Material: ink on animal-skin (vellum)​

Size: 12 x 10 inches

 

First, take a minute or two to look closely at the images above. Write down your reaction to these two pages--what details do you notice? Why did you pick these objects for your response paper? Make notes on things that you notice about them. Also, write down any questions you have about them--what kinds of things would you want to know about this object? Remember the questions we ask in class. You don't need to have answers for these questions yet, but keep them in your notes.

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Once you have some questions written down, try to answer them by reading the information I've provided below about this object and its context.​

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What do we know about this object?​

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The Book of Kells contains the text of the four Gospels, and is 340 pages long. Each gospel has an elaborate first page, and there are also several full-page illustrations such as the two shown here. The pages used to be larger, but were trimmed and their edges gilded during a rebinding in the 19th century. It is generally thought that the book was produced by monks from the monastery at Iona, which was attacked by Vikings in 806; the monks then relocated to Kells, perhaps bringing this book with them. Different artists who worked on this book had different styles, and scholars think they can identify three different artists who worked on different pages. There were at least four scribes who copied the text, too. The text actually has a number of errors in it, and so scholars generally think that this book was only used for special occasions rather than for daily services (the sumptuous decoration also suggests this was for special occasions only).

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In 1006 the Book of Kells was stolen from the monastery for its elaborate bejeweled case; the book was later found buried in the ground, without its case. One can imagine that being buried underground did not help its preservation! After the church of Kells was destroyed during unrest in Ireland in 1641, the book was sent to Dublin for safekeeping, and ended up in the collection of Trinity Library, where it is a major tourist draw today. Over the years, about 30 pages of the book have gone missing.

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Trinity Library has used modern technology to analyze the pigments used to create these paintings:

• Orpiment (yellow arsenic sulphide) was used to produce a vibrant yellow pigment

• Red came from red lead or from organic sources which are difficult at present to identify

• A copper green, reacting with damp, has actually eaten away the vellum on a number of folios

• The blue may have been indigo (researchers were able to prove that the blue pigment was NOT produced from lapis lazuli, though this was used in other places in the Middle Ages)

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The first page in the gallery above shows the four Gospel authors: Matthew (man), Mark (lion), Luke (ox), and John (eagle). This is based on a passage from Jerome: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham’ (Matthew 1:1). Mark is linked to a lion since his Gospel describes John the Baptist as a voice crying in the wilderness, which Jerome links with the roar of a lion: ‘A voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths’ (Mark 1:3). Luke is represented as an ox because his Gospel opens with a story of the priest  Zachariah in the Temple: ‘There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zachary (Zachariah), of the course of Abia; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name Elizabeth’ (Luke 1:5). Jerome connects that story to the Old Testament practice of using an ox in religious sacrifices (cf. Exodus 20:24). Finally, John is depicted as an eagle because at the beginning of his Gospel he immediately focuses on Christ’s divinity and his role in creation, rather than Christ’s earthly origins: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God’ (John 1:1). John is therefore like an eagle because it was believed that the eagle alone could fly towards the sun (a symbol of divinity) and look at it without being blinded. The Book of Kells features Jerome’s pairings.

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Expanding on Jerome’s exegesis of the Evangelists and their relationship with the four creatures, Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) related each symbol to an event in Christ’s life. According to Gregory, the man symbolised Christ’s Incarnation, with significance placed on his humanity at birth. The ox represented the Passion of Christ due to the animal’s common use in the Old Testament sacrificial ceremonies, which prefigured Christ’s sacrifice.  The lion stood for the Resurrection; according to the bestiary tradition a young lion was born either dead or asleep (details vary between traditions), but was awakened by the breath and roar of a parent. Isidore of Seville (560-636) writes: ‘when they [lions] bear their cubs, the cub is said to sleep for three days and nights, and then after that the roaring or growling of the father, making the den shake, as it were, is said to wake the sleeping cub’ (Etymologies 12.2.5, trans. Barney, 2006). Finally, the eagle soaring towards heaven was associated with the Ascension of Christ into heaven (footnote 1).

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The second page shows Christ sitting in a low throne holding a book. Above his head is a cross flanked by two peacocks and two urns overflowing with greenery. The peacock was a symbol of immortality due to the medieval belief that its flesh did not decay. Christ is also flanked by two human figures (SS. Peter and Paul?) and two angels. 

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Some things to consider in your response paper:​

• What was your response to this object? What drew your eye? You are encouraged to use first person (I/me) in your response paper. I want to know what you think.

• Consider the details of this object carefully. What kinds of decisions did the artist make when they were creating this piece (about line, color, or composition), and why do you think they made these choices? Use your art terminology. What aspects of these two illustrated pages are characteristic of Celtic art?

• What do these images--and the book in general--tell us about Christian belief and theology in Ireland at the time? For example, what symbols are most important in these two pages? How is this different from the early Christian art we looked at in class?

• Why do you think people produced fabulous illustrated books like this for the Church in the medieval period? Why put time and resources into something so elaborate, when it was only going to be used for special occasions?

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The Book of Kells: Image and Text. URL here.