The Faith Between the Lines: A Survey of Doctrinal Language in the Old Northumbrian Glosses to the Gospel of Matthew in the Lindisfarne Gospels

Abstract

The present thesis discusses whether the community of St Cuthbert, located at Chester-le Street in Northumbria, was impacted by the English Benedictine Reform during the time when Aldred glossed MS Cotton Nero D IV, better known as the Lindisfarne Gospels. By comparing his interlinear word-for-word translation to the West-Saxon prose translation of the Gospel of Matthew, the study sought to establish the lexicological differences between both translators' approaches to translating religious terms, which were suspected to reflect a reform-impact if there was one. By placing the different translations in the contexts of their respective places and circumstances of composition some specifically Old Northumbrian features of the gloss by Aldred could be further explained than they had previously been in the extensive body of research on the Lindisfarne Gospels codex.