Book of Durrow
The Book of Durrow is an illuminated manuscript gospel book dated to c. 700 that contains the Vulgate Latin text of the four Gospels, with some Irish variations, and other matter, written in Insular script, and richly illustrated in the style of Insular art with four full-page Evangelist symbols, six carpet pages, and many decorated initials.
The text includes the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, plus several pieces of prefatory matter (the Letter of Jerome, prefaces, summaries, glossary of proper names and canon tables).
[8] The illumination of the book shows especially well the varied origins of the Insular style, and has been a focus for the intense art-historical discussion of the issue.
One thing that is clear is that the artist was unused to representing the human figure; his main attempt, the Man symbol for Matthew, has been described as a "walking buckle".
But the circular panel in the centre seems, although not as precisely as other parts of the book, to draw on Celtic sources, although the three white circles at the edge recall Germanic metalwork studs in enamel or other techniques.
Parallels with metalwork can be noted in the rectangular body of St Matthew, which looks like a millefiori decoration, and in details of the carpet pages.
Other motifs include spirals, triskeles, ribbon plaits and circular knots in the carpet pages and borders around the Four Evangelists.
The book is named after a monastery in Durrow, County Offaly, founded by Colum Cille late in his life, while he was abbot of Iona.
Although Colum Cille founded monasteries in Ireland, Scotland and the early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom Northumbria in today's Northern England, the rough recent consensus amongst scholars is that the book was produced at Durrow, or at least in Ireland, around 700, although the range of proposed dates around that year is fairly large, and largely dependent on the dating given to other related manuscripts.
[14] What is known for certain is that Flann Sinna (877-916), High King of Ireland, commissioned a silver cumdach, a "book-shrine" or metalwork reliquary for the book.
In the description of 1677, which is now bound into the manuscript as Folio IIv, the cover had a silver cross, an arm of which was inscribed in Irish with the name of the craftsman (not recorded by O'Flaherty) and on the main shaft an inscription "invoking the blessing of St Colum Cille on King Flann, who caused the shrine to be made".
[17] The monastery seems physically to have been destroyed after the Norman Invasion of Ireland, its lands passing to Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath, who used the stones in his new castle at the site.
It was recorded that by 1627 the un-named custodian of the book ("the Ignorant man that had same in his Custody") used it to cure disease in cattle by immersion in water, which was then given to the cows.
