The Book of Kells

Book of Kells as an art work:

"The richness, vitality and beauty of the illustration, together with the dedication and craft of its execution combine to create a breathtaking work of art." - Thomas N. Mitchell, Provost, Trinity College, Dublin

"Throughout the centuries, the pages of this great... book have aroused wonder and admiration at the ingenuity and creativity of the human spirit. Moreover, the story of the book's survival for over twelve hundred years, makes it all the more precious." - Margaret Manion

"The Book of Kells represents the peak of Insular illumination, a period in which the decorative vocabulary of Celtic art, developed over many thousands of years to adorn metalwork and stonework, was adapted by artists to express the beliefs and concepts of Christianity in the art of manuscript painting." - Margaret Manion

"In its taste and delicacy, in its originality, and in its elaborations of coloring and design, the Book of Kells must be placed among the wonders of the world." - Conrad Schoeffling, Long Island University

"Look closely at it and you will penetrate the innermost secrets of art; you will find embellishments of such intricacy, such a wealth of knots and interlacing links that you might believe it was the work of an angel rather than a human being." - Giraldus Cambrensis, 1185 CE

"The Book of Kells can perhaps be seen as the orchestration of a triumphant Mass, combining features from Celtic, Saxon and wider European sources to the greater glory of God. The Book of Kells continues to attract record crowds whether it is exhibited in Dublin or Tokyo or Canberra. Every detail repays the closest of studies, every feature is capable of more than one reading-elusive images indeed as one would expect of its Celtic ancestry. Look into the great Chi-Rho page and one is led literally on a cat-and-mouse chase; towards the bottom left of the page two cats sit facing each other seemingly unperturbed by four mice at play. The pair in the middle hold a communion wafer marked with a cross, just one of several variations on holy rebirth and renewal. The Celtic roundels and trumpet junctions are not, however, these just decorative in-fills. Throughout Kells these seeming abstract Insular motifs, must, like the Continental art of more than a millennium before, represent a visual language of which we have yet fully to learn the vocabulary." - Ruth and Vincent Megaw in Celtic Art From Its Beginnings to the Book of Kells

"[The opening pages of the Book] are set out in the framework of Byzantine architecture, with pillars, capitals, bases and tympana finely decorated.... Much has been written about the different influences to be traced in the artistry of the Book. The haphazard nature of the decoration, the spontaneity and even the turbulence of writing serpents and wrestling animals, the humorous incongruities are all characteristic of Celtic work. Yet, at the same time, the precision and accuracy of detailed design, when examined under a magnifying glass are astounding. Oriental, especially Egyptian, influence may be seen in the features of the portrait subjects...." - The Book of Kells; a selection of pages reproduced with a description and notes by G. O. Simms

"The text is based on the Vulgate (the version of the Bible completed by St. Jerome in 384 AD) intermixed with strong elements of the version that preceded it, known as the Old Latin translation." - Bernard Meehan in The Book of Kells

"Once a motif, whether figurative or symbolic or purely ornamental, is employed in any medium, it enters a common currency of decoration and can be borrowed, re-used and adapted. Parallels with metalwork as well as stonework are frequently to be observed.... The Book of Kells integrates and develops its decorative inheritance with breathtaking assurance, embellishing the text on every page." - Bernard Meehan in The Book of Kells

Irish saving civilization:

"The manuscript, the creation of a ninth-century community of the order of St Colum Cille, is a lasting symbol of the unique contribution made by the Irish to the development of the history and culture of Western Europe." - Thomas N. Mitchell, Provost, Trinity College, Dublin

"The Irish enshrined literacy as their central religious act. In a land where literacy had previously been unknown, in a world where the old literate civilizations were sinking fast beneath successive waves of barbarism, the white Gospel page, shining in all the little oratories of Ireland, acted as a pledge: the lonely darkness had been turned into light, and the lonely virtue of courage, sustained through all the centuries, had been transformed into hope." - Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

"Monks began to set off in every direction, bent on glorious and heroic exile for the sake of Christ. They were warrior-monks, of course, and certainly not afraid of whatever monsters they might meet.. Many of the exiles found their way to Europe.There is much we do not know about these Irish exiles. Their clay and wattle buildings have long since disappeared, and even most of their precious books have perished, but what they knew-the Bible and the literatures of Greece, Rome and Ireland-we know, because they passed these things on to us.. Latin literature would almost surely have been lost without the Irish, and illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literatures without the example of Irish, the first vernacular literature to be written down. Beyond that, there would have perished in the west not only literacy but all the habits of mind that encouraged thought. [By the late 800s,] the transmission of European civilization was assured. Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemes' heads. Wherever they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization." - Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization