Home | Celtic History & Manuscripts | Celtic Art | Drawing Techniques | ProScribe CDROM | Links
Alphabetical List of manuscripts
(Click Here for a chronological list)
The Book of Armagh seems to be unfinished, for whatever reason, as it was written and drawn, ready for an illumination that never happened. For instance there are the four Evangelist pages (pictures of the saints' emblems) and a page of all four round the cross, but none have the colour that they should. Unusually the emblems each have four wings (as in the much later Book of MacDurnan), rather than the usual two. In the twelfth century Giraldus Cambrensis was shown one of the great celtic Bibles in which there were as many as six wings each. Such variations on the original portraits were common.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
The Book of Deer, a Gospel book, is a beautiful, very simply decorated manuscript, with an almost child-like quality to it. The illumination is primitive, but stongly traditional pictish/celtic. It is especially important for the additions made in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which tell the story of the foundation of the monastery. These are thought to be the oldest known writings in Scottish Gaelic rather than the Old Irish which it came from. They tell the story of how Colmcille(St. Columba, AD 521-597) visited Bruide Mac Maelchon (c. AD 556 - 584), king of the Tuatha Cruithne (Picts) to convert them and, after a conflict with the Druids of Bruide, Colmcille was successful and founded the monastery in one of the last areas of the Celtic world to become Christianised.
It was described in the Third Statistical Account of Scotland as ŒOne of the principal antiquities of Scotland'. The Book of Deer consists of 86 folios (pages) made up of the first six and a half chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew, the first four and a half chapters of St. Mark, the first three chapters of St. Luke and the first verse of the fourth chapter and the whole of St. John. There is also the Apostles' Creed. The Latin is poor, with plenty of spelling mistakes and gramatical errors. It is based on the Vulgate form and similar to the text known as the ŒIrish Gospel' a version long since been abandoned by Rome. While the text is all written by one person it has been recently demonstrated that at least two were responsible for the illustrations.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
An early, and not very highly decorated, manuscript. The decoration consists of illuminated initials and three Evangelist portrait pages and one Evangelist's emblem page.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
The Durham Gospels are attributed to the same scribe that wrote the Echternach Gospels, although in it he is writing in a different script, much closer to the insular majuscule practiced by Eadfrith. See notes on the Book of Lindisfarne, below.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
Contemporary corrections in the Book of Lindisfarne were done by the same person making corrections to the Durham Gospels, which implies its connection with the monastery of Lindisfarne.
Aldred, a tenth century priest who translated it wrote:
Eadfrith, Bishop of the Lindisfarne Church, originally wrote this book, for God and for Saint Cuthbert and '- jointly '- for all the saints whose relics are in the Island. And Ethelwald, Bishop of the Lindisfarne islanders, impressed it on the outside and covered it '- as he well knew how to do. And Billfrith, the anchorite, forged the ornaments which are on it on the outside and adorned it with gold and gems and also with gilded-over silver '- pure metal. And Aldred, unworthy and most miserable priest, glossed it in English between the lines with the help of God and Saint Cuthbert.
The whole Book was written and illuminated by Eadfrith in one go, without a major break. It must have taken at least two years to complete. It may have taken much longer, as we do not have details about matters such as the weather. In 764 the Abbot of Wearmouth-Jarrow wrote blaming an exceptionally cold winter for his scribe's inability to complete some books that had been ordered. Eadfrith probably made the Gospels in the period immediately before the elevation of the relics of St. Cuthbert in 698, when he was still only a senior member of the community, possibly head of the monastic scriptorum.
The rubrics (titles) were done by someone else who also helped to make final corrections to the text. One or two smaller corrections were added by a third person, also contemporary. This third person also made corrections to the Durham Gospels, which implies its connection with the monastery of Lindisfarne.
Of the manuscripts left to us, only the Book of Kells is more decorated. The illuminated pages consist of five cruciform(cross-shaped) pages (one at the beginning and one at the start of each Gospel), four portraits of the Evangelists, six pages of text (the first of each Gospel, the first of St. Jerome's Epistle and the page beginning 'Christi autem generatio'), sixteen pages of Eusebian Canons in arcaded columns and a wealth of decoration throughout the book. The colour range is wider than in most manuscripts, including red, yellow, green, blue, pale violet and purple with black as a common background.
