The Book of Kells
The ignorance of Vikings and the pinnacle of book design
The Book of Kells is an extraordinary object. It is a piece of art. It is a piece of history. And the story of the Book of Kells contains all the elements for a movie plot: a sacred relic-like object, monks and monasteries, theft and rediscovery, viking raids and escape. All covered in the enticing mystery that lies in the vague unknowns of an unfamiliar past.
The origins of the book containing the four Gospels of the New Testament as well as various prefatory content is not entirely certain. It is however usually dated around 800 AD and its place of origin is believed be Iona (a small island on the western coast of present-day Scotland). But due to the repeating raids of the Vikings in this time period, it might have been relocated to Kells Abbey (located in present-day County Meath, Ireland). The Kells Abbey was also pillaged by Vikings time and again through the 10th century, but somehow the Book of Kells survived these attacks. At least until 1007 AD, the year in which we find the earliest historial reference to “the great Gospel of Collumkille”, which is generally believed to be The Book of Kells. A 1007 entry in the Annals of Ulster records:
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
Anstonishingly, given the unmistakable splendour and artistic quality (to which we shall shortly turn), the stolen book was recovered a few months later “under a sod”. Only the golden and bejewelled cover of the book (and possibly also the folios at the beginning and end of the manuscript which are missing today) were absent from the recovered manuscript, thus revealing that the Vikings—or whoever the thieves were—had no time for even the utmost, that the world has ever seen, when it comes to illuminated manuscripts.
Here I feel the need to interject, by saying that, as possible biologic descendants of the Scandinavian Vikings, we at 2K strongly dissociate ourselves from the unfortunate inheritance of such ignorance of the typographical magnificence contained in this book.
However, the Book of Kells remained at Kells until it in 1661 was presented to Trinity College in Dublin. And since the 19th century it has been on display to the public in the Old Library at Trinity College, where it can still be seen and admired today.
It is assumed, that each of the four Gospels was originally prefaced by both a portrait of the given Evangelist and also full page miniature containing the four evangelist symbols, one of which is shown above. The man is the symbol for Matthew, the lion is the symbol for Mark, the ox is the symbol for Luke and the eagle is the symbol for John. The use of all four of the Evangelist symbols at the beginning of each Gospel is unusual and probably due to an intention of communicating the sense of unity and coherence across the Gospels. Only three of the possibly four original Evangelist symbol pages has survived to the present day.
The content
The Book of Kells is a Gospel book, containing the four Gospels mainly in the Vulgate text version, except for some deviations scattered throughout the texts. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are encluded in their entirety, but the Gospel of John is missing the last part from 17:14—probably due to the damage caused to the book, when the bejewelled cover was forcefully ripped of. In addition to the Scripture texts, the Book contains preliminary matter, of which an unknown amount of content is missing for the same probable reason.
The remaining preliminary matter consists of fragmentary lists of Hebrew names mentioned in the Gospels, Gospel summaries (the so-called Breves Causae) and short biographies of the Evangelists (the so-called Argumenta) and canon tables originally developed by Eusebius of Caesarea around the turn of the 4th century ad to aid the reading of the Gospels in parallel.
Today the Book of Kells consists of 340 folios (or leaves) of vellum. Vellum was the most exclusive parchment made from calf skin and it use was reserved for the most important manuscripts, such as the illuminated masterpieces of the 8th century, of which the Book of Kells stands as the pinnacle, that no prior nor later manuscript can rival when it comes to both the quantity and quality of its decorations.
The decorations of the Book of Kells are not limited to the major pages selected for special illumination treatment. Scattered throughout all but two of the normal text pages, we find highly decorated initals and small figures of humans and animals as well as abstract linear patterns. The patterns bear the recognisable Celtic style of astonishingly complicated knots and other energetic spiral forms. The illustrations as well as the text decorations feature a broad range of colours, with purple, lilac, red, pink, green, and yellow being the colours most often used.
The illustrations
Even though there is only one carpet page (i.e. pages wholly devoted to mainly non-figurative geometrical ornamentation), which is less than other insular manuscript from the same time period, the Book of Kells is far more comprehensively decorated than any previous manuscript in any tradition. There is also relatively few full-page illustrated scenes (The Temptation of Christ, The Arrest of Christ, Christ Enthroned and Madonna and Child), but more illustrations might have been planned or executed and lost. Beside the carpet page and the scenes, there are also two evangelist portraits and three full pages with all the four evangelist’s symbols (one of which is shown here to the left). This amount of illustrations are not extraordinary or uncomparable to other similar manuscripts.
However, the Book of Kells is placed in a league of its own, when it comes to its text pages decorations. Of all the 340 folios, only two contains no illustrations. And throughout the book, not one single illustration is reused or copied. In addition to a host of small decorations and decorated initials throughout the text, there are thirteen (surviving) pages of text decorated to such a degree, that the text itself almost is rendered illegible and overtaken by the lavish—bordering on the grotesque—decorations.
Examples on such are the Eusebian Canon Table pages, so highly decorated, that the content and functionality thereof is obscured. They are basically unusable, also due to the fact, that the chapter division of the bible text, that is needed for the tables to be useful, was never even added in the margins of the texts.
Another example of the aesthetics trumping the utility is the incipit pages, i.e. the traditional first page of each of gospels, where the text is given a special and dramatic treatment. Also here, the monks illuminating the Book of Kells, went all in, producing such extravagant and ornate design, that they on the incipit page in the Gospel of Matthew, were only able to fit in the first two words Liber generationis (“The book of the generation) on the entire page. Appearance has obviously taken precedence over practicality, since the text is almost undecipherable to the uninitiated Bible reader.
Luckily, with the probable exception of the transient encounter with an ignorant Viking, the Book of Kells was never in the hands of an uninitiated Bible reader, since books of such stature and prominence had a sacramental rather than informational purpose. It was only removed from the altar of the church for the reading of the Gospel during mass, and in such case. the reader would probably recite from memory more than actually reading from the text.
Speaking of the text, the script in the Book of Kells is a story on its own. You’ll find that here.