Charles Gidley - The Book of Kells: *BARGAIN FULL EDITION

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ISBN: 9781608637201

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Credits: frontis: f29r. The Introductory Page of the Gospel of Matthew;
at right: f. 34r Detail of angels from the Monogram Page;
far right: f.40v Detail from Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew;
images visipix.com.

f.27v. The Four Evangelists Symbols page in the Gospel of Matthew. The symbols of all four Evangelists are presented here. Reading clockwise: Matthew (human), Mark (lion), John (eagle), and Luke (calf).VISIPIX.COM

T he Book of Kells, Irelands greatest national art treasure, is an illuminated manuscript that presents a Latin translation of the Four Gospels and their Preliminaries in a lush majuscule script accompanied by a dazzling array of decorative ornamentation, iconography, and illustration. The book is named after the Abbey of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, where it is believed monks associated with the monastic order of St. Columba in the late eighth to early ninth centuries created most of its pages. It is believed that the manuscript was never entirely completed. Scholars are unsure of its whereabouts immediately after the early ninth century Viking invasions, but most agree that it was still at Kells as of the early eleventh century. It remained there until Cromwells invasion of Ireland. In 1654, during the occupation of Kells by Cromwells troops, it was transferred for safekeeping to Dublin. In 1661 it was officially bequeathed to Trinity College. Under that librarys stewardship and careful preservation the manuscript was elevated to the status it has today as Irelands most hallowed work of art. The Book of Kells remains at Trinity and is on permanent display at the colleges Old Library.

A first perusal of the Book of Kells can be a daunting experience, simultaneously mesmerizing and bewildering. The richness of its polychromatic artistry, the fecundity of its embellishment and the strangeness of it hieratic imagery can overshadow what the manuscript actually represents. It could be said that its artistry has the same kind of protean visual effect as modern-day Op Art or, in a more humorously popular vein, a session with a Wheres Waldo book. Appreciation of many of the images requires a sustained contemplative focus accompanied by the use of a good magnifying glass. Only then will their shapes fully reveal themselves on the page. Even when images are clearly discernable, their meaning can escape the modern viewer. A working knowledge of each of the four Gospels is a prerequisite to overcoming these obstacles, as is a review of specific passages in the books of Ezekiel (1:129) and Revelations (4:18). These passages, which will be referred to later in this survey, are thematically significant to the manuscripts symbolism and iconography. Finally, it will help to have a basic knowledge of manuscripts historical and artistic background. It is to be remembered that the manuscript is a presentation of the Four Gospels as envisioned by eighth and ninth century Columban monks, the understanding of whose culture and whose style of creating devotional art requires that we place the book in the context of the history of early Irish Christianity.

Scholars believe that Irelands conversion to Christianity occurred during the fifth century. The first written reference to this conversion appears in a work known as Prospers Chronicle and also in the Annals of Ulster, which state that in 431 Pope Celestine named one Palladius as the first bishop of Ireland. That Rome considered Ireland worthy of this recognition suggests that there must have been a significant number of Christian communities already present. Where the early missionaries who inspired these communities originated from is difficult to say. Some missionaries may have come via trade routes from Northern Spain, the Eastern Mediterranean or from Gaul. Some came from Britain. The most important of these was St. Patrick, who, according to the Annals of Ulster, arrived in 432. (After this we hear no more of Palladius.) For our purpose of describing the cultural milieu from which the Book of Kells emerged, it is instructive to note that the growth of Christianity in Ireland from the late fifth through the ninth century took two divergent paths. St. Patrick brought Romanized Catholicism to Ireland. Indeed, according to a fragment of one of his Latin letters, entitled Confession, Patrick thought of himself as a Roman citizen. His model of Christianity was the Church of Rome, a Church that reflected the urban environment in which it operated. Like the civil administration of the city of Rome, that Church took the form of a rigidly interconnected hierarchy based on centralized authority. When Patrick arrived in Ireland he found a loose confederation of rural Christian communities organized not around any central Church authority but rather around monastic centers, each independent from the other. Doctrinally, these communities were entirely in line with the Roman Church, but organizationally they formed the nucleus of what was to become a uniquely indigenous expression of Catholicism, which scholars have referred to as the Celtic or Irish Church. This monastic Irish Church was heir to a movement that stressed solitude, asceticism and scholarship, one whose roots can be traced as far back as the fourth century to North Africas desert Fathers, the followers of eremitism in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean, and to the monasticism in Gaul of St. Martin of Tours. Promulgated by a host of rather independent-minded monks, and therefore borderline renegades according to Rome, this breakaway monastic movement would have a tumultuous relationship with the rigidly organized Church of Rome as it spread through Western Europe and on to the British Isles.

The Patrician (or Roman) branch ultimately became Irelands official church. However, from the sixth to the ninth centuries the monastic tradition of the Irish Church ran parallel to the Roman influenced organization created by Patrick and, most importantly, became fertile ground out of which grew a uniquely Irish community of monks. Hungry for Latin religious writings of the Church Fathers, this community became known for its devotion to scholarship, learning, and art, and it was this devotion that inspired them to create a repository of classical Latin learning during the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. With much of Western Europe sunk into illiteracy, it was the monks of this Irish Church who kept the lamp of classical scholarship lit in the capacious libraries and thriving scriptoria of their monasteries. And it was in their scriptoria that illuminated manuscripts like the