Book of Kells. Illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels in Latin, named after the town of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, where it was preserved in the monastery from the 11th century or earlier until the 16th century. It is one of the most famous of all illuminated manuscripts, celebrated for its extraordinary richness of ornamentation, especially in its decorative initial letters, and it is regarded as one of Ireland's greatest national treasures. However, little is known for certain about its origins. According to tradition it is from the time of St Columba (
d 597), or is even a work of his own hands, but it is certainly appreciably later (it is now generally dated to about 800). It may have been produced at Kells, but the prevailing scholarly opinion is that it was made (or at least begun) on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, where Columba founded a monastery, and brought to Ireland when the monks of Iona fled from the Vikings in 806. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 the manuscript was in private hands until the 1660s, when it was presented to Trinity College, Dublin, by Bishop Henry Jones of Meath. At the same time he presented another celebrated early manuscript, the Book of Durrow (
c.650–80), named after the monastery at Durrow, County Offaly, where it had long been preserved. As with the Book of Kells, its origins are uncertain: Ireland, Iona, and
Lindisfarne have variously been suggested as its place of production (see
Insular art). It marks the beginning of the idea of building initial letters into whole-page designs, a concept so richly developed in the Book of Kells. See also
Celtic art.
