Book of Kells (c. 800): Ireland's Illuminated Gospel Book

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels in Latin, made by monks of the Columban monastic family around 800. Its pages are filled with spirals, interlace, fantastic animals and painted portraits of extraordinary detail, making it the most celebrated work of Insular art, the style shared by Ireland and Britain in the early Middle Ages. Kept at Trinity College Dublin since the 1660s, it is one of Ireland’s most treasured national symbols.

What the manuscript contains

The Book of Kells contains the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, together with introductory texts such as canon tables, summaries and explanations of Hebrew names. The text is mainly the Latin Vulgate translation of Jerome, mixed with readings from older Latin versions.

It survives as 340 leaves (folios) of vellum, prepared calfskin, now measuring about 33 by 25 centimetres; the pages were trimmed when the book was rebound in the 19th century. Some leaves are missing at the beginning and end. The amount of skin needed for a book of this size has led to estimates of roughly 150 to 185 calves, figures that are approximate.

The script is Insular majuscule, a large, rounded and very even hand. At least three or four scribes probably worked on the text, and several artists on the decoration.

Where and when it was made

The manuscript itself carries no colophon naming its makers. Its date of around 800 rests on comparisons of script and decoration with other manuscripts, metalwork and stone carving, and historians allow a margin of a few decades either way.

The most widely held theory links it to Iona, the island monastery off western Scotland founded by Saint Columba in 563. Iona was the head of a network of monasteries in Ireland and Britain. After Viking attacks in 795, 802 and 806, when 68 members of the community were killed, many of Iona’s monks moved to a new monastery at Kells in County Meath, built from about 807.

The book may have been started on Iona, perhaps to mark the 200th anniversary of Columba’s death in 797, and finished at Kells. Other scholars argue it was made wholly on Iona, at Kells, or in another monastery of the federation, possibly even in Northumbria or Pictland. The question remains open.

Art of the pages

The Book of Kells is decorated far more lavishly than any comparable manuscript. Almost every page has coloured initials, and many contain small animals, human figures and plant scrolls woven between the words.

Full-page illustrations include portraits of the evangelists and their symbols, a page of the Virgin and Child (often described as the earliest surviving image of the Virgin in a western manuscript), the arrest of Christ and the temptation of Christ. Elaborate carpet pages of pure ornament mark major divisions of the text.

The most famous is the Chi Rho page (folio 34 recto). It opens Matthew’s account of Christ’s birth with the Greek letters chi and rho, the first two letters of Christ’s name, swelling to fill almost the entire page. Within its spirals and interlace hide angels, a cat watching mice that nibble a communion wafer, and an otter holding a fish.

The artists used a wide range of pigments, including yellow from orpiment, green from verdigris, reds and purples from lichens or insect dyes, and blue from indigo or woad. The popular idea that the blue came from lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan has not been supported by modern scientific analysis.

How the book was made

Making a manuscript like the Book of Kells required enormous resources. Calfskins had to be soaked, scraped, stretched and dried to produce smooth vellum, then cut into sheets and folded into gatherings. Scribes ruled the pages with lines before writing with quill pens and inks made from oak galls or carbon.

The decoration was planned with great precision. Some designs appear to have been laid out with compasses and grids, and many ornaments are so small that they can only be appreciated with a magnifying glass. Pigments were ground and mixed with binders such as egg white, then applied in layers. Some colours required complex preparation, and a few may have been imported.

Scholars identify several distinct hands among both scribes and artists, each with a characteristic style. Their names are unknown. The work probably took years and may have been disrupted by the upheavals of the period, which could help explain why some decoration remained unfinished.

The theft of 1007

The earliest secure reference to the manuscript is a dramatic one. The Annals of Ulster record that in 1007 the great Gospel of Colum Cille, the chief relic of the western world, was stolen by night from the western sacristy of the stone church at Kells. It was recovered after two months and twenty nights, stripped of its gold and hidden under a sod of earth.

The jewelled cover or shrine that once held the book was never found, which may explain why some leaves at the beginning and end are lost. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the monks of Kells copied charters, legal records of land grants to the monastery, onto blank pages of the book. These documents show it was then being kept at Kells and treated as a sacred possession.

From Kells to Trinity College

The monastery at Kells declined, but the book remained in the town’s church. In the 1650s, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, it was sent to Dublin for safekeeping. Henry Jones, Bishop of Meath, presented it to Trinity College Dublin in the early 1660s, and it has remained there ever since.

The book was rebound several times. The binding of the 19th century was damaging, and in 1953 the bookbinder Roger Powell rebound it in four separate volumes. This allows two volumes to be displayed at once in the Old Library, where hundreds of thousands of visitors see it every year. In 2011 it was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Myths and facts

Myth: Gerald of Wales described the Book of Kells as the work of an angel. In the 1180s Gerald of Wales praised a gospel book he saw at Kildare, saying its intricate decoration seemed the work of an angel rather than a man. That book is lost, and it was not the Book of Kells, although his words are often quoted about it.

Myth: Saint Columba wrote the Book of Kells. Columba died in 597, about two centuries before the book was made. It was associated with him because it belonged to his monastic family and was venerated as his Gospel.

Myth: the book is unfinished because of a Viking attack. Some decoration was never completed, but there is no evidence linking this to a particular raid. Unfinished details are common in large manuscripts made over many years.

Key people

Columba (Colum Cille, c. 521-597) founded Iona and the monastic federation that produced the book. Although he lived long before it was made, the manuscript was known in the Middle Ages as the great Gospel of Colum Cille.

Henry Jones (c. 1605-1682), Bishop of Meath, gave the manuscript to Trinity College in the 1660s, together with the Book of Durrow.

Gerald of Wales (c. 1146-1223), a churchman and writer, visited Ireland in the 1180s. His praise of a now-lost gospel book at Kildare is often mistakenly applied to the Book of Kells.

Roger Powell (1896-1990), an English bookbinder, rebound the manuscript in 1953 and also worked on other early Irish manuscripts, including the Book of Durrow.

Timeline

• 563: Columba founds the monastery on Iona.
• c. 715-720: The Lindisfarne Gospels, an earlier Insular masterpiece, are made in Northumbria.
• 795: Vikings raid Iona for the first time.
• 806: Raiders kill 68 members of the Iona community.
• c. 800: The Book of Kells is made, probably on Iona and/or at Kells.
• c. 807-814: A new Columban monastery is built at Kells.
• 1007: The book is stolen from Kells and recovered without its golden cover.
• 1650s: The book is sent to Dublin during the Cromwellian wars.
• Early 1660s: Bishop Henry Jones gives it to Trinity College Dublin.
• 1953: Roger Powell rebinds the book in four volumes.

Place in Insular art

The Book of Kells is the high point of a tradition that includes the Book of Durrow and the Lindisfarne Gospels. These manuscripts combine Celtic spirals, Germanic animal interlace and Mediterranean Christian imagery. They were made in an age when monasteries in Ireland and Britain were among the leading centres of learning in Europe, a period that overlapped with the Carolingian Renaissance on the continent.

The book’s production coincided with the first Viking attacks on the British Isles, such as the raid on Lindisfarne in 793. That such a fragile treasure survived theft, war and twelve centuries is itself remarkable.

Why it matters

The Book of Kells shows the skill and devotion of early medieval Irish and Scottish monasteries at their peak. It preserves the Gospels in one of the most beautiful forms ever made and stands as a central monument of European art. For Ireland it has become a national emblem, recognised around the world.