The Book of Kells sits in a darkened room under protective glass and the watchful eye of security guards. The chamber’s temperature is meticulously managed, just one of many precautions undertaken by the tome’s custodians at Trinity College Dublin. Photos are not allowed — though no small number of touristy eyes peers at the ancient volume each and every day. The pages of the book are turned once every six weeks, resulting in a ponderously slow journey through the Gospels.
But perhaps this slow pace is necessary to truly appreciate the intricately drawn illustrations that accompany this Celtic manuscript. Despite dating back to roughly 800 A.D., the bright colors of each page have not faded at all, as creatures both mundane and mythic leap out from behind carefully inscribed Latin words.
The Book of Kells enjoys a quiet existence now, despite all those curious passersby. A safer one, to be sure. Originally begun on the small Scottish island of Iona, the Book of Kells was completed on Irish soil after having fled across the sea from the constant threat of Viking raids. Though comparatively safer in Ireland, the book was still stolen and buried and later recovered, though its bejeweled cover was never seen again. In 1654, once more under threat of violence, the book was moved from the monastery at Kells to Dublin. It was entrusted to Trinity College in 1661 and there remains.
For as much as we know about the history of the Book of Kells — and to be honest, there are some real gaps in the story — we know next to nothing about the monks who put the book together. According to the official display at Trinity College, there were four different scribes and three major artists, though there likely were more hands involved in the final product.
What is agreed upon is that this was laborious work; it required immense focus and discipline — not to mention good eyesight! Mistakes were made and removed, and scribes wrote notes to one another in the margins expressing their great desire to be done already. The scribes were not above boredom.
But what is also clear is that the Book of Kells is a labor of profound love and devotion. This was a contemplative act of worship. This kind of work was integral to the monastic life of the time.
And so what? We are eons beyond scratching handmade inks into dried calfskins. What does it matter to us?
I was struck by the exhibit’s ongoing reflection on the mysterious identities surrounding these great scribes and artists. While we don’t know their names or what became of their lives, we are able to discern some sense of their personalities based solely on how they tended to their work — how they quite literally revealed the Gospel. One scribe preferred colored inks; another approached his work with a conservative sobriety. Flourishes were individual choices, discerned and deployed to better articulate some moment of the Gospel story.
To put it bluntly, these monks have been reduced to the simple design choices they made so as to best illuminate the Gospel as they saw fit. That’s what’s been protected and studied and treasured for all these years: these quiet decisions as acts of worship that imagined new and creative ways to reveal the Good News.
I wonder: If we stripped away our names and identities, our work and our legacy, our families and our friends, what flourishes would remain of our own attempts to reveal the Gospel?
Or, to put it bluntly once more, if a person 1,200 years from now found some fragment of your life, would they understand something of your truest self by examining how you revealed the Gospel day in and day out?
How can we live our lives in such a way that our unique experience of God may have such a lasting effect for the good of all?
