Book of Kells - online

Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Created in the early 800s, the Book of Kells (Trinity College Dublin MS 58) is one of the, if not the, most spectacular and beautiful manuscripts ever created. The manuscript contains the four Gospels in Latin based on a Vulgate text, written on vellum (prepared calfskin), in a bold and expert version of the script known as "insular majuscule".

Transparencies of the Book of Kells, originally done in 1990, have recently been rescanned using state of the art imaging technology. These new digital images provide the most accurate high resolution images to date.



The manuscript can be viewed in its entirety at

Book of Kells
http://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/home/index.php?DRIS_ID=MS58_003v

- Information taken and adapted from the Trinity College Dublin Web Site.

- Public Domain Image showing the Portrait of John

Probably the best thing to say here is just "!"

I was trotting through the Temple Bar last October on the way to see the Book of Kells when I got picked clean of all my vacation money by a pickpocket. When I finally got there I saw a big flashing sign warning of pickpockets. Needless to say I was so upset when I finally got in to see it that I rather lost all the pleasure of it. This makes for easier, less stressful viewing. ;-)

Oooh - what a wonderful resource! Thank you so much for sharing this!

#1 Papyri
Thank you. Itʻs a great service to the world to have access to a view of the Book of Kells on the Internet. I have always wondered at the life of the monks, featured, sitting in their stalls or tables, pen in hand, working. But how was it done -- by the entire group, each with special training? How did they get the colours they did, and ingredients to mix the colours, the quality of paper, the writing of the text. If a mistake was made, surely they were forced to redo the work or how else can one explain the beautiful flawless pages? One is always told about the Irish monks, isolated, intent on copying and illustrating books while the whole of (I remember one Elementary School nunʻs, Sister Mary Nobertʻs, phrasing: "Europe lay in the DEEPEST SHADES of the DARK AGES.") It made us shudder for the entire poor continent of Europe. We peered at a printed commercial reproduction of those tonsured monks, isolated on their large, mountainous island once creeping with snakes that St. Patrick lured and put away -- we fell to a hushed reverence reserved mainly for 3 oʻclock, Good Friday. On an island then, as now, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Time has made no difference. And Space is irrelevant.

>7 leialoha: The whole trope of the "Dark Ages" ( term I never allow my students to use), has been completely overblown. In part this is a result of the Protestant historiographical tradition - recall that early protestant rhetoric had good reason to make the bad old times under the thrall of the evil papacy seem as dismal as possible. (This is the source of a lot of misconceptions about the Middle Ages, actually). Add onto that, a layer of enlightenment era trash-talking about the ills of religion, and the reality of the period gets lost in successive waves of what is essentially propaganda.

The Middle Ages, even the "early Middle Ages," the time of the Book of Kells, were far more vital and lively than we have been accustomed to thinking. Literature, art, philosophy, culture all flourished throughout. True, the early MIddle Ages struggled with a mini ice age, or protracted period of cooler weather, but even so, the idea that life was cold, bleak, primitive and foreboding is hogwash.

Oh, and the Book of Kells, just like any manuscript, is far from flawless. Mistakes were made, of course. Some were 'erased' by using a sort of scraper that literally scraped off the surface of the skin. Others were hastily worked into the text or the design. George Bain's excellent book Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction actually shows some of the mistakes in Kells specifically. (That book, by the way, is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in Kells or other of the celtic manuscripts, even if you aren;t wanting to learn how to do interlace.)

>8 Mithalogica:: "In part this is a result of the Protestant historiographical tradition - recall that early protestant rhetoric had good reason to make the bad old times under the thrall of the evil papacy seem as dismal as possible."

I've got a fantastic book rescued from my Episcopalian grandmother's shelves: Glimpses of the dark ages, or, Sketches of the social condition of Europe from the fifth to the twelfth century (1846) -- it's about as hilariously obnoxious as you would expect.

