What was sacked at lindisfarne

It is clear that the attack on Lindisfarne is far from the first Viking raid on the British Isles. But worse was to come. The weather had been awful across northern England resulting in a poor harvest. By a famine had set in, reducing the people to abject despair.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that the worse was still to come, noting that there :. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter. This gives only a sense of the horror that was to descend on Lindisfarne. There could be no such stand on Lindisfarne without divine intervention.

Some of the brethren they killed; some they carried off in chains; many they cast out, naked and loaded with insults; some they drowned in the sea. The impact on the Anglo-Saxon and clerical psyche was profound.

Cuthbert and warm his feet when he was praying. Related: 12 bizarre medieval trends. Bede wrote that the body had not decayed at all. The brothers then "clothed the body in fresh garments, they laid it in a new coffin which they placed on the floor of the sanctuary" translation from the book "The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe, Volume 1" by Michelle Brown, British Library, Artifacts from Lindisfarne indicate that the monks enjoyed material wealth.

The Lindisfarne Gospels, a text that contains the canonical Christian Gospels, is decorated with colorful illustrations and was written on fine sheets of cattle hide leather. A colophon says that the texts were copied by St.

Eadfrith, who was bishop of Lindisfarne between A. How much it cost to produce the Gospels is unknown but scholars agree that it would have been substantial. Another artifact that shows the wealth of the people at Lindisfarne is a recently discovered 1, year-old game piece that is decorated with a blue "gumdrop" color.

It may have been brought to Lindisfarne by a wealthy visitor. It was the first time the Vikings had attacked a monastic site in Britain, and the attack came as a major shock for medieval Christians. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle a record of events claimed that dragons were seen flying around Northumbria the area of Britain where Lindisfarne is located before the attack happened. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter…," the chronicle entry said translated by James Ingram in Alcuin believed that God was punishing the monks at Lindisfarne for an unknown sin.

The attack "has not happened by chance, but is the sign of some great guilt," Alcuin wrote in the letter to Bishop Higbald, going on to encourage the surviving monks to not wear fancy clothes, not drink, pray often, keep faith in God and not have sex. The attack on Lindisfarne was only the beginning. Viking raids increased in Britain in following years and eventually entire Viking armies landed in Britain, conquering parts of the country.

As the Vikings attacked other monastic sites, Alcuin kept writing letters encouraging priests and monks in Britain not to flee from the Vikings. In its chapels and on its altars were golden crucifixes and crosiers, silver pyxes and ciboria, ivory reliquaries, and tapestries.

In its scriptorium, illuminated manuscripts. The attack on Lindisfarne was unprecedented and horrified those who wrote of it. For Alcuin, who was at the court of Charlemagne and a leader of the Carolingian Renaissance, it was inconceivable that ships could suddenly appear from over the horizon. Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.

Another chronicler, also working from a lost version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle but writing in the twelfth century, tells of that fateful year. And they came to the church of Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters, many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea How else to explain these depredations except that an omnipotent God was deservedly chastising an unworthy people with acts of divine retribution.

What assurance is there for the churches of Britain, if St Cuthbert, with so great a number of saints, defends not its own?