Binding the Book of Kells
The scriptorium
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The scriptorium was the writing room usually at or near a Church settlement; the physical space where the act of transcribing books was carried out.
Some early sources refer to saints and holy people withdrawing to a quiet place in order to transcribe a gospel, implying that it was a form of solitary, meditative, devotional activity. In his late seventh-century account of the Life of Colum Cille, the abbot of Iona referred to Colum Cille’s ‘writing place’ as located on a hill overlooking the monastery at Iona in Scotland. The foundations of this have recently been identified by archaeologists in the University of Glasgow.
Fig 1. The (restored) abbey of Iona. The writing hut of Colum Cille is thought to have been located on the hill in front of the abbey building (to the left of the picture). Photo: Rachel Moss
The making of a new manuscript required significant resources; a library, containing books from which to make copies, and access to sources of vellum and pigments. So, by the late eighth and ninth centuries, when the Book of Kells was made, it is likely that the production of books was limited to a number of major centres. Iona is known to have been a centre of significant manuscript production, and renowned scriptoria in Ireland included Kildare, Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly, Bangor, Co. Down, Clonard, Co. Meath and Armagh.
Fig 2. A scribe at work, with his materials and book cupboard behind him. From the Codex Amiatinus, made c. AD700 in the north-east of England. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Amiatinus 1, fol. 5r. CC-PD-Mark.
Records of a fire at the monastery of Armagh in 1020 note the survival of the teach screaptra (‘house of the scriptures’), presumably a reference to a dedicated scriptorium building. However, clearly not all of the books were kept here, as the destruction of books kept in the students’ houses is also noted.
Ard-Macha [Armagh] was burned … without the saving of any house within it, except the house of the scriptures, and many houses were burned … and the large stone church was burned, and the cloictheach [round tower], with its bells; and Daimhliag-na-Toe, and Daimhliag-an-tSabhaill; and the old preaching chair, and the chariot of the abbots, and their books in the houses of the students, with much gold, silver, and other precious things.
Annals of the Four Masters, 1020
We know nothing of the original form of Irish scriptoria, but there were certain challenges to overcome. In the era before artificial light, large windows would have been needed, although we have no records of window glass in Ireland during the period in question, so another covering, such as vellum, may have been used. The dangers posed by fire may also have placed restrictions on heating, and complaints about the cold are not unusual in the margins of manuscripts.
175 comments
The scriptorium was the writing room usually at or near a Church settlement; the physical space where the act of transcribing books was carried out.
Some early sources refer to saints and holy people withdrawing to a quiet place in order to transcribe a gospel, implying that it was a form of solitary, meditative, devotional activity. In his late seventh-century account of the Life of Colum Cille, the abbot of Iona referred to Colum Cille’s ‘writing place’ as located on a hill overlooking the monastery at Iona in Scotland. The foundations of this have recently been identified by archaeologists in the University of Glasgow.
Fig 1. The (restored) abbey of Iona. The writing hut of Colum Cille is thought to have been located on the hill in front of the abbey building (to the left of the picture). Photo: Rachel Moss
The making of a new manuscript required significant resources; a library, containing books from which to make copies, and access to sources of vellum and pigments. So, by the late eighth and ninth centuries, when the Book of Kells was made, it is likely that the production of books was limited to a number of major centres. Iona is known to have been a centre of significant manuscript production, and renowned scriptoria in Ireland included Kildare, Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly, Bangor, Co. Down, Clonard, Co. Meath and Armagh.
Fig 2. A scribe at work, with his materials and book cupboard behind him. From the Codex Amiatinus, made c. AD700 in the north-east of England. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Amiatinus 1, fol. 5r. CC-PD-Mark.
Records of a fire at the monastery of Armagh in 1020 note the survival of the teach screaptra (‘house of the scriptures’), presumably a reference to a dedicated scriptorium building. However, clearly not all of the books were kept here, as the destruction of books kept in the students’ houses is also noted.
Ard-Macha [Armagh] was burned … without the saving of any house within it, except the house of the scriptures, and many houses were burned … and the large stone church was burned, and the cloictheach [round tower], with its bells; and Daimhliag-na-Toe, and Daimhliag-an-tSabhaill; and the old preaching chair, and the chariot of the abbots, and their books in the houses of the students, with much gold, silver, and other precious things.
Annals of the Four Masters, 1020
We know nothing of the original form of Irish scriptoria, but there were certain challenges to overcome. In the era before artificial light, large windows would have been needed, although we have no records of window glass in Ireland during the period in question, so another covering, such as vellum, may have been used. The dangers posed by fire may also have placed restrictions on heating, and complaints about the cold are not unusual in the margins of manuscripts.
Binding the Book of Kells
Medieval gospel books were sometimes bound in a single volume, or might be bound into separate gospels, or kept in loose gatherings in a folder-like cover so that sections could be consulted separately.
The original binding of the Book of Kells has long since been lost, and the trimming of the edges of some of the pages mean that valuable clues as to the original composition of the manuscript are now difficult to piece together with absolute certainty.
However, numerous closed books are illustrated throughout the pages of the manuscript, giving us some sense of the manner in which book covers were decorated at the time. Typically, these were made with wooden boards, covered with leather either stamped with a design while wet, or decorated with additional metal fittings.
Fig 1. Fol. 2v from the Book of Kells © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin, Fig 2. Fol. 4r from the Book of Kells © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin. 
Fig 3. Fol. 28v from the Book of Kells. © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin, Fig 4. Fol. 32v from the Book of Kells. © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin.
We know that by the early eleventh century the manuscript was either kept in a decorated box, known as a cumdach or book shrine, or had a treasure binding – in other words a wooden cover decorated with jewels. It was this covering that attracted thieves to steal the book in 1007.
Fig 5. Cover of the cumdach or shrine of the Book of Dimma, reflecting the type of precious ornament used to decorate book covers (twelfth-century with later additions). © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin.
Since that time the manuscript has been rebound several times. In 1742, in conjunction with the opening of the new library building a decade earlier (now known as the Old Library), the Book of Kells was rebound by Dublin bookseller, printer and binder John Exshaw for the sum of 3s 6d. This binding remained in place for just under a century, when, in 1826, the manuscript was entrusted into the care of binder George Mullen Jnr. Belonging to an era when ‘tidiness’ was the preferred aesthetic, Mullen’s intervention has since been described as ‘disastrous’.
Mullen first washed the manuscript, causing the pages to shrink unevenly, and then pressed them together to flatten them, causing considerable loss of colour. He then painted some of the margins with white oil paint, and filled and tinted flaws in the vellum. Worst of all, he trimmed the formerly uneven edges of the manuscript so that the edges could be gilded, removing parts of decoration of some of the pages in the process.
Fig 6. Fol. 183r from the Book of Kells. © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin, Fig 7. Fol. 290v from the Book of Kells. © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin. 
Fig 8. Fol. 291v from the Book of Kells. © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin, Fig 9. Fol. 3v, Fig 10. Fol. 29r from the Book of Kells. © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin.
Controversially, the manuscript was sent to London for yet another rebinding in 1874 causing widespread alarm that the book had been spirited out of the country without the proper permissions in place. By 1950, some of the leaves of the manuscript had become loose from this binding, and it was resolved to employ the conservation binder Roger Powell to work on the manuscript; it is his work which continues to protect the manuscript to the present day. His very sensitive treatment saw the manuscript bound into four separate volumes, one for each gospel.
This had many benefits, among them, allowing for more than one opening of the manuscript to be displayed at the same time. At present openings from two volumes are displayed while two volumes are kept in safe storage.
© Trinity College Dublin
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postado por professorpier @ novembro 28, 2019
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