"The whole trope of the "Dark Ages" ( term I never allow my students to use)"

I intentionally set mine an essay early in the semester where they are to write about their presuppositions about the Middle Ages / "Dark Ages"; and then have them come back at the end of the semester and analyze those first essays in light of everything we've studied over the course of about 8 weeks devoted the M.A. (The course nominally covers the period from Augustus through the Reformation, but as a medievalist, I tend to spend a lot more time in the M.A. than some of the other faculty do. The classical historian usually doesn't make it into the Middle Ages until the final third of his course!)

>8 Mithalogica:

*Snerk* I will have to keep my eyes open for that one; it sounds a right entertaining read!

I love your essay assignment! Since most of my coursework is more broadly humanities-based, I tend to get creative working in my medievalist interests. (And, as you noted, they tend to get so very little of it elsewhere; my university doesn't even *pretend* to cover the Middle Ages in history!) But I always try to counter the "ohnoes, the dark ages were scary and dirty" silliness. Good to know I'm not the only one!

ETA::: Oh my gosh, I just realized (I had to visit your profile, and your book listing for the above) that you're in KY! I'm in Louisville; so good to meet a fellow 'Bluegrass Medievalist!' We tend to be a rare breed hereabouts!

#8 "Dark Ages"
The phrasing by Sr. Mary Norbert was "Europe lay in the DEEPest DARK Ages." I understand your love of your subject and honour it but please realize it was a Roman Catholic nun in an Elementary parish village school, in the middle of the Pacific, teaching children who had never experienced devils, of the wonder-ful graphic kinds that the Catholics brought with their often superb sense of pictorial salvation -- that made the other books like the Book of Kells a stunning experience of the beauty believed implicit in the same salvation. It so happened I was the only Protestant, already confirmed, as a matter of fact, in the Calvinistic Congregationalism brought to the islands by the New England missionaries. They seldom admitted to the attractive qualities of pictorial
art of the robust Catholic tradition -- although the brand from cold New England got thawed out soon after arrival to the islands. In New England, it came as a shock to actually HEAR 18th c Jonathan Edwardsʻ Fire-and-Damnation pronouncements. I mean when one stands in e.g. the Old North Church and senses, in the quiet of that beautiful, simple chapel, as worthy as a St. Maryʻs of London by Christopher Wren --the Puritan spirit that impelled people to more earnestly to seek salvation. But I learned the Sense and the Emotional Impact of the context for the darkness of the Middle Age -- it was, in the Puritanʻs case, a strategy to REVIVE the spiritual sense of the New Englandersʻ Forefathers. Likewise, Sr. Mary Norbertʻs understanding of child psychology led her to dramatize the splendid qualities of the dedicated monks -- testimony to the sweetness, probably actually fierce, that Christian faith also engenders. Children, especially, learn by a developing emotional intelligence as well as by purported "truth." I think itʻs a mistake to dun phrases from a contemporary and/or adult viewpoint because they are, of course, from our contemporary point in time, false, as THOUGHT. As you say the expression is oversimplified. Do children need dramatization --DEEP DARK Ages vs. the BOOK OF KELLS. Pictures are rivetting.
Or why admire the terrors in Doreʻs Dantean world unless it informs you without your even realizing youʻre being instructed. Instead, the delight wins. But it could probably never do so all by itself. Isnʻt Contrast a major principle in art and therefore a means of defining experience? But I hear you and, of course, agree.

#11. Re: " . . .heard Jonathan Edwards." Sometimes, in places steeped in history, like the Tower of London, it takes little to understand the spirit that moved them. Only metaphorical speakings may show us the way.

>11 leialoha: Respectfully, I couldn't disagree more. Children respond to dramatization, perhaps. But they are also perfectly capable of understanding matters (to a level of subtlety that many adults seem to lack, in my experience), without deeply shaded and dramatized presentation. Of any possible audience before whom the historian may deceitfully color the past, the most egregious is most certainly children.

Furthermore, the very nature of such dramatization makes it horrifically vulnerable to ideological shading, not just drama. Drama, after all, has certain integral elements (go back to Aristotle's Poetics; what I'm saying is nothing new), and these elements inevitably include both protagonist and antagonist. The more we dramatize, the more we accentuate both, making heroes of some and villains of others.* In that moment, however, we have begun teach ideology, not history.

One hopes that those who savor the artistry of Dore's Dantean images (or the verses of Dante himself), are aware they are reading allegory, not history. Dante himself is aware he is writing allegory; he describes this at length in his letter to Can Grande dellaScala, where he elaborates on how the reader is to approach his Commedia. (If you dismiss the epistle to CanGrande, as some do, refer then to De Vulgari Eloquentia, and/or Il Convivio, where he also discusses layers of allegorical literary meaning).

However, were we to tell the tale of actual history using Dante's dramatic style, or Dore's equally dramatic visions (as it seems the above referenced Sister was doing), we would again be engaging in indoctrination, not education. The Middle Ages can be brought to life in many colorful, fun, and approachable ways without merely perpetrating inaccuracies and prejudices.

As to needing "metaphorical speakings" to help us understand the motivations of the past, I think that's also hogwash. People then were people, and really, at their hearts, no different from us. People then (it makes no matter to which "then' we are referring), were moved by love, fear, hunger, loyalty, selfishness, selflessness, sex, nobility, pettiness, and all the tapestry of human emotion just as we are today. Mystical, overblown dramatics only reify the intrinsically human, rendering it less understandable, not more.

*I have often referred to this tendency as the 'Big Bad Wolf Syndrome;' some seem unable to conceive of anything without distilling the matter down to a Bad Guy and a Good Guy. Rarely, however, is the reality as simple as this kind of dualistic thinking implies. Still worse, dualistic thinking requires a Bad Guy, where often there are but ordinary people.

>11 leialoha: and 13: In the contemporary world, such dramatization of the Middle Ages plays right into the hands of the Dan Brown's of the world with their ludicrous conspiracy theories -- rather than revealing the Middle Ages (or any other historical era, for that matter), it cloaks them under a penumbra of misty alterity. The reality of medieval life was often different enough from contemporary life to make connecting students with it already difficult; add another chasm of puffed up obfuscation, and bridging the chasm between yesterday and today becomes nigh on impossible. (I wrote more in this vein a few years ago in reviewing an episode of NOVA devoted to gothic cathedrals: "The Secrets of Medieval Cathedrals...".)

Oddly, the converse often seems to be true when we teach and think about the classical cultures of Greece and especially Rome. The Renaissance narrative has never quite left our historiography, and the neo-classicism that infuses the founding (mythic) narrative of the United States adds to our comfy sense of affinity with Rome, which is all too often blind to the chasm between us and them (as Peter Brown eloquently pointed out in December in the New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/dec/19/rome-sex-freedom/ ).

#13
1, We were talking about the Book of Kells.

2. I was recounting a story of when I was first shown it and its beauty was brought out by a contrast to the the times, THEN CALLED (in my childhood) the "Dark Ages, which was the term used then by scholars in the field, who apparently had no opportunity to inquire of your convictions on the subject. (I, from a Calvinistic Congregationalist denomination that preferred plain crosses to crucifixions etc., appreciated a Roman Catholicʻs, Sr. Mary Norbertʻs, introduction of the Book of Kells. And I appreciate her wonder-full dramatic presentation. I had never seen anything like the Book of Kells. It was only a fair reproduction by todayʻs photo standards. I never forgot the experience of it. (I daresay neither had my elementary Catholic schoolmates seen anything like it either -- but they were accustomed to the crucifixion in gold and rich, silk vestments, and ivy green forests that black horned devils, brandishing blood dripping swords lunged out of church walls painted to inspire one from doing evil. I was not. The Book of Kells stood in contrast to that drama. Let me assure you, we were a pretty well behaved, prayer memorizing lot.

