The Book of Kells (the Book of Columba)
The Book of Kells
The Book of Kells (also known as the “Book of Columba”) is a richly illustrated hand-written book created by Irish (Celtic) monks in around 800. This is one of the mostly decorated with exquisite miniatures and ornaments medieval manuscripts preserved to our days. Due to magnificent technique of work and beauty of pictures, many researches view it as the most significant work of Irish medieval art. The book contains four Gospels in Latin, an introduction and interpretations decorated with a huge number of colored patterns and miniatures. At the present, the book is kept in the library of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
According to the main version of its origin, the book was created in the scriptorium of Saint Columbus monastery on the isle of Iona in the end of VIII – beginning of IX centuries. After the monastery was plundered by Normans the Book was brought by refugee-monks to Ireland, into the Kells Abbey (monastery), from which the book received its name.
The book of Kells is the peak of mastership in making hand-written books in the period since the end of VI until the beginning of IX centuries in monasteries of Ireland, Scotland and Northern England as well as in monasteries founded by emigrants from Ireland and England on the continent.
Of the manuscripts preserved to this day (illustrated Gоspels) it is worth noting Cathach of St. Columba, Ambrosiana Orosius, a fragment of the Gospel of the Cathedral library of Durham (all – beginning of VII century), Book of Durrow – the second half of VII century. Of the books created in the beginning of VIII century Durham Gospels, Echternach Gospels, Lindisfarne Gospels and Lichfield Gospels are preserved. St. Gall Gospel Book and Macregal Gospels were created in the end of VIII century. In the beginning of IX Book of Armagh (807-809), Turin Gospel Book Fragment, Leiden Priscian, St. Gall Priscian and Macdurnan Gospel were created. These manuscripts possess common traits that allow researchers to put then into one category.
The book was kept in the Abbey of Kells throughout almost all of the middle ages. This monastery was founded in the city of Kells (Meath County, Ireland) in the beginning of the IX century at the time of constant invasions of Vikings by monks from the isle of Iona near the Scottish coast. After the isle of Iona became too dangerous for living because of the Vikings’ raids, the majority of the monks escaped to the Abbey of Kells, which later became the center of the society of monks founded by Saint Columba.
There were fierce arguments about the date and place of this manuscript’s creation. Tradition attributed creating of the book to Saint Columba himself, but paleographic researches moved creation of the book to a much later date –– around 800 A.D.
There are at least five different theories about the place where this manuscript was created. According to one of them, the book was created in the scriptorium of Saint Columbus Monastery on the isle of Iona and brought into the Abbey in the present, not quite finished form. According to a second version, the book was begun on Iona and later the work on it was continued in the Abbey of Kells. According to a third version, the book was completed in the scriptorium of the Abbey of Kells. According to a fourth version, the book was created in the north of England, maybe in Lindisfarne, and then brought to Iona and further –– to the Abbey of Kells. And then, finally, the book might have been created in an unknown monastery in Scotland. Probably, the precise place will never be disclosed, but at the present time the most commonly accepted version is that the book was begun on the isle of Iona and continued in the Abbey of Kells. In any case, the book was produced by the monks, who belonged to the society founded by Columba.
Whenever it was created, the book in XII century was for sure in the Abbey of Kells and almost for sure –– in the beginning of XI century. “Ulster Annals” chronicle of 1006 says, “the great Gospel of Columkille, the chief relic of the Western World, was wickedly stolen during the night from the western sacristy of the great stone church at Cenannas on account of its wrought shrine.” The manuscript was recovered a few months later—minus its golden and bejewelled cover—“under a sod.” If, as it is assumed it is spoken about the book of Kells, it is the first mention of it in the records. It may be that it was after this theft the book lost a number of pages from its beginning and its end.
In the XII century, land charters pertaining to the Abbey of Kells were copied onto some of its blank pages, which fact provides the earliest concrete evidence of the books location at Kells at that time. (The practice of copying of charters into important books was widespread in the medieval period).
The 12th-century writer Gerald of Wales, in his Topographia Hibernica, described in a famous passage seeing a great Gospel Book in Kildare which many have since assumed was the Book of Kells. The description certainly matches Kells:
This book contains the harmony of the Four Evangelists according to Jerome, where for almost every page there are different designs, distinguished by varied colours. Here you may see the face of majesty, divinely drawn, here the mystic symbols of the Evangelists, each with wings, now six, now four, now two; here the eagle, there the calf, here the man and there the lion, and other forms almost infinite. Look at them superficially with the ordinary glance, and you would think it is an erasure, and not tracery. Fine craftsmanship is all about you, but you might not notice it. Look more keenly at it and you will penetrate to the very shrine of art. You will make out intricacies, so delicate and so subtle, so full of knots and links, with colours so fresh and vivid, that you might say that all this were the work of an angel, and not of a man.
Since Gerald claims to have seen this book in Kildare, he may have seen another, now lost, book equal in quality to the Book of Kells, or he may have misstated his location.
The Abbey of Kells was dissolved due to the ecclesiastical reforms of the 12th century. The abbey church was converted to a parish church, in which the Book of Kells remained.
The Book of Kells remained in Kells until 1654. In that year, Cromwell’s cavalry was quartered in the church at Kells, and the governor of the town sent the book to Dublin for safekeeping. Henry Jones, who later became bishop of Meath after the Restoration, presented the manuscript to Trinity College in Dublin in 1661, where it has remained ever since, except for brief loans to other libraries and museums. It has been on display to the public in the Old Library at Trinity since the 19th century.
In the 16th century, one Gerald Plunkett of Dublin added a series of Roman numerals numbering the chapters of the Gospels according to the division created by 13th-century Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton. The prominent Anglican clergyman James Ussher counted and numbered its folios in 1621, shortly after James I named him Bishop of Meath. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were invited to sign the book in 1849; however, they in fact signed a modern flyleaf which was erroneously believed to have been one of the original folios. The page bearing their signatures was removed when the book was rebound in 1953.
Over the centuries, the book has been rebound several times. During an 18th-century rebinding, the pages were rather unsympathetically cropped, with small parts of some illustrations being lost. The book was also rebound in 1895, but that rebinding broke down quickly. By the late 1920s, several folios had detached completely and were kept separate from the main volume. In 1953, bookbinder Roger Powell rebound the manuscript in four volumes.
In 2000, the volume containing the Gospel of Mark was sent to Canberra, Australia, for an exhibition of illuminated manuscripts. This was only the fourth time the Book of Kells had been sent abroad for exhibition. Unfortunately, the volume suffered what has been called “minor pigment damage” while en route to Canberra. It is thought that the vibrations from the aeroplane’s engines during the long flight may have caused the damage.
In 1979, Swiss publisher Faksimile-Verlag Luzern requested permission to produce a full-colour facsimile of the book. Permission was initially denied, because Trinity College officials felt that the risk of damage to the book was too high. By 1986, Faksimile-Verlag had developed a process that used gentle suction to straighten a page so that it could be photographed without touching it and so won permission to publish a new facsimile. After each page was photographed, a single-page facsimile was prepared so the colours could be carefully compared to the original and adjustments made where necessary. The completed work was published in 1990 in a two-volume set on CD containing the full facsimile and scholarly commentary.
The Book of Kells contains the four Gospels written in black, red, purple, and yellow ink in an insular majuscule script, preceded by prefaces, summaries, and concordances of Gospel passages. Today, it consists of 340 vellum leaves, or folios. The majority of the folios are part of larger sheets, called bifolios, which are folded in half to form two folios, but some folios are singular.