Well worth a look

I poached this picture off the blog of Westminster Cathedral in London, the Mother Church of Catholics in England and Wales. I did so only to entice you to view the post from which I poached it, entitled Lindisfarne Gospels meet their Bishop.

If I understood our Director of Music and Liturgy, Mr. Gregory Glenn, correctly when we first discussed setting up our parish blog, The People of St. Mary Magdalene, part of his inspiration was the Westminster Cathedral blog Solomon, I Have Surpassed Thee. Since then I have looked at it from time-to-time. Today that glance was well worth my time. The picture you see above is one of "so-called 'carpet pages'" of the "Lindisfarne Gospels". The one in the picture, according to the author of the post, is the "one introducing Mark's gospel". Dr. Michelle Brown, the leading authority on these unique manuscripts, believes (just from looking it is easy to see why) the carpet pages are "derived from the patterns of actual Islamic carpets, used for prayer at Lindisfarne!"


The post is worth reading and educational in terms of understanding about auxilary bishops and titular sees. For example, Bishop Wester, as auxilary of San Francisco, is the titular bishop the Diocese of Lamiggiga, located in Numidia in North Africa. It was diocese in Roman Africa in a region that alternated between a Roman province and a Roman client state. It does not exist today. Numidia was located on the eastern coast of modern day Algeria, bordered by the Roman province of Mauretania (west coast of modern Algeria) to the west, the Roman province of Africa (modern day Tunisia) to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Sahara Desert to the south.