The astonishing Book of Kells

(gentle piano music)

- [Dr. Steven] Two days ago,

we went to see the Book of Kells

in the magnificent library
at Trinity College.

Then we drove to the town of Kells itself

to look at the monastic community

where this important book
was housed for 800 years.

- [Dr. Lauren] The Book of
Kells is one of the most

exceptional books from
the early Middle Ages.

When we were standing
in front of the book,

you noticed how many folios
formed the book itself.

- [Dr. Steven] The book is
made out of fine vellum,

and the skin of more than 100 young calves

were used to produce this book.

- [Dr. Lauren] So many of those pages

are filled with full page illustrations.

They're not only vibrantly colored,

but there is so much intricacy

and delicate details to each drawing.

It's impressive to think of the time

that it would've taken to
complete even just a single page.

- [Dr. Steven] It would've been produced

in a building that is
known as a scriptorium.

We can imagine scribes sitting at desks

for long hours writing and painting.

- [Dr. Lauren] So the Book
of Kells is a gospel book

that includes the writings
of each of the four

gospel authors: Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John.

- [Dr. Steven] And there are
both author portrait pages

and pages that show the symbols

associated with each
of the gospel authors.

Books of this era are
not structured the way

that modern books are with
title pages, et cetera,

but there are efforts to help the reader,

and one of the mechanisms
that books of this era

often include is a canon table,

that is a kind of
concordance that allows you

to find the passages that
you're interested in.

But in this case, the canon tables

are extraordinarily
elaborate in their decoration

and are almost architectural

with colonnades and Roman arches.

- [Dr. Lauren] And shortly
after the canon table pages,

we find, by some accounts,

the earliest representation
of the Virgin and Child

in a manuscript within Western Europe.

And it reminds me of imagery
of the Virgin and Child

that you might find in
Byzantium and even Ethiopia.

- [Dr. Steven] What's
common to these images

is the frontal nature of the Virgin Mary,

and the schematic rendering of the face

and elaboration of the
clothing that she wears,

of the wealth of those textiles.

- [Dr. Lauren] Other stunning
pages in the Book of Kells

include things like the carpet page.

- [Dr. Steven] And there
we see a cross so elaborate

that it almost ceases to be a cross,

because it's got two cross
beams and these delicate circles

with intricate interlacing
in each of them.

But the circles are so large

that they almost overwhelm
the cross itself.

- [Dr. Lauren] And carpet pages

are not unique to the Book of Kells.

We see them in other books
like the Lindisfarne Gospels.

It's likely that the Book
of Kells was started,

if not completed, in Iona,
in what is today's Scotland.

- [Dr. Steven] Iona was
a monastic community

that had been founded by a
very important Irish saint,

a man named Columba.

- [Dr. Lauren] Now in
Irish, Columba is Colmcille,

and he is one of the most
important saints and figures

in the early Christian period in Ireland.

- [Dr. Steven] The
illumination that is best known

from the Book of Kells
is the Chi Rho page.

It is dense with decoration.

- [Dr. Lauren] The Chi Rho

is the first letters in
Christ's name in Greek.

You see it frequently
in early Christian art

as a way of marking Christ's presence.

And here, what looks
like an X for the Chi,

stretches in this swooping
diagonal from right to left,

taking up a good portion of the page,

but really what grabs your attention

is the very intricate
interlacing and spirals

and what looks like
filigree work that we find

in metalworking of this era in Ireland.

What I'm always struck by when
I look at the Chi Rho page

is how incredibly difficult
it is to make out the forms.

Every time I look, I see something new.

There are human heads, there are angels.

We see animals, birds, some of them

as part of the interlace or
these interwoven designs.

Some of them very clearly articulated,

such as my favorite
detail, which is two cats

that have caught mice who are
biting a eucharistic host,

the wafer that miraculously
trans substantiates

into the body of Christ during mass.

- [Dr. Steven] And so it seems miraculous

that a scribe was able to
define such intricate details

at such a minute scale,
and to do it so precisely,

knowing that the parchment
itself was precious,

that the materials were precious,

and that there was little room for error.

- [Dr. Lauren] To create a page like this

would have required the utmost focus.

We could think of it
as an act of devotion.

- [Dr. Steven] But on
the day that we visited

the Book of Kells, it was open
to another magnificent page.

Every few days, the
pages have to be changed.

And it has a typically elaborate border,

which is defining a serpent or a dragon

who's biting its own tail.

- [Dr. Lauren] And in that
border, we see the characteristic

interlace with beasts and
birds, all intertwined together.

And then within the decorative border,

we see four angels
surrounding the word una,

and we even see interlaced
birds that have been described

as peacocks inside the middle of the U.

- [Dr. Steven] Look at
that beautiful teal blue,

which was used by mixing
a white with lapis lazuli,

a color that was imported
all the way from Afghanistan.

- [Dr. Lauren] The use of lavish materials

added to the importance of this book.

The text on this page,
as well as the pages

that are primarily
filled solely with text,

is using a Irish form of writing
called insular majuscule.

- [Dr. Steven] Insular refers to something

that was made in the British Isles,

and majuscule refers to
the use of capital letters,

but there is this distinctly
beautiful rounded form

and regularization of those letter forms.

- [Dr. Lauren] This is an era
where manuscript production

is so vital to early Christianity
and its spread in Ireland.

- [Dr. Steven] If it was made in Iona,

one of the reasons that it
would've been transported

all the way to Kells is to protect it.

- [Dr. Lauren] So in 793, Iona
is attacked by the Vikings.

And so that's when monks
at Iona would have brought

the Book of Kells to Kells
Abbey for safe keeping,

or possibly have finished it there.

(gentle piano music)