishing artwork, without precedent in Europe. Next to the Book of Kells [see here], the decorated Lindisfarne manuscript laid out on vellum, elaborately furnished with intricate artwork of staggering detail, is one of the world's greatest works of art. It stands along with the Book of Kells as an unrivalled testimony to religion and civilization. Dedicated to the 4 gospel writers, this middle-ages manifest is a dedication to beauty, truth, awareness and supreme culture. It combines the essence of European art with a distinctly Anglo-Saxon skill and view of the world.

An audio and book translation can be found here.

“The Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the most magnificent manuscripts of the early Middle Ages, was written and decorated at the end of the 7th century by the monk Eadfrith, who became Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698 and died in 721. Its original leather binding, long since lost, was made by Ethelwald, who succeeded Eadfrith as bishop, and was decorated with jewels and precious metals later in the 8th century by Billfrith the Anchorite. The Latin text of the Gospels is translated word by word in an Old English gloss, the earliest surviving example of the Gospel text in any form of the English language, it was added between the lines in the mid 10th century by Aldred, Provost of Chester-le-Street. Today the manuscript is once again bound in silver and jewels, in covers made in 1852 at the expense of Edward Maltby, Bishop of Durham. The design is based on motifs drawn from the decoration of the manuscript itself....”

But remember, before sundry fat and ignorant atheists such as Gibbon, Diderot, Voltaire or Hume, or the fraud of all trades Galileo, Europe stank in a 'dark age'. Superstition and stupidity reigned, art and society had collapsed. Nothing of value was manufactured. Only Islam kept the candle of civilization burning.....and all awaited the grand entrance of the 17^th century and the age of science [along with witch-burning, abiogenesis, the occult, Puritanism, Spanish insolvency, the 30 years war to control Germany...].

So the propaganda tells us.