Echternach Gospels

This manuscript, and other such Hiberno-Saxon codices, were highly important instructional devices used in the Early Middle Ages primarily for conversion.

This style is classified by intricate interlacing or linear patterns, flat geometric layout, and reduced schematic figures.

[2] As the Christian Church spreads across Europe, a resurgence of Imperial Roman conventions in art is evidenced as early as the 6th century through the Carolingian period.

The very flat and stylized figural representation that we see in the Echternach Gospels are a result of the integration of the Roman author portrait convention depicted in the native visual language which emphasizes abstraction.

Bede, the eighth-century Northumbrian monk, writes that religious imagery was for the “intent that all who entered the church, even if ignorant of letters, might be able to contemplate … the ever-gracious countenance of Christ and his saints".

[7] Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 597, travelled to England as a missionary for King Æthelberht of Kent, bringing many of his manuscripts with him as necessary conversion tools.

The council was initially called to reconcile a dispute over the date of Easter and address other dissenting issues between Eastern and Western Christianity.

This developing framework of medieval Christianity contextualizes many of these Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts, including the Echternach Gospels, under the canvas of the multicultural Roman Church.