The production of manuscripts formed a significant activity in early Christian Ireland. The arts of calligraphy and decoration were widely practiced, with scribes holding a high position in society. Illuminated manuscripts from the period between the sixth and ninth centuries represent high points in Ireland’s artistic history and have helped to define the country in a cultural-historical sense.
Folio 58v from the Book of Kells. The Board of Trinity College Dublin.
The travels of Irish missionaries abroad exerted wide influence on calligraphy and decorative techniques. Important Irish manuscripts survive from centers in Europe. Early seventh-century copies of works by Jerome (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, S.45.sup) and Orosius (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, D.23.sup) were probably produced at Bobbio, founded in 612 by St. Columbanus of Bangor, County Down. The latter manuscript contains the earliest surviving "carpet page" in insular art. (A carpet page is one composed entirely of ornament. "Insular" is commonly used as a broad and neutral term to describe the characteristics of the style in art and script.) A fragmentary gospel book, "Codex Usserianus Primus" (Dublin, Trinity College, 55), contains a cross monogram, set within a triple frame, between the gospels of Luke and Mark. The Greek letters alpha and omega are placed on either side of the cross. Generally believed to have been made early in the seventh century, "Usserianus Primus" has recently been ascribed to the fifth century and to a continental center (Dumville, 1999). Several important manuscripts, including a strikingly decorated Gospel book from the eighth century (St. Gallen, Stiftsbiblio-thek, 51), survive from St. Gallen in Switzerland, which was founded by one of Columbanus’s disciples.
St. Colum Cille, or Columba (c. 521-597) is a key figure in any account of Irish illuminated manuscripts. Born in Donegal around 521 into the ruling Ui Neill dynasty, Colum Cille traveled to Scottish Dal Riata with twelve companions around 561. The monastery he founded on Iona, off Mull (Argyll), became the head of a wealthy monastic confederation stretching from Ireland through Scotland to the north of England, where Lindisfarne was its most significant foundation.
A life of Colum Cille written by his successor as abbot, Adomnan (c. 628-704), contains references to the copying of texts on Iona, and to Colum Cille’s own prowess as a scribe. Three manuscripts written at intervals of roughly one hundred years—the Psalter of circa 600 known as the Cathach ("Battler") (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 12.R.33); the famous gospel manuscripts in the Book of Durrow, from circa 700 (Dublin, Trinity College, 57), and the Book of Kells, produced circa 800 (Dublin, Trinity College, 58)—all have strong associations with St. Colum Cille and serve as landmarks in the progression of insular styles of decoration. The Cathach, perhaps the earliest surviving manuscript with an unquestioned Irish origin, was traditionally believed to be the copy made by St. Columba of a Psalter lent to him by St. Finnian. A dispute about the ownership of the copy was resolved by King Diarmait mac Cerbhaill with the judgment "to every cow her calf and to every book its copy." This is frequently cited as an early instance of copyright law. It is not clear whether the Cathach was written and decorated by St. Colum Cille or was the work of a copyist undertaken some years after his death. Its artistic techniques include trumpet and spiral devices, the fish and the cross (symbols of Christ), as well as the calligraphic device of "diminuendo," in which the opening letters of a verse are formed in diminishing sizes. Its initials are frequently outlined in red dots. Red is used for rubrics, and there are some yellow and white pigments, but the damaged condition of the manuscript— a result of its having been kept in a shrine since the eleventh century—inevitably leads to a diminished appreciation of its artistry. On certain folios there are creatures that have been described as dolphin-like. Such uncertainty over the identity and meaning of particular devices, the purpose of which was presumably clear to the artist, is a feature of the study of insular art.
