The Book of Kells: Vikings, Murder and the Theft of a Medieval Masterpiece

 

Iona Abbey, Scotland, in a historic view before its restoration.

 

For more than twelve centuries, the Book of Kells has survived violence, theft, exile and the disappearance of the world that created it. Its story is almost as extraordinary as the manuscript itself.

Around the year 800, somewhere in the monastic world of the British Isles, a group of scribes and artists were creating something extraordinary.

On sheets of carefully prepared vellum, they copied the four Gospels in Latin. Around the words they constructed an almost impossibly intricate universe of interlacing lines, fantastic animals, human figures, brilliant pigments and monumental initials.

Today we call it the Book of Kells.

But we still do not know with certainty exactly where it was made.

For many years, the principal theory has connected its creation with the monastery of Iona, founded by St Columba on a small island off the western coast of Scotland. Other origins have also been proposed, and recent scholarship continues to debate the question. What is clear is that the manuscript emerged from the Columban monastic tradition around the end of the eighth century. 

 

Three pages from the Book of Kells — among the great masterpieces of medieval illumination.

 

Then the Vikings arrived

 

A later depiction of a Viking raid on the British Isles.

 

Iona's isolation had once been part of its protection.

By the end of the eighth century, it had become a vulnerability.

Viking raiders attacked Iona in 795. They returned. In 802 the monastery was burned. And in 806 came the event that would change the community forever. 

The Annals of Ulster record it with chilling brevity:

“The community of Í, to the number of sixty-eight, was killed by the heathens.”

Sixty-eight.

We do not know the name of the Viking leader responsible for the attack. Nor does the surviving contemporary record tell us precisely how the 68 were killed.

But the effect on the community was profound.

The surviving Columban monks established a new monastery inland at Kells, in County Meath, Ireland. The new foundation appears in the annals immediately afterwards, and for a period Iona and Kells formed part of the same religious community. 

Whether the manuscript travelled with those survivors cannot be proved. Nor can we know whether it had already been completed at Iona, was finished at Kells, or was created partly in both places.

Somewhere in this turbulent passage from one monastery to another, however, the book survived.

And eventually it became inseparably associated with Kells.

Why 68?

More than twelve centuries later, that number is the reason behind the limitation of our new edition.

The Galobart Book of Kells XL Edition consists of 68 individually numbered copies.

Not 100. Not 500.

Sixty-eight.

Each numbered copy remembers the 68 members of the community killed at Iona in 806 — and the extraordinary chain of events through which the Columban tradition, and ultimately the manuscript associated with it, endured.

But Viking raids were not the last danger the Book of Kells would face.

 

The Viking Raider Stone, Lindisfarne, c. 800–825. An extraordinary contemporary image from the age of the Viking raids on the British Isles.

 

The night the Book of Kells disappeared

 

The Book of Kells — XL Edition by Galobart, with its cumdach-inspired presentation case.

 

Two centuries later, in 1006, something extraordinary happened at Kells.

The manuscript was stolen.

And the thieves were apparently not particularly interested in the book.

They wanted its magnificent cover.

Medieval Gospel books of exceptional importance could be protected by extraordinarily valuable shrines or covers, known in Ireland as cumdachs. They could incorporate precious metals and elaborate ornament, making the object surrounding a sacred manuscript almost as valuable as the manuscript itself.

The Book of Kells appears to have possessed such a treasure.

The Annals of Ulster describe the manuscript at the time as the great Gospel book of Colum Cille and record that it was stolen at night from the great stone church at Kells. The reason for its extraordinary importance was its precious shrine. 

The thieves took the gold.

The book was discarded.

After roughly two months and twenty nights, according to the historical account, the manuscript was recovered — deprived of its gold and found beneath a sod of earth. 

Imagine the scene.

A manuscript that had required immense skill and years of labour, already centuries old, abandoned in the ground because the thieves valued the precious metal around it more than the pages themselves.

The cover disappeared.

The book survived.

 

A manuscript that refused to disappear

The Book of Kells remained at Kells throughout the Middle Ages.

Its blank spaces were even used to record property transactions concerning the monastery, evidence that this extraordinary object was not merely preserved but remained part of the life of the community. 

Then came another period of danger.

Following the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the church at Kells fell into ruin. Around 1653, the manuscript was sent to Dublin for safekeeping.

In 1661, Henry Jones, Bishop of Meath, presented it to Trinity College Dublin. It has remained there ever since.

In 1953, the manuscript was rebound into four volumes.

Today its 340 surviving folios — 680 pages — measure approximately 33 × 25.5 cm. The manuscript contains the four Gospels in Latin and some of the most elaborate decoration ever created for a medieval book.

 

 

Twelve centuries later

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Book of Kells is simply that it is still here.

The monastery that produced or nurtured it belongs to another world.

The Vikings came and went.

Its precious medieval shrine disappeared.

Kells itself ceased to be its home.

Yet the vellum pages survived.

Approximately twelve centuries after they were created, we can still look into the extraordinary labyrinths of the Chi Rho page, see the Virgin and Child, follow the minute interlacing animals and human figures, and encounter essentially the same images that medieval eyes encountered centuries ago.

That survival is part of what makes the Book of Kells more than a beautiful book.

It is an object that has travelled through history.

 

THE BOOK OF KELLS — XL EDITION

To mark this extraordinary history, Galobart is creating a complete 1:1 facsimile of the Book of Kells, reproducing all 680 surviving pages at the scale of the original manuscript.

The edition is limited to 68 individually numbered copies worldwide, in remembrance of the 68 members of the community killed at Iona in 806.

Each copy will be accompanied by an English study volume, ten Collector’s Art Prints and a handcrafted presentation case inspired by the medieval Irish tradition of the cumdach.

Early Access is now open to Galobart collectors.

DISCOVER THE BOOK OF KELLS — XL EDITION →

 

The Book of Kells — XL Edition by Galobart, reproduced at the original 1:1 scale.