Treasured Books
Attribution: Dalenevada, Creative Commons
I love telling the story of how St. Columcille (Columba) loved books. They were rare in the 6th century when he lived, and to have one and be able to make your own copy to keep and study was the greatest treasure to saints and scholars. Columcille, whose name means Dove of the Church, copied a copy of the Vulgate without permission. Making a copy lessened its value and a war was fought over this book. It was that important.
Pages of Ireland
The idea of how cherished books were in that time period inspired my novel, Pages of Ireland. My now published novel originally had another title. I wrote on this blog how the story was inspired by the Book of Durrow. I was fortunate enough to be able to see the Book of Durrow when I visited Trinity College a few weeks after I wrote this post.
Enya’s Son
This novel includes the tale I mentioned at the beginning of this post, but from the perspective of Columcille’s mother. You can’t tel a story about St. Columba without this tragic tale that led to his banishment to the island of Iona.
Ancient Books
I wrote the following years ago. The novel mentioned here turned out to be Pages of Ireland.
I’ve commented a lot on this blog about the ancient Celtic books and how rare and valuable they are. But the topic is on my mind again since I’ve just completed a novel I’m calling WORDS.
A book, of course, is involved, and it causes a lot of havoc. Some ancient people believed books were magical, powerful, and could bring fortune. It’s hard to fathom that in today’s society. Sure, we like books, but we wouldn’t go to war over one. We can just make a copy (legally or illegally.)
While writing WORDS I was influenced by the Book of Durrow, an ancient manuscript thought to have been created around 680 AD.
This book is considered as the earliest of the magnificently decorated Gospels created by Irish hands.
In the 17th century a man named Conal Mac Geoghegan of Lismoyne recorded in the Annals of Clonmacnoise, “I have seen myself part of that book which is at Durrow in the Kings County in the custody of an ignorant man. When sickness came upon cattle, for their remedy put water on the book and suffered it to the rest there a while and saw also cattle return thereby to their former or pristine state and the book to receive no loss.”
A man dunked the ancient book into a cattle trough! According to The Ancient Books of Ireland by Michael Slavin, The Book of Durrow does show signs of water damage and “a hole in the top right-hand corner of the leaves indicates that they could have been suspended by a thong in the ‘cure’ process.”
In my story, the same thing happens. These books were treasured not only for the scriptures they contained, but also for the incredible works of arts on the calfskin pages. In addition, some of the ancient books contained genealogies and other information that helped establish the rights of a kingdom.
Copies were rare, and that’s understandable when you consider that only a small percentage of people (monks) could read or write. The fact that some of these manuscripts survive is a wonder, maybe even a miracle. The Book of Durrow resides today in the library at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
Less than a month after I wrote that, I visited the library at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. It’s a popular visit that usually draws long lines. Once you get in to see the book enclosed in a glass display case, you can linger and get a good look. They change the pages available to view from time to time (I’m not sure what the schedule is) but to my surprise, they featured another book alongside it (something that also changes from time to time). It was The Book of Durrow! Even older than the Book of Kells and quite remarkable in its own right. The other visitors weren’t interested (they probably had no idea of its significance since its the Book of Kells that is most renowned.) I was able to get a good look. And last year Trinity College introduced a new display case. You can see it here and see how the book is displayed.
Learn more about the Book of Durrow here. It’s my understanding the Book of Durrow is not on display all the time, so I feel like it was meant to be that I saw it.
