The Book of Kells

On Saturday I had time to visit the Book of Kells exhibition. The story of this twelve hundred year old book is remarkable. It's so old experts can't be sure where it was made or why. The book very possibly started life in the monastery on the Scottish island of Iona. After one particularly brutal attack by "sea rovers", the survivors moved to the ninth century monastery at Kells in Ireland. The book was stolen in 1006. The golden cover was lost forever but the leaves were recovered and taken care of until the monastery was closed and the book became the property of the parish church of Kells. It was given to the library of Trinity College Dublin in 1661.

The chemical make up of the colours is unknown - "the secret of their mixture has been lost without trace. Some people have tried to copy these colours, but it has not been possible to imitate and reproduce the feel and the tone and the whole look of the twelve-hundred-year-old book."

Exploring the Book of Kells, George Otto Simms, 1988

The guy who wrote the guidebook quoted above was locked into a special outbuilding during the time he researched the details of the book. He would have been able to appreciate the richness of the colours and the excellent creative talent of the writers and illustrators and his love of the book comes out in the fond way he describes different aspects.

"In the Book of Kells there are no amusing remarks, but there are some very funny little pictures. We can be sure that the monks enjoyed a good laugh....Life for them was a life given to God, and the lively animals that they put into their pictures show us that they found great joy in God's 'creatures great and small'."

He very gently mentions one of the scandals of the Book of Kells - that the pages were all cut to one size "at one period in history", sometimes cutting right through an illustration on the edge of the original page. You can see this in the picture below - look at the top and right hand side - just sliced through the ancient illustration without a thought for the value and history being destroyed.

I've been told further details about this but it isn't my story to tell, anyway not today.