Eadfrith chose to write the main text of his Gospels in the fine formal script known technically as insular majuscule. The manuscript which he was making was intended not for the use of students in a library, but for ceremonial use in church, where it would be carried in procession and used for reading, perhaps not every day but certainly on special festivals. Its place would be with the altar vessels rather than any other books that the monastery might posess. Every effort was therefore made to ensure that the final effect, both inside and out, should be in keeping with the status of a book enshrining the Word of God.
The script most characteristic of the Wearmouth-Jarrow scriptorium was uncial, a formal capitular hand developed in the Roman Empire during the fourth century and widely used for several centuries thereafter, for writing out books in text form. The manuscripts brought to England by Saint Augustine and his followers and those later collected by Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith provided English scribes with many fine models for this script. So brilliantly did the scribes from Bede's community learn to execute it that the surviving masterpiece from Wearmouth-Jarrow, the huge one-volume Bible known as the Codex Amiatinus, now in Florence, was only recognised as English work in the last century after much disagreement among scholars.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
The Book of Durrow is a copy of the Latin Gospels, formerly belonging to Durrow Monastery, King's Co., Ireland, founded by Saint Columba in 553 AD, where it was probably written. The colophon claims that the scribe was Columba himself and that the book was written in twelve days. This is patently impossible, and it is believed that the current book is a copy of an earlier, undecorated original. It was such a precious relic that King Flann had a cumdach (box shrine) made for it around 900 AD, but this has been lost. The decorations consist of five carpet pages (one at the beginning and one at the start of each Gospel), five pages of Evangelists' emblems (one for each and one page with all four) and four elaborate initial pages (one at the start of each Gospel). Unusually the Evangelists have neither wings, haloes nor books, which implies and aerly date. The background of the decorative pages is usually black, with the exception of the emblem pages, which are plain vellum.
The Book of Durrow is the earliest of the fully decorated manuscripts that remain, though the decoration is already of a high quality. This implies a practiced skill of which we no longer have any evidence. I find the theory that the style appeared fully formed and then spent four hundred years deteriorating and being influenced from the outside as a little unlikely.
The colours used are red, yellow and green, with less brown and a little purple. Rubrication (red dots) are common.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
Return to the list of manuscripts...
The first record of it is in Kells, Co. Meath, Ireland in 1007, but others have suggested its origin as the Columban monastery on Iona, or even at Lindisfarne in Northumbria.
By far the best decorated of all the remaining manuscripts, as well as the best known. It is very well documented elsewhere, so if you want to know more, try your local library. (Yes, I will put in notes on it later.)
The range of colours in the Book of Kells is possibly the widest of all the manuscripts, including red, blue, green, yellow,
Return to the list of manuscripts...
The first recorded owner was a welshman, Guyal, who sold it to a man called Gelhi for a horse in the ninth century. Later Gelhi dedicated it to St. Teilo, patron saint of Llandaff, before it ended up at Lichfield. This has led to the theory that it was of Welsh origin, though stylistically it is extremely close to Irish and Northumbrian manuscripts. The decoration consists of a cruciform page, five pages of text (the start of each Gospel and the page starting 'Christi autem generatio'), portraits of Saints Luke and Mark and a page of the four Evangelistic symbols. The colours have deteriorated badly with time and damp, but they were red, green/blue, yellow and purple, with black often used as a background.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
This is one of the books that shows particularly well the celtic unease at representational art. The book contains the usual carpet pages (at the start of each gospel and the words "Christi autem generatio") and the usual portrait pages (the four symbols of the Evangelists, and a cross with all four). The scribe of the Book of MacDurnan, like many others, did well on the purely decorative, but had no feel for the style he was copying for the portraits. The sandals on the feet of Matthew and Luke are so badly copied that the saints look to have cloven hoofs (a similar mistake can be seen in the Book of Kells). Colouring the skin with a solid white just adds to the unnatural quality of the pictures.
Other colours used were golden yellow, bright red, two greens and a violet.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
Return to the list of manuscripts...
Some have claimed that this book was written by Saint Mulling himself (died 697), but the style of the book firmly belongs to a century later. The colophon (note) at the end of the book stating that it was written by Mulling is almost certainly copied from an earlier original.
This is one of the small 'pocket' Gospels, intended for personal use rather than ceremonial purposes at a monastery. The writing is therefore in a quick to write miniscule, rather than the slow, formal and much more readable uncial of the larger manuscripts. It contains three (originally four) Evangelist portrait pages. The Evangelists have haloes but no wings, and their portraits are bordered with interlaced animals and knotwork of good quality. The style implies that the artist had little training in continental art, but a good working knowledge of traditional Celtic art, as even St. John's clothing is interlaced.
