The Book of Kells is second only to St. Patrick as an Irish icon. A project launched in 2011 will bring it out of art, academic and literary circles and make it more popular.
Half a million visitors a year gawk at the open volumes displayed at Trinity College, University of Dublin, unable to believe it is the work of humans. The lavish, intricate, minute, illuminated art and calligraphy, overwhelms even the Holy Script.
When “evil thieves” tore off the cover made of gold and gems and threw the book into a bog a thousand years ago, the Annals of Ulster called it “the greatest relic of the western world.”
Computer scientists and art historians at the University are collaborating today to preserve, analyze and quantify the designs digitally and make them available for wider applications. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrqo8DXHw8o
Four hundred years after St. Patrick’s mission, Irish monasteries spread their spiritual and cultural influence. Celtic monks on the Isle of Iona created the 680-page manuscript of the Four Gospels (Latin Vulgate version) and other texts on vellum prepared from the slaughter of 185 calves. Ten vibrant pigments were used, some from distant lands, and a purple-brown-black ink made from iron salts and vegetable sources, such as oak apples (galls).
Mind-boggling in complexity and ornamentation, the book combines figures of humans, animals and mythical beasts with Celtic knot-work and interlace. Motifs swirl, letters evolve into pictures and pictures into letters. Along with technical knowhow and Christian iconography, the monks indulged in fun. A letter M is two monks pulling each other’s beards; an illustrated rhyme compares a writer choosing words to his cat chasing mice. Four artists, one from the Mediterranean, worked together with 50 or so assistants, researchers believe.
The sacred Word of God was designed to sit on the altar at the high holidays of the Christian year. However, when Vikings raided the monks’ colony they had to flee to Kells, county Meath. There thieves stole the book and it wasn’t found for months. The Roman Catholic Church took it for safekeeping in the 16th century, then brought it to Dublin 100 years later.
Since the mid 1800’s, the book has been on display, now bound into four volumes of 33×25-cm pages. It has some water damage, is extremely fragile and has lost substantial pigment. The folios bend or contract if the temperature changes the least bit, threatening adhesion of the colors.
In 1989 Facsimile-Verlag Lucern published a limited edition of 1480 copies (740 reserved for the British Isles). Two of these, valued at $18,000 each, were presented to Texas Christian University and Austin College in 1990.
Just a week ago, a lecture on the Book of Kells attracted 120 people to Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro, VT. At the University of Dublin, Professor Roger Stalley debunked the idea that the book was created in quiet seclusion; it is closely connected with the forms and structures of 9th and 10th century stone sculpture.
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