What Is the Book of Kells?

The Book of Kells (Codex Cenannensis) is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels, written in Latin in the Insular half-uncial script and decorated with elaborate ornament and figurative imagery in a style that is generally considered the masterpiece of the Insular tradition. It was produced around 800 CE, probably at the monastery of Iona off the west coast of Scotland or at the monastery of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, where it was kept for many centuries. The manuscript has been housed in the library of Trinity College Dublin since 1661 and is one of the most famous illuminated manuscripts in the world.

The argument below links to the related treatment of the Lindisfarne Gospels, to the broader treatment of the Insular and Anglo-Saxon art, and to the monastic culture of early medieval Ireland and Britain.

The Origin and History of the Manuscript

The manuscript was probably begun at the monastery of Iona, founded by St. Columba in 563 and the great center of the Irish monastic mission in Scotland and Northumbria. The community at Iona was forced to flee to Ireland in 807, after a series of Viking raids, and they took the manuscript with them to the monastery of Kells, the refounded Columban house in County Meath. The manuscript was at Kells for many centuries, was stolen in 1006, was recovered, and was eventually transferred to Trinity College Dublin in the seventeenth century.

The manuscript is sometimes associated with the mission of the St. Columba and the work of the Columban monasteries of Iona, Kells, Durrow, and Lindisfarne, but the exact circumstances of its production are unknown. The script, the ornament, and the iconographic program are closely related to the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Durrow, and the manuscript is conventionally dated to around 800, although some scholars prefer a date in the second half of the eighth century and others in the early ninth. The work is thought to have been the work of perhaps three or four principal artists, working in a single scriptorium over a period of years, perhaps decades.

The Contents of the Book

The Book of Kells contains the four Gospels of the New Testament — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — in the Vulgate version, with preliminary matter including canon tables, breviaries, and prefatory texts. The manuscript as it survives is incomplete: at some point it lost about thirty folios, including the end of John and the original binding. The text is written in the Insular half-uncial script, a script developed in the Irish and Anglo-Saxon scriptoria of the seventh and eighth centuries, and is decorated with elaborate ornament and figurative imagery on virtually every page.

The manuscript contains a number of famous full-page illustrations. The Portrait of Christ (folio 32v), a frontal, half-length, bearded image of Christ, is one of the most reproduced images in the history of Western art. The portraits of the evangelists, the Virgin and Child (folio 7v), the Temptation of Christ (folio 202v), the Arrest of Christ (folio 114r), and the major initials are the most famous figurative pages. The carpet pages — full pages of pure ornament with no text — are the most elaborate pages of the manuscript. The Insular carpet page has no parallel in the Byzantine or Carolingian manuscript traditions and is the most distinctive contribution of the Insular scriptorium.

The Decoration

The decoration of the Book of Kells is the most elaborate of the surviving Insular manuscripts. The ornament includes interlace of every kind — knotwork, plaitwork, ribbon interlace — spirals, key patterns, trumpet patterns, zoomorphic forms (birds, snakes, lions, cats, dogs, insects, and human figures intertwined with the abstract ornament), and figurative imagery drawn from the Bible and the lives of the saints. The pigments include red, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and white, and the gold and silver leaf is applied in small areas to highlight the most important images. The decoration covers virtually every page of the manuscript, and the integration of text and ornament, of figural and abstract imagery, is so close that the script itself becomes part of the visual program.

The most distinctive visual feature of the Book of Kells is the way the ornament seems to be alive, the way the human and animal figures seem to emerge from and dissolve into the abstract pattern, the way the page seems to be in constant visual movement. The pages of the Book of Kells have been described as the most visually complex pages ever produced in the history of Western art, and they have been the subject of intense scholarly study and popular admiration for centuries. The technique, the pigments, and the scriptoria that produced such books are treated in illuminated manuscripts of the early Middle Ages.

The Significance of the Book

The Book of Kells is one of the most famous manuscripts in the world and one of the most studied. It is a key monument of the Insular tradition, the most elaborate surviving example of Insular book production, and a major source for the study of early medieval art, script, and theology. The manuscript is also a major tourist attraction in Dublin, and a high-quality facsimile is available for study and exhibition. The manuscript has been described as “the work of an angel rather than a man,” as the product of “the supreme achievement of Insular illumination,” and as one of the most important works of Western art.

The influence of the Book of Kells on the subsequent development of Western art has been substantial. The Celtic Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Arts and Crafts movement, the Art Nouveau movement, and the modern interest in non-naturalistic visual languages all drew on the Insular tradition as represented by the Book of Kells. The manuscript has been the subject of major exhibitions at Trinity College Dublin, the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Morgan Library, and other major institutions, and it is one of the most reproduced and most familiar manuscripts in the world.