The colours have aged badly, but originally were red (now brown), yellow and green (now turquoise blue).
Return to the list of manuscripts...
The earliest of the surviving manuscripts. Legend has it that it was written in the library of St. Finnian of Moville around AD 560, by stylistically this is not possible.
It is a small book, with 58 folios (pages) out of a probable 110 remaining. Colmcille means Columba, and the Psalms in it are said to have been written by the hand of Columba himself. He is said to have copied it from the Gospel of St. Martin.
Though it is the first of the manuscripts that we have left, the style and the artwork show the ŒCathach' to be neither experimental nor primitive in concept but obviously the result of an earlier tradition.
The word 'cathach' means 'battler' and the book was so called because it was carried into battle as an icon by the clan O Domhnaill as recently as 1497.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
It is a small but very thick book,due to the large script used. Its outer pages are blackened with age. Originally, the pages were bound in 19 sets of twelve pages each, but there are now only twelve sets left. It was originally bound in strong wooden covers, portions of which remain, polished by long wear. It still has its leather satchel, the back of which is ornamented with diagonally-impressed lines and circles, barely visible now. It has been suggested that the wooden binding is the oldest extant binding of any Irish book.
The large number of illuminated capital letters are coloured bright blue, deep reddish purple and golden yellow on a background of sealing wax red. While obviously in the tradition of the great celtic manuscripts, by this point the Urnes style has taken over. The Urnes style, mainly influenced by the Scandinavian art that the Vikings had brought with them, used much wider ribbon bodies for the beasts and much thinner lines for the snakes. While the style and decoration are obviously Celtic, the feel (mainly determined by the balance of background to knotwork) is much more Scandinavian, and to judge by its popularity not as pleasing to the modern eye.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
Return to the list of manuscripts...
The Codex Aureus has had an interesting history, having travelled widely. In the ninth century it was stolen by the Vikings and Aldormen Aelfred had to pay a ransom to get it back. He then donated it to Chris Church, Canterbury. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was in Spain, and in 1690 it was bought for the Swedish royal collection and so returned to Scandinavia.
The artist of the portrait pages is a master in copying the Byzantine/Italian style, but the Celtic style is very mechanical. There was another artist, who worked on the Canon Tables at least, had a strong grasp of traditional Celtic design. Overall its style is similar to the Vespasian Psalter, but it is its use of gold that makes it stand out. Gold was hardly ever used in the Northumbrian and Irish manuscripts, but here it is overwhelming. This is because half of the pages have been dyed purple - a throwback to an earlier tradition. On these pages the text is written in gold, silver and white, while on the plain vellum black, red and gold are used.
Other colours used were red, blue, yellow, green and brown.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
While it is probable that this book was written in Ireland and donated to the monastery of St. Gall, Switzerland, it is arguable that it was written there by a monk trained in Ireland as there was a determined influx of celtic missionaries into northern Europe in this period.
The illumination consists of four evangelists pages, five initial pages, one carpet page and two illustrations from the life of Christ. The celtic decorations on the carpet pages are beautifully done, while as usual the portraits and miniatures leave a bit to be desired. The portrait pages have very basic portraits of the Evangelists with their emblems flying above them, but are surrounded with intricate borders of knotwork and spirals.
The colours used were mainly blue, yellow and red with a few touches of others in the miniatures.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
TheVespasian Psalter was said to have belonged to St. Augustine himself, but unfortunately it was made over a hundred years after his death. It was originally (and at least until the 17th century) bound in silver, befitting its luxurious quality, but while the Psalter has remained, the binding was presumably melted down years ago.
It was almost certainly written in Canterbury, due to the perfect Italian uncial used for the text and the very english style of the artwork. The portraiture was done by a scribe well-versed in the Roman style, yet the Celtic ornaments used for the borders are just as perfect (though not as varied in the true Celtic manuscripts). This mixture is peculiar to Canterbury, the meeting place of the two styles, though rarely are the two mixed as well as in this Psalter.
There are more colours used than in most of the other manuscripts, including red, blue, yellow, brown, orange, green and some gold. The use of colour is different too, in that the portraits use shading to add depth to the figures, rather than the flat colours characteristic of the true Celtic manuscripts.
Return to the list of manuscripts...
Two Gospel Books in the British Museum (Harl. 1802 & 1023)
Psalter of Ricemarchus
Return to the list of manuscripts...
Click Here to go to the Art and History Index
Click
Here to go to the Celtic Creative Home Page.