The Book of Durrow employed red dotting, not only around letters, but also, executed with remarkable delicacy, in places like the face of the Man, symbol of Matthew (folio 21v). Broad ribbon interlace, in red, green, and yellow, dominates the carpet pages and symbols pages preceding its Gospel texts, while trumpet and spiral devices and panels set into the carpet pages are strongly reminiscent of metalwork and jew-elery. The Eagle, symbol of Mark (folio 84v), is derived from a Roman imperial model, while the Lion on folio 191v has joint features in common with Pictish representations of animals. Both Durrow and the Cathach are thought to be the work of single artist-scribes. This is not so with the Book of Kells, which has such a diversity of approach as to indicate that it was executed by several different practitioners, probably working discontinuously rather than together to a common plan. Its artists and scribes showed extraordinary assurance and a vivid sense of color in integrating native Irish art with animal and figure drawings derived from classical and other Mediterranean prototypes. The Book of Armagh (Dublin, Trinity College, 52) was produced around the same time. It contains the earliest extant New Testament copied in Ireland, along with a dossier of texts relating to St. Patrick and a life of St. Martin of Tours. Sections of it can be attributed to a known scribe, Ferdomnach, "a scholar and an excellent scribe," as he was termed by the Annals of Ulster. According to an inscription in the manuscript, Ferdom-nach made it for Torbach, who was abbot of Armagh in 807. Ferdomnach’s work resembles the Book of Kells in its style and virtuosity, though he used only pen and ink. The identities of other artist-scribes in the Book of Armagh are not known.
The Macregol Gospels (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. D.2.19) can also be securely dated and localized. An inscription on the final page indicates that it was written and decorated by Macregol, abbot of Birr, County Offaly, who died in 822. A gloss added in Old English late in the tenth century indicates that it left Ireland at a relatively early date and demonstrates how difficult it is to anchor insular manuscripts in time and place. Had the final page of the Macregol Gospels, with its telling colophon, been lost, it might have been mistaken for one produced outside Ireland. Macregol’s work has considerable vigor and impact, containing initials that characteristically have purple or yellow fillers and are surrounded by red dots. These remain gleaming on the page and in relief, in contrast to the Book of Kells, where nineteenth-century processing has flattened and reduced the impact of such effects. A few pages that were not glossed in the tenth century give an unsullied impression of Macregol’s artistry.
It is likely that most major monasteries produced and cherished great manuscripts as relics of their founder and as status symbols. It is known from the comments of the thirteenth-century historian, Giraldus Cambrensis, that Kildare owned such a book, though one no longer extant:
It contains the concordance of the four gospels according to Saint Jerome, with almost as many drawings as pages, and all of them in marvellous colours…. If you look at them carelessly and casually and not too closely, you may judge them to be mere daubs rather than careful compositions.. But if you take the trouble to look very closely, and penetrate with your eyes to the secrets of the artistry, you will notice such intricacies, so delicate and subtle, so close together, and well-knitted, so involved and bound together, and so fresh still in their colourings that you will not hesitate to declare that all these things must have been the result of the work, not of men, but of angels (Fox, 1999).
It does not seem fanciful to suggest that similar manuscripts were probably produced at monasteries of the stature of Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, or Terryglass, County Tipperary, where a "pocket copy" of St. John’s Gospel and the Stowe Missal (bound together as Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, D.II.3) may have originated. Both manuscripts have high-grade decoration in the small format characteristic of the "pocket gospel" group of manuscripts. Examples from the group include the late eighth-century Book of Mulling (Dublin, Trinity College, 60), from St. Mullins, County Carlow, which has finely executed portraits of three evangelists, as well as a sadly damaged diagram, on its final page, of twelve crosses with inscriptions to accompany a sequence of prayers. The contemporary Book of Dimma (Dublin, Trinity College, 59), from Roscrea, County Tipperary, contains less naturalistic images.
The tradition and skills of insular decoration continued into the tenth century, seen in, for example, a fire-damaged Psalter from the Cotton library (London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius F.XI); the eleventh century, of which the Liber Hymnorum (Dublin, Trinity College, 1441) is a handsome example; and the twelfth century, where a Psalter signed by the scribe Cormac contains decoration that is assured and coherent (London, British Library, Add. 36929).
Styles imported from England after the Norman invasion of 1169 are reflected in a Psalter from Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, produced in 1397 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawl. C. 185), and an illustrated early-fifteenth-century missal (London, Lambeth Palace, 213). Both manuscripts probably originated in England. In the late fourteenth century, the charter roll of the city of Waterford was decorated in a lively manner, perhaps locally, while in the early fifteenth century a decorated copy of Ranulf Higden’s chronicle (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawl. B.179) is probably a Dublin production.
