About Trinity in College Dublin and the Book of Kells:
Trinity College is officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin and is the only college in the University of Dublin. The most notable possession here is the Book of Kells….a beautifully illustrated, 680-page manuscript that outshines other manuscripts of the same period in both the quality of its artwork and the large number of illustrations.
When it was created (around 800 AD) there was only one Christian church, and that was the Catholic Church. The Book of Kells was therefore inspired by the Vulgate bibles of the early Catholic church. The Old Testament has 45 (or 46) books and the New Testament has 27. Some of the books in the Book of Kells would later be excluded from the protestant bibles: seven books from the Old Testament (1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, and Judith) and parts of the Book of Daniel and Book of Esther).
Consisting mainly of copies of the four gospels, as well as indexes called “canon tables,” the manuscript is believed to have been made primarily for display, not reading aloud, which is why the images are elaborate and detailed while the text was not copied well, with entire words missing or long passages being repeated. It must be noted that much of the population was illiterate at this time in history, and so using images was a method of conveying the stories in the Bible to the general population (the same can be said of the use of stained glass windows).
The Book of Kells is written on parchment, in this case calf skin, a material that remembers the anatomical features of the animals from which it came, with markings where tails, spines, and legs used to be.
It is rather amazing that The Book of Kells has survived fairly well over the centuries; however 30 folios of the original manuscript have been lost over that time and the edges of the existing manuscript were severely trimmed during re-bindings.
Traveling to Trinity College in Dublin:
Address: College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland