Incipit serves here also as an initial. Decoration in the early Northumbro-Irish manuscripts has the function of introducing each text, and of breaking the page into visual sections which makes it easier to use. The opening of St. John in the Echternach Gospels. Lindisfarne, around 700

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Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms. lat. 9389, f. 177. After Christopher de Hamel. Medieval Craftsmen: Scribes and Illuminators (London: British Museum Press, 1992), plate 38.