1,200 YEAR OLD BOOK OF KELLS! DUBLIN, IRELAND HISTORY!

Turning the darkness into light. That was the goal of early Christianity and the dedicated monks who worked tirelessly to document the gospels of Jesus Christ. Today the Book of Kells is a symbol of national Irish pride and one of the countries most sacred historical objects.

Recently we visited the historic Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland which is the permanent home of the Book of Kells and its incredible exhibit. In this video we will show you the sights of the exhibit while we tell you it’s story.

The Book of Kells was written by Irish monks, most likely on the island of Iona, around the year 800 AD. The book is sometimes called the Book of Columba because it was originally thought to be written during the time of St. Columba and possibly even by his own hand. St. Columba was an Irish abbot and missionary who lived between the years 521 and 597, and he evangelized in Scotland.

The Book of Kells contains summaries of the Gospels of Jesus Christ and is written in Latin. It is ornately decorated with figures of Celtic knots, designs, humans, animals and mythical creatures. Its beauty has caused it to be called, “the work of angels”. Contained in the book are 340 leaves or folios in Latin, which are left-side and right-side pages of an open book. It must be mentioned that there is some “errors” or differences in its gospels than the bible that we are used to.

Pope Gregory the Great had said that the beautiful illustrations in writing such as these, contribute to “a living reading of the Lord’s story for those that cannot read”. Through their piousness and simplicity of life, the monks were about to create many things of beauty. Besides writing many beautiful works, the monks around the British Isles wrote several pocket gospels to be used for missionary work.

Before the use of Latin, writing in Celtic Ireland was what is called, Ogham script. Ogham was used since at least the fifth century and was made up of twenty characters, divided up into four groups of five, formed by combinations of one to five short lines and notches relative to a stem line.

The Vikings began to raid the area in the year 795. In 802, Iona was attacked and burned and later in 806 the monastery in Iona was sacked. Sixty-eight monks were killed but a few escaped to the mainland in Ireland and took the Book of Kells with them. They set up another monastery in Kells, County Meath, Ireland.

It appears that four different monks, with individual styles worked on the transcript of the Book of Kells but they tried to keep everything in the same general theme. It also appears that there were three different artists to decorate it.

The Book of Kells stayed at its home in County Meath for 650 years until the invasion of Oliver Cromwell. In 1646, Henry Jones, the Vice-Chancellor of Trinity began the process to have the book moved from the church in Kells. It was moved in 1653 to where it is today in the library of Trinity College, in Dublin, Ireland.

The Book of Kells is part of a group of manuscripts that are Insular style, which is the post-Roman style of the British Isles. What makes the Book of Kells so important and well known, is it is by far the most ornate and decorated of these books. These books were written by monks in England and Scotland as well with two other ones written in Ireland known as the Book of Durrow and the Book of Armagh, which is important to the St. Patrick story.

Today anyone can visit the Book of Kells and its exhibit at historic Trinity College, in Dublin Ireland. Trinity College was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I, and until modern times was for protestants only. The college continues today as one of the most elite universities in the world and is home to several items of Irish pride. One of those items is the Brian Boru Harp, which is the oldest surviving Irish harp, and the insignia of Ireland. It was once mistakenly linked with Brian Boru, high king of Ireland who was killed in 1014 at the Battle of Contarf, in modern day Dublin. Also, on display is one of the last remaining copies of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. This copy was posted to the wall of the General Post Office at the start of the 1916 Easter Rising, which eventually lead to Ireland’s independence from Great Britain.

Both the Brian Boru Harp and the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic are on display in the Long Room. The Long Room is also called, Trinity College’s Old Library building, houses over 200,000 of the college’s ancient books. It was founded in 1732 and is in use to this day. Many have called the library, the “Harry Potter Library” because it looks very similar to the one in the very popular movies.

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