The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish monk Saint Aidan; who had been sent from Iona off the west coast of Scotland to Northumbria at the request of King Oswald c.635 CE. It became the base for Christian evangelising in the North of England and also sent a successful mission to Mercia. Monks from the community of Iona settled on the island. Northumberland's patron saint; Saint Cuthbert; was a monk and later Abbot of the monastery; and his miracles and life are recorded by the Venerable Bede. Cuthbert later became Bishop of Lindisfarne. He was buried here; his remains later translated to Durham Cathedral (along with the relics of Saint Eadfrith of Lindisfarne). Eadberht of Lindisfarne; the next bishop (and Saint) was buried in the place from which Cuthbert's body was exhumed earlier the same year when the priory was abandoned in the late ninth century.

At some point in the early 700s the famous illuminated manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels; an illustrated Latin copy of the Gospels of Matthew; Mark; Luke and John; was made probably at Lindisfarne and the artist was possibly Eadfrith; who later became Bishop of Lindisfarne. Sometime in the second half of the tenth century a monk named Aldred added an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) gloss to the Latin text; producing the earliest surviving Old English copies of the Gospels. The Gospels were illustrated in an insular style containing a fusion of Celtic; Germanic and Roman elements; they were probably originally covered with a fine metal case made by a hermit called Billfrith.