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The Book of Kells

(illuminated manuscript, c. 550)

Christians have long been considered “people of the book” because of the importance they place upon the Bible as the Word of God. In a time when books were rare and very precious, no book was more precious than the Scriptures, and no part of the Scriptures more precious than the Gospels, which tell the story of the One who was himself the Word. Therefore, it is fitting that one of the most beautiful books ever created was an illuminated copy of the Latin translation of the four Gospels, which has come to be known as The Book of Kells.

A monastery on a small, lonely island off the western coast of Scotland was the home to a group of monks who created this masterpiece. They were far away from the violence and chaos that spread across Europe in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire, and were able to develop the art of copying manuscripts to an unparalleled degree of accuracy. But their peaceful existence on this remote island ended when the Vikings attacked the monastery in 806. Sixty-eight monks were killed, but the rest escaped to the mainland of Ireland, where they established a monastery at Kells, not far from Dublin. It is almost a certainty that they brought the book with them. Hence it has come to be called The Book of Kells.

And what a book it is. The monks of Kells adapted Celtic artistic traditions to fit the Christian message. Although we can place no names to the anonymous scribes who copied out the text and embellished it with imaginative and sometimes playful images, many scholars believe it shows the artistry of at least three distinctive hands. Ultimately, however, it is the product of the entire monastery working together to dry and prepare the animal skins necessary for making the parchment (it is said to have required the skins of 150 calves to provide enough pages for the book), to grind and prepare the colors (the blue, in particular, which is used extravagantly, came from lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone that in those days was as priceless as gold), to gather and cut and sew the parchments into a codex (book form), and to sit at their desks for hours every day to painstakingly copy and paint and illuminate the manuscript.

Chi Ro page from The Book of Kells, folio 34r, Trinity College Library, Dublin [Wikimedia Commons, CC-PD-Mark]

The result of their labor is an exuberant work of art—finely detailed, intricate, and imaginative. It evidences a sense of respect for the holiness of the labor of illuminating the Word of God, as well as an undisguised playfulness in creating the interwoven loops and curves and tangled vines and dizzying spirals. Peering out at the reader are a teeming zoological plentitude—birds, snakes, butterflies and moths, cats, dogs, and mice, otters, and many purely fantastical beasts. They share space with portraits of the four Gospel writers, tangled and twisted human figures (some likely the images of fellow monks), and angelic beings. It is high and holy art combined with a deep humanity. It contains an abundance of the ornate and beautiful, rich in symbol and meaning, but with little touches that make us smile.

One medieval writer gives witness of how greatly The Book of Kells moved him:

Fine craftsmanship is all about you, but you might not notice it. Look more keenly at it and you will penetrate to the very shrine of art. You will make out intricacies, so delicate and subtle, so exact and compact, so full of knots and links, with colors so fresh and vivid, that you might say that this was the work of an angel, and not of a man. For my part the oftener I see the book, and the more carefully I study it, the more I am lost in ever fresh amazement, and I see more and more wonders in the book.1

This quote exemplifies one of the qualities of The Book of Kells—it contains layers of detailing that make it unlikely for a viewer to be able to appreciate it all with a single brief look. One can spend hours letting the eyes settle upon a page and explore all the little secrets and mysteries hidden in the beautiful illuminations. It rewards a close look, and it unfolds its beauty, humor, and symbolic profundity slowly to the attentive eye.

Until the fourth century, most writing had been done on scrolls. There were distinct disadvantages to the scroll, however, especially when you wanted to revisit a passage you’d read earlier. You might have to unwind nearly the entire scroll to find what you were looking for. But with the development of the codex, which consisted of individual pages sewn together, we begin to come close to something resembling today’s books.

Because of all the effort expended in making a book—the technology to print and reproduce them mechanically didn’t exist until around 1450—they were rare and extremely valuable. And monasteries became a place where this work was done. Jakob Louber, a fifteenth-century Carthusian prior, expressed the importance of books: “A monastery without books is like a state without its troops, like a castle without walls, a kitchen without utensils, a table with no dishes upon it, a garden without herbs, a meadow without flowers, a tree without leaves.”2

Books were viewed as nearly irreplaceable treasures, more valuable than a single human life. In 1237 the library of the monastery of Vorau, in Syria, caught fire. The prior rushed to the library and took his place in the midst of the flames, transporting one book after another to the window, where he tossed them to safety. He kept at the task, rescuing as many books as he could, until he was finally engulfed in flames.

Monasteries were places where these books were stored and copied for posterity in order that the gospel might be spread. Missionary monks would take these books with them when they brought the Christian faith into new lands. Therefore, many early books were small and portable, and often written in miniscule lettering for economic reasons. But the books created for use in worship or at the high altar were another matter. Here no expense was spared. These Scripture portions, prayer books, liturgical aids, and commentaries were turned into works of art. They were also bound in exquisite covers encrusted with jewels and set in gold and silver.

It was not unusual for a monastery to take a year or more to copy out a manuscript of the Bible. It was an arduous task. Sometimes a monk would express his complaints in a personal note appended to the end of a section. One left behind this testament to his frustration: “Thin ink, bad vellum, difficult text. The parchment is hairy. Thank God it will soon be dark.”3 Perhaps a small insight into the human cost involved in creating a beautiful manuscript.

The result of that kind of effort is these luminous pages of text. Our term “illuminated manuscript” comes from the Latin illūmināre, “to light up.” The effort of these monks truly lit up the pages of the books. Each and every page was an original work of art, created by hand and likely guided by prayer. They copied carefully and added miniature paintings within the text. They sometimes used gold leaf and expensive colors in great profusion. These monks were the first to illustrate the initial letter of the text, on occasion filling a full page with its intricate design. They also created abstract “carpet pages” that look pretty much like they sound—formal repetitive designs of great beauty and detail.

The Book of Kells has its impressive predecessors, among them The Book of Durrow and The Lindisfarne Gospels, but none can really compare to what the monks created in Kells. Illuminated books are a part of the Christian heritage, and all kinds of such books appeared in the years that followed The Book of Kells, including prayer books for the laity (The Book of Hours) and breviaries for the clergy, all beautifully adorned with inspiring art. Many times the art overwhelmed the text in these later works, but The Book of Kells seems a nearly perfect marriage between text and artistry, and is one of the great masterpieces of the Christian heritage.