Of Kells to heart were subverting the centralized power of the CatholicĬhurch, located in Rome for centuries. The sixth century and died just as Saint Augustine came to Canterbury,įrom Rome, to convert Britain. Was made in Ireland and is associated with a Saint Columba, who lived in The Book of Kells becameįamous in the nineteenth century, during the Celtic revival. Why is the oldest surviving version of Catholicism’s most important textĬondemned to life under a blanket, while the Book of Kells lives behindĪs with all things, the answer is political. The occasional person who wandered through to use the photocopier.” ‘Amiatina!’ they declared.”ĭe Hamel is left with the book, “entirely unsupervised,” joined only “by Trolley with a bulky shape under a blanket. Microfilms and a photocopier.” The man and a colleague point to “a Where de Hamel nestles among “camera stands, filing cabinets of Who leads de Hamel to a “little room evidently used for photography,” Office, where he finds two women chatting. Guidebook asserts them to be pomegranates,” he writes-to the library When de Hamel arrives to see it, he walks past aĬloister and a garden-“I am sure that the fruit trees are oranges but my The Abbey was closed,īy the grand duke Pietro Leopoldo, in the seventeen-eighties, and theīook was sent to the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, in Florence, where The Tuscan lava dome Monte Amiata, hence the name. Ninth century it was in the possession of the Abbey of the Saviour, near Seventh century, in the community of the Venerable Bede, but by the The book was manufactured in England at the end of the Translation of the Bible into Latin-a text of incalculable value for theĬatholic Church. Vulgate, and therefore the best witness to St. Version of the chapter describing this process, Meehan “begged me not toĭescribe too precisely where we had looked at the volumes of theĭe Hamel has a rather different experience encountering the CodexĪmiatinus, the earliest surviving manuscript of the complete Latin De Hamel writes that after he showed Meehan an early In order to see the book, de Hamel must sit at “aĬircular green-topped table, prepared in advance with foam pads, aĭigital thermometer, and white gloves.” He is not allowed to turn the Inappropriate to allow it into the reading-room,” given the book’s Manuscripts at Trinity, explains to de Hamel that “it would be These days, the security arrangements around the Book of Kells are “asĬomplex as presidential protection undertaken by the secret services ofĪ great nation,” de Hamel tells us. Treasure, one can’t help but think of the Book of Kells alone in the As de Hamel sits supervisedīy a hawklike librarian, or alone behind a photocopier with a priceless Security procedures that protect each one. Hamel meets are, in fact, remarkable, there is wild variation in the Its mostĮngaging enigma centers on worth. Your open hand and which then curled to indicate whether you were inĭe Hamel is a man of extraordinary erudition and easy charm his bookĪsks many questions of the past, and invokes many mysteries. Same as a Great Dane, and that the pages of the Gospel of SaintĪugustine tend to “curl up alarmingly,” recalling one of “those paperįish one used to buy in joke shops, which you placed on the warmth of That the oldest complete version of the Latin Vulgate weighs about the “I have no vocabulary to define this, but there is aĬurious warm leathery smell to English parchment,” he writes. Again and again, de Hamel takes us into the reading Each chapter is a sort of visitation with aĬelebrity-with de Hamel as our guide, we turn the pages of the Morganīeatus, the Hours of Jeanne de Navarre, the Hengwrt Chaucer, theĬopenhagen Psalter. Manuscript keeper of the Parker Library at the University of Cambridge, The story of the Book of Kells is one of twelve that de Hamel, the Muddied by sod after eighty days-twice as many, de Hamel notes, asĬhrist spent in the Wilderness. Miscreants, in 1007 A.D., it was recovered stripped of its binding and The book’s “disappearance” caused a stir in the press, perhapsīecause the last time it had been stolen, by Vikings or similar The librarian there decided to bring the book to the British Museum, to get some advice about rebinding. Western manuscript image of the Virgin Mary-was held at Trinity College in Dublin. By then, the thousand-year-old text-a richly illustrated gospel book containing the earliest surviving The second time that the Book of Kells was stolen, in 1874, it was, asĬhristopher de Hamel explains in his new book, “ Meetings With Remarkable Photograph by Historical Picture Archive / Corbis via Getty A reproduction of Saint Matthew from the Book of Kells, a manuscript that is a linchpin of Irish identity.
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