3. The Book of Kells is a work of art, regardless who views it, with which faith, or even if he/she has none. That is, art is not indoctrination, but a language that is in this case of the Book of Kells both pictorial and in colour. Art extends human sensibilities of sight, touch, smell, sound, thinking, etc. In this instance, it does so by the eye, depicting form and substance in three dimension -- and if danced, in four, by lines, shades, colour, textures, with mediums of paper, water, wood, etc., height, weight etc. The art of the Book of Kells is the imaginative correlative of the monksʻ understanding of their faith in the believed truth of the text. That the monks were powerfully inspired by the language of the Bible is obvious, but they added to their Bible a flourish. It shows their mastery of illustration by colour and gold.

Sr. Mary Norbert was intent on teaching us the depth of the monksʻ commitment of faith, for they worked alone, she said, in Ireland, an island. So moved were they that they laboured to produce a visual beauty to match the inspiration of their Biblical faith told in the words that were translations of the Judaic-Christian story. That was a profound experience.

When the condition of their labour was told us children, it was depicted by description, as in a story: set in the "Dark Ages." The condition was the context, described in the story. The monks worked in isolation, contrasted with the dark of the world beyond. In those rooms was the "light" that was the love of their art of illustration, analogous to a poem, a song, a dance, etc. They labouored, but in that, they rejoiced. Outside, the world, that is the continent, there was no such commensurate light that was known. That is the heart of the phrase, as one of two terms set in opposition for contrast, which is dramatic.
The art of drama lay not only in her choice of words -- "DEEPEST" "DARK" -- but also in the rise of tone of DEEPest, the slowing of tempo, the pause between words, and the stress on DARK, prolonging the A of DARK.

All the rant about indoctrination vs. education and so forth is, in this case, to me sheer pretentious "scholarship." All religious teachings may be called indoctrination; all claim to be educating. I was a Protestant and not once did I ever believe Sr. Mary Norbert misrepresented her faith, because I knew my faith, (which was my familyʻs more than mine, but mine still), was just as likely to be imperfect. (Thatʻs what my Congregationalist grandmother believed.) This is not to say indoctrination does not exist. One would have to contend hypocrisy first. I would never believe any, especially nuns, who give their lives to teaching their faith, are hypocrites among teachers of religion. And I swear to it as a Protestant (for sauce) but even more so as a matter of common logic (for water).

When I said "I hear you and I agree" with you I meant I hear that you believe that "trope, the Dark Ages" is "overblown." I agree with that because SINCE my elementary school days, we have learned more about the Middle Ages. We have the advantage of hindsight. It is cheap when we arrogate superiority to ourselves about a time when scholars and teachers had not the same resources that we have in further study of Middle Ages. But at the time the Book of Kells was introduced to that little village classroom of elementary school children, "Deep, Dark Ages" was the standard scholarship, I believe. If it was "Protestant propaganda," one Catholic nun used the term -- would you purport -- in ignorance? Strange -- she never said Black instead of Dark Ages.

Before you throw around words like "allegory," you should know that it is a form of storied art. Stories are metaphors of life situations, in language that is speech, or speech re=devised for writing.

I donʻt believe you understand art. I donʻt believe you understand children. I donʻt believe you understand teaching children and how they learn. You certainly donʻt seem to believe that anybody else (than yourself), like a Roman Catholic nun (who gave her life to teaching children, even this Protestant child then), understood how the Christian faith may be expressed by simple contrast at first exposure. Why not? You lack imagination. That is not a crime. But it does lead you to presume to know more than you understand.

Children grow up and comprehend more, differently, and both socially dependently and individually independently. Apparently, considering how many kinds of children may exist, whether on islands or on continents, they are not as adult as you are.

One exposure with a few words of a phrase is not a death sentence.

The Book of Kells stands brilliantly as a product of an age that was believed to be generally impoverished of COMMENSURATE WORKS on the continent. Certainly it was not made in the light believed to describe the Age of Greece or that Power known of Rome, or (from after the fall of Rome, looking forward) -- that known as the Renaissance.

#14
Are you saying the Ages or Periods cannot be compared?
Logically anything may be compared if they share one thing in common. I am not certain what you mean.