![]() There monks created the lovely Lindisfarne Gospel but the Irish would claim the Book of Kells is the finest of its kind. Monks from the original monastery founded by St Columba also set up other monastic communities including one on the great rock of Lindisfarne in Northumberland, established by the Ionan monk Aidan in 635. The Book of Kells isn’t the only illuminated manuscript in the so-called insular style. This is a description thought by many to be of the Book of Kells by the 12th Century writer Gerald of Wales: Practically all of the 680 pages are decorated in some way or another. On some pages every corner is filled with the most detailed and beautiful Celtic designs. Written on vellum, it is estimated that the skins of 185 calves were needed for the project. The scale and ambition of The Book of Kells is incredible. ![]() A few years later it reached Trinity College where it remains today. According to the Annals of Ulster it was found “two months and twenty days” later “under a sod.” After fighting in the Cromwellian period, the church at Kells lay in ruins, and in 1653 the book was sent to Dublin by the governor of Kells for safekeeping. But medieval sources do record that an illuminated manuscript was stolen from the stone church of Kells in 1006 which is likely to have been the Book of Kells. ![]() The most likely theory is that the monks took the manuscript with them.Īmazingly since they were written, the majority of the pages have been passed down through the generations with just 60 pages missing. In 806, following a raid that left 68 of the community dead, the Columban monks took refuge in a newly-founded monastery at Kells in County Meath in Ireland to keep them safe. The monastery, like many early Christian communities, came under the threat of Viking raids. But it wasn't just forces of nature with which the monks had to contend.
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