An Introduction to the Astonishing Book of Kells, the Iconic Illuminated Manuscript

What­ev­er set of reli­gious or cul­tur­al tra­di­tions you come from, you’ve prob­a­bly seen a Celtic cross before. Unlike a con­ven­tion­al cross, it has a cir­cu­lar ring, or “nim­bus,” where its arms and stem inter­sect. The sole addi­tion of that ele­ment gives it a high­ly dis­tinc­tive look, and indeed makes it one of the rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ples of Insu­lar iconog­ra­phy — that is, iconog­ra­phy cre­at­ed with­in Great Britain and Ire­land in the time after the Roman Empire. Per­haps the most artis­ti­cal­ly impres­sive Celtic cross in exis­tence is found on one of the pages of the ninth-cen­tu­ry Book of Kells (view online here), which itself stands as the most cel­e­brat­ed of all Insu­lar illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts.

On what’s called the “car­pet page” of the Book of Kells, explains Smarthis­to­ry’s Steven Zuck­er in the video above, “we see a cross so elab­o­rate that it almost ceas­es to be a cross.” It has “two cross­beams, and these del­i­cate cir­cles with intri­cate inter­lac­ing in each of them, but the cir­cles are so large that they almost over­whelm the cross itself.”

That’s hard­ly the only image of note in the book, which con­tains the four Gospels of the New Tes­ta­ment, among oth­er texts, as well as numer­ous and extrav­a­gant illus­tra­tions, all of them exe­cut­ed painstak­ing­ly by hand on its vel­lum pages back when it was cre­at­ed, cir­ca 800, in the scrip­to­ri­um of a medieval monastery. These illus­tra­tions include, as Zuck­er’s col­league Lau­ren Kil­roy puts it, “the ear­li­est rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Vir­gin and Child in a man­u­script in West­ern Europe.”

This is hard­ly a vol­ume one approach­es light­ly — espe­cial­ly if one approach­es it in per­son, as Zuck­er and Kil­roy did on their vis­it to Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin. “When we were stand­ing in front of the book,” says Kil­roy, they “noticed how many folios formed the book itself” (which would have required the skin of more than 100 young calves). Com­ing to grips with the sheer quan­ti­ty of mate­r­i­al in the Book of Kells is one thing, but under­stand­ing how to inter­pret it is anoth­er still. Hence the free online course pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, which can help you more ful­ly appre­ci­ate the book in its dig­i­tized form avail­able online. Even if the cross, Celtic or oth­er­wise, stirs no par­tic­u­lar reli­gious feel­ings with­in you, the Book of Kells has much to say about the civ­i­liza­tion that pro­duced it: a civ­i­liza­tion that, insu­lar though it may once have been, would go on to change the shape of the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece the Book of Kells Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Take a Free Online Course on the Great Medieval Man­u­script the Book of Kells

Dis­cov­er the Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script Les Très Rich­es Heures du Duc de Berry, “the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Cal­en­dar” (1416)

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.