Insular script in the context of "Blackletter"

The Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D.IV) is an illuminated manuscript gospel book probably produced around the years 715–720 in the monastery at Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, which is now in the British Library in London. The manuscript is considered one of the finest works in the unique style of Hiberno-Saxon or Insular art, combining Mediterranean, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic elements.

The Lindisfarne Gospels are presumed to be the work of a monk named Eadfrith, who became Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698 and died in 721. Current scholarship indicates a date around 715, and it is believed they were produced in honour of St. Cuthbert. However, some parts of the manuscript were left unfinished so it is likely that Eadfrith was still working on it when he died. It is also possible that he produced them prior to 698, in order to commemorate the elevation of Cuthbert's relics in that year, which is also thought to have been the occasion for which the St Cuthbert Gospel (also in the British Library) was produced. The Gospels are richly illustrated in the insular style and were originally encased in a fine leather treasure binding covered with jewels and metals made by Billfrith the Anchorite in the 8th century. During the Viking raids on Lindisfarne this jewelled cover was lost and a replacement was made in 1852. The text is written in insular script, and is the best documented and most complete insular manuscript of the period.

Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period as part of an overall effort to create a clear, uniform, and consistent manner by which to copy books. Multiple abbeys had begun to experiment with improvements to earlier Merovingian cursive scripts, with one version of an early Caroline script being developed at the scriptorium of the Benedictine monks of Corbie Abbey, about 150 kilometres (95 miles) north of Paris. The development and adoption of an improved minuscule script was slow and occurred across many locations throughout the Carolingian empire, although a later version of Caroline minuscule developed at the scriptoria of Tours and used in the creation of widely distributed bibles and Gospel books helped to contribute to an overall Caroline minuscule standard. Further adoption was encouraged by the issuance of imperial capitularies, with the script continuing to spread throughout the Holy Roman Empire and beyond, ultimately replacing Insular script in Britain and Ireland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as well as Visigothic script in the Iberian peninsula.

Carolingian minuscule subsequently evolved in the tenth and eleventh centuries into a script which became known as blackletter or Gothic script, with the Carolingian minuscule becoming increasingly obsolete until the fourteenth century and the Italian Renaissance, when a script modeled on it and known as humanist minuscule script was developed. Through this later script the Carolingian minuscule can be seen as a direct ancestor of most modern-day Latin letter scripts and typefaces such as Times New Roman.

Gaelic type (sometimes called Irish character, Irish type, or Gaelic script) is a family of Insular script typefaces devised for printing Early Modern Irish. It was widely used from the 16th century until the mid-18th century in Scotland and the mid-20th century in Ireland, but is now rarely used. Sometimes, all Gaelic typefaces are called Celtic or uncial although most Gaelic types are not uncials. The "Anglo-Saxon" types of the 17th century are included in this category because both the Anglo-Saxon types and the Gaelic/Irish types derive from the insular manuscript hand.

The terms Gaelic type, Gaelic script and Irish character translate the Modern Irish phrase cló Gaelach (pronounced [ˌkl̪ˠoː ˈɡeːl̪ˠəx]). In Ireland, the term cló Gaelach is used in opposition to the term cló Rómhánach, Roman type.

The Lichfield Gospels (also known as the St Chad Gospels, the Book of Chad, the Llandeilo Gospels, the St Teilo Gospels and variations of these) is an 8th-century Insular Gospel Book housed in Lichfield Cathedral. There are 236 surviving pages, eight of which are illuminated. Another four contain framed text. The pages measure 30.8 cm by 23.5 cm. The manuscript is also important because it includes, as marginalia, some of the earliest known examples of written Old Welsh, dating to the early part of the 8th century. The art historian Peter Lord dates the book at 730, placing it chronologically before the Book of Kells but after the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Marginal entries indicate that the manuscript was in the possession of the church of St Teilo in Wales at some point in the 9th century and eventually came into the possession of Lichfield Cathedral during the 10th century.