What it is: An illuminated manuscript of the four Christian gospels, made in the ninth century
Where it is from: The island of Iona in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides
When it was made: About 1,200 years ago
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What it tells us about the past:
The Book of Kells is a large illuminated manuscript — a handwritten and heavily illustrated document ornamented with paints made from gold and silver. It was made at the beginning of the ninth century, probably by Celtic Christian monks on the island of Iona in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides.
The manuscript consists of the four Christian gospels written in Latin and is famed for its rich illustrations and masterful calligraphy, which date from a time before the invention of printing.
Books at this time had to be painstakingly copied by hand, a task often performed by teams of monks. Experts think the Book of Kells was created on Iona in this manner in about A.D. 800 by monks devoted to the sixth-century Irish missionary St Columba, who is credited with spreading Christianity throughout Scotland.
But the British coastline was prey to Viking raids at this time, and dozens of monks had already been killed in raids on isolated islands like Iona and Lindisfarne.
In the early 800s, the monks on Iona relocated to Ireland to avoid such attacks — and they took the manuscript with them. It was then housed for centuries at a monastery in the Irish town of Kells, where it got its name. But it was sent to Dublin for safekeeping during Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland from 1649 until 1653.
In 1661, the Book of Kells was donated to the library of Trinity College Dublin, and it is still on display there today; the college has also made a digitized version.
The Book of Kells is considered the finest example of the “Insular” style of illuminated manuscripts — from the Latin word for island, the island being Celtic Britain — that were produced in Ireland and Britain during the post-Roman period.
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Insular manuscripts are characterized by their elaborate initial letters, and are often highly decorated with fanciful designs of legendary animals and Celtic motifs.
The Book of Kells manuscript is written on vellum — usually prepared by scraping calf skin — and spans 680 pages that experts think were written by at least three different monks.
Some of the pages are missing, possibly because of a theft in the 11th century, but it is remarkably complete for a text that is so old.