Lindau Gospels
 Lindau Gospels Cover, Smarthistory
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The Lindau Gospels is an illuminated manuscript in the Morgan Library in New York, which is important for its illuminated text, but still more so for its treasure binding, or metalwork covers, which are of different periods. The oldest element of the book is what is now the back cover, which was probably produced in the later 8th century in modern Austria, but in the context of missionary settlements from Britain or Ireland, as the style is that of the Insular art of the British Isles. The upper cover is late Carolingian work of about 880, and the text of the gospel book itself was written and decorated at the Abbey of Saint Gall around the same time, or slightly later.
When J.P. Morgan, already in his early sixties, bought the book in 1901, it was his first major purchase of a medieval manuscript, setting the direction that much of his subsequent collecting was to follow.
The lower or back cover is older than the text and presumably added from another book, perhaps around the time the text was written. It was perhaps originally a front cover. It is the only largely intact example of a very early Insular metal bookcover to survive, although we know from documentary records that famous works like the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels had them. A few Irish cumdachs or metal book-shrines or reliquaries for books have survived, which show broadly comparable styles, and use crosses as the central feature of their designs. The style is close to that of the other main survival of essentially Anglo-Saxon work executed on the Continent, the Tassilo Chalice, and also a number of works executed by local workshops in several parts of Europe. However, the St Cuthbert Gospel (British Library), a decorated leather binding thought to date from around 700, is the earliest intact European binding.
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