<P> The fittings of a major abbey church in the insular period remain hard to imagine; one thing that does seem clear is that the most fully decorated manuscripts were treated as decorative objects for display rather than as books for study . The most fully decorated of all, the Book of Kells, has several mistakes left uncorrected, the text headings necessary to make the Canon tables usable have not been added, and when it was stolen in 1006 for its cover in precious metals, it was taken from the sacristy, not the library . The book was recovered, but not the cover, as also happened with the Book of Lindisfarne . None of the major insular manuscripts have preserved their elaborate jewelled metal covers, but we know from documentary evidence that these were as spectacular as the few remaining continental examples . The re-used metal back cover of the Lindau Gospels (now in the Morgan Library, New York) was made in southern Germany in the late 8th or early 9th? century, under heavy insular influence, and is perhaps the best indication as to the appearance of the original covers of the great insular manuscripts, although one gold and garnet piece from the Anglo - Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, found in 2009, may be the corner of a book - cover . The Lindau design is dominated by a cross, but the whole surface of the cover is decorated, with interlace panels between the arms of the cross . The cloisonné enamel shows Italian influence, and is not found in work from the Insular homelands, but the overall effect is very like a carpet page . </P> <P> Although many more examples survive than of large pieces of metalwork, the development of the style is usually described in terms of the same outstanding examples: </P> <P> Cathach of St. Columba . An Irish Latin psalter of the early 7th century, this is perhaps the oldest known Irish manuscript of any sort . It contains only decorated letters, at the beginning of each Psalm, but these already show distinctive traits . Not just the initial, but the first few letters are decorated, at diminishing sizes . The decoration influences the shape of the letters, and various decorative forms are mixed in a very unclassical way . Lines are already inclined to spiral and metamorphose, as in the example shown . Apart from black, some orange ink is used for dotted decoration . The classical tradition was late to use capital letters for initials at all (in Roman texts it is often very hard to even separate the words), and though by this time they were in common use in Italy, they were often set in the left margin, as though to cut them off from the rest of the text . The insular tendency for the decoration to lunge into the text, and take over more and more of it, was a radical innovation . The Bobbio Jerome which according to an inscription dates to before 622, from Bobbio Abbey, an Irish mission centre in northern Italy, has a more elaborate initial with colouring, showing Insular characteristics still more developed, even in such an outpost . From the same scriptorium and of similar date, the Bobbio Orosius has the earliest carpet page, although a relatively simple one . </P> <P> Durham Gospel Book Fragment . The earliest painted Insular manuscript to survive, produced in Lindisfarne c. 650, but with only seven leaves of the book remaining, not all with illuminations . This introduces interlace, and also uses Celtic motifs drawn from metalwork . The design of two of the surviving pages relates them as a two - page spread </P>

Which of the following is true of the hiberno-saxon or insular style