The Durham Gospels is a very incomplete late 7th century insular

Insular art

Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, is the style of art produced in the post-Roman history of Ireland and Great Britain. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe...

 Gospel Book

Gospel Book

The Gospel Book, Evangelion, or Book of the Gospels is a codex or bound volume containing one or more of the four Gospels of the Christian New Testament...

, now kept in the Durham Cathedral

Durham Cathedral

The Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert of Durham is a cathedral in the city of Durham, England, the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Durham. The Bishopric dates from 995, with the present cathedral being founded in AD 1093...

 Library (MS A.II.17). A single folio of this manuscript is now in Magdalene College, Cambridge

Magdalene College, Cambridge

Magdalene College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mary Magdalene...

 (Pepysian MS 2981). Only two of the fully decorated pages survive: a Crucifixion (the oldest in English art) and the initial to John, and both of these are in poor condition. There were probably originally evangelist portrait

Evangelist portrait

Evangelist portraits are a specific type of miniature included in ancient and mediæval illuminated manuscript Gospel Books, and later in Bibles and other books, as well as other media. Each Gospel of the Four Evangelists, the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, may be prefaced by a portrait of...

s and carpet pages, as in other Insular Gospel books conceived on a similar scale. The book was produced at Lindisfarne

Lindisfarne

Lindisfarne is a tidal island off the north-east coast of England. It is also known as Holy Island and constitutes a civil parish in Northumberland...

 and brought to Durham when the monks of Lindisfarne removed to Durham because of Viking

Viking

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...

 attacks. The Durham Gospels were written by the same scribe that wrote the Echternach Gospels

Echternach Gospels

The Echternach Gospels is an 8th-century insular Gospel Book from the library of the monastery of Echternach, Luxembourg. It is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris . The manuscript was written by the same scribe that wrote the Durham Gospels.-References:* De Hamel, Christopher. A History...

.

The Durham Cathedral Library A. II. 10. Gospel Book Fragment is another manuscript (MS A.II.10) in the cathedral library which is sometimes referred to as the "Durham Gospels", but more usually as the "Durham Gospel Fragment".