Page 38 - DIVA_1_2013

cribes a church on the river Jordan,
marking the site of Christ's bap-
tism, so precisely that Jordanian
archaeologists are still making use
of his account. The abbot presents
all his knowledge as information
gleaned from a wandering pilgrim
who washed up on the shores of the
Scottish island of Iona.

Illuminating In September 2010 the National
Museum of Ireland added to the list
of clues with an exciting announce-
a Dark Age ment that traces of Egyptian papy-
rus had been detected in the binding
of a 1,200 year old psalter discove-
red in the bogs of Tipperary in 2006
by a surprised turf-cutter. While not
certain, the scraps of evidence lend
Early Christian Manuscripts weight to the idea that Celtic scribes
labouring in their rainswept refuges
dvanced computer techno- the Latin text of the four Gospels were not so much saving Roman ci-
logy with use of sophistica- scripted by at least three scribes. vilisation as participating in a spiri-
A ted digital techniques and It was found in Kells, an ancient tual movement inspired by the de-
internet is assisting art historians, Christian centre and heritage town sert hermits of Egypt; a movement
archaeologists, palaeographers and north-west of Dublin, in the eleventh that was conceived, in part, as a re-
others to explore and discover early century as attested by church tran- volt against civilisation.
connections of Christian scholars to sactions copied into it. The manus-
a globalised world embracing the cript may have been taken therein the Penned a century earlier Saint
Roman Empire and beyond. Codices early ninth century by monks of the Patrick's memoirs do not say how
are being decoded and the science of Scottish island of Iona, Columbanus he felt about the process of writing
recovering lost writing has made big (Colm Cille) community seeking re- but the spirit of self-discipline was
strides amongst scholars East and fuge from Viking
West alike. raids. While its
date and place
Earliest of the surviving fully illumi- of origin remain
nated insular Gospel manuscripts controversial, the
of Irish influence is the Book of Book of Kells is on
Durrow. The presence of the manus- protected public
cript in the monastery of Durrow, display at Trinity
near Tullamore, Co. Offaly (founded College Library,
in the sixth century by Coim Cille), Dublin where it
is attested from the tenth century was brought in
onwards, though it was not written the i66os.
there. On the strength of several
elements it is said to have been exe- Early Christian
cuted at a monastery in Northum- Manuscripts
bria founded by Cohn Cille and his
successors. Following suppression An Irish-born
of the monastery of Durrow, the monastic, wri-
book remained in the area; in the ting in the late
sixteenth century a local farmer was seventh century,
using it to cure sick cattle by dip- shows a remar-
ping it in the water that was then kable knowledge
offered to the cattle to drink. Henry of the Middle
Jones, Protestant Bishop of Meath, East, including
obtained possession of it in the se- Nile and Alexan-
venteenth century and in 1652 pre- dria. Gilla Adorn-
sented it to Trinity College, Dublin. nan, a priest from
Durrow who was
A masterpiece of medieval illumina- appointed abbot
tion is the Book of Kells containing of Kells, also des-

36 History
1