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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downy, and today we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about what might be the most beautiful

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Speaker 1: book in the world, the Book of Cows. Yeah, when

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Speaker 1: my mom was in her teens traveling in Dublin, she

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Speaker 1: made sure to visit the Book of Kells as often

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Speaker 1: as she could because back then they used to change

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Speaker 1: the pages over every day or so and you could

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Speaker 1: see a new illumination in new text. And now they

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Speaker 1: only turn the pages of the manuscripts every few months.

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Speaker 1: But when I visited Dublin a little more than a

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Speaker 1: year ago, I made sure to check in with the

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Speaker 1: Book of Kells and um, it's probably the most famous

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Speaker 1: book in the world, maybe the most beautiful, and it's

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Speaker 1: kept at Trinity College, which is right in the middle

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Speaker 1: of Dublin. After taking a look at the famous campus arch,

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Speaker 1: you can take a turn in the college library and

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Speaker 1: there's a whole exhibit devoted to the book. Before getting

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Speaker 1: a glimpse at its pages, the museum impresses upon its

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Speaker 1: visitors the whole significance of this volume. You know what

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Speaker 1: the Book of Kells means and why it's so important,

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Speaker 1: its age, the skill and time it took to make it,

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Speaker 1: the scholarship surrounding it, and the miracle of it even surviving.

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Speaker 1: And finally you get to this packed room where two

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Speaker 1: of the four manuscripts are displayed, and four manuscripts make

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Speaker 1: up the whole. We don't want to give the impression

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Speaker 1: they are different copies, um, but each manuscript represents a gospel,

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Speaker 1: and one has turned to an illuminated page and one

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Speaker 1: to a page of script, and the writing is really

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Speaker 1: shapely and clear, and the illumination is colorful and detailed,

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Speaker 1: and so detailed in fact, that you never could get

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Speaker 1: quite a close enough view and long enough of you

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Speaker 1: and that big crowd of people to to see everything.

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Speaker 1: But it's still amazing to look at something that's so

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Speaker 1: intricate and so beautiful and more than one thousand, two

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Speaker 1: hundred years old old. So no wonder it's often considered

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Speaker 1: Ireland's National treasure and attracts five hundred thousand visitors a year.

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Speaker 1: So let's dive into the history of the book. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so the Book of Kells isn't just famous for its beauty,

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Speaker 1: and its skill of craftsmanship. It's shrouded in mystery and

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Speaker 1: there are all these misadventures. It's so amazing that we

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Speaker 1: actually still have this book and it's in as good

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Speaker 1: a shape as it is. So for centuries there has

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Speaker 1: been arguments about where it originated, whether it was Ireland

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Speaker 1: or Northern England or Scotland, but the most likely story

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Speaker 1: starts way back in five sixty one or maybe five

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Speaker 1: sixty three. So in five sixty one or five sixty three,

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Speaker 1: the Irish Saint Columba or column Kill which means delve

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Speaker 1: of the Church, who was an Irish monk inscribe, fled

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Speaker 1: Ireland and founded a monastery on Iona, An Island off

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Speaker 1: the west coast of Scotland, and this became a missionary

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Speaker 1: center to people of Irish descent who were living in

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Speaker 1: the area. Yeah, so they were there for a while,

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Speaker 1: but in eight oh six a Viking raid on the

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Speaker 1: island left sixty eight months dead. So the Columbian monks

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Speaker 1: take off. They're not going to risk that happening again,

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Speaker 1: and they moved to a new monastery at Kells in

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Speaker 1: County Meath, which is northwest of Dublin. And the book

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Speaker 1: was probably written close to eight hundred a d. But

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Speaker 1: we can't quite guess if it was written completely at Iona,

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Speaker 1: completely at Kel's or a mixture of both, because you know,

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Speaker 1: after all, a book is pretty portable. You could bring

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Speaker 1: it when you were fleeing to your new monastery. There's

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Speaker 1: some other lesser accepted hypotheses, like one that says it

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Speaker 1: was written in North England, maybe Linda's Farn, the site

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Speaker 1: of perhaps the second most famous illustrated manuscript of the period,

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Speaker 1: Um brought to Iona and then Kells, or maybe right

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Speaker 1: to Kells. Or it was possibly made at an East

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Speaker 1: Scottish monaster. The controversy, but we're going to go with that.

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Speaker 1: Iona to Kell's story. I think, Um, life at Kells

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Speaker 1: isn't easy, are the beautiful manuscript either though? It's the

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Speaker 1: city is constantly being sacked by Danes and locals, lots

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Speaker 1: of Irish infighting. Um, So it's really impressive that it

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Speaker 1: survives this period too, let alone it's it's earlier days

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Speaker 1: we know for sure of its presence and Kells by

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Speaker 1: ten oh six or ten oh seven, and Kati and

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Speaker 1: I were saying, it's so strange thing ten of going

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Speaker 1: one thousands UM and that's when the Annals of Ulster

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Speaker 1: told that quote the Great Gospel of column Kill, the

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Speaker 1: chief relic of the Western world, was wickedly stolen during

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Speaker 1: the night on account of its rot shrine. Two months

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Speaker 1: and twenty days later it was found under assad, missing

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Speaker 1: its gold and jewel encrusted shrine and a few pages.

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Speaker 1: But things still don't look up for the Book of Kells.

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Speaker 1: Its existence is not easy in even the coming centuries,

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Speaker 1: and it's defaced and damaged. And in the twelfth century

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Speaker 1: charters concerning monastery business are copied onto its blank pages,

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Speaker 1: which sounds so weird. Using the Book of Kells's scrap

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Speaker 1: paper essentially horrifying. I'd don't even dog your library book.

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Speaker 1: It's a common practice at the time, though, um you

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Speaker 1: know when paper or vellum is rare. And also in

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Speaker 1: the twelfth century, the monks lost the book. Due to

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Speaker 1: ecclesiastical reform, the monastery at Kell's ceased to exist and

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Speaker 1: the property passed on to the Bishopric of Meath, so

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Speaker 1: the book stayed in what was now the parish church.

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Speaker 1: So it stayed in the same spot. It just was

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Speaker 1: no longer under the monk's protection right, And in sixteen

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Speaker 1: fifty four the Cromwellian cavalry quartered in the church and

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Speaker 1: this was bad news. Um. I'm sure that the people

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Speaker 1: responsible for the book are concerned that the English will

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Speaker 1: run off with it, so they send it to Dublin

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Speaker 1: for safety. And after sixteen sixty one it's officially presented

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Speaker 1: to try the College by Henry Jones, who goes on

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Speaker 1: to become the Bishop of me after restoration, and that's

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Speaker 1: its home now. It has not gotten back to Kell's

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Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that more later. The last terrifying

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Speaker 1: book crime we have to account was not at the

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Speaker 1: hands of the Vikings or the English, but in eighteen

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Speaker 1: twenty one book binder who cut off about half an

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Speaker 1: inch at the outer margins of the book, including decorations,

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Speaker 1: sorts of priceless decoration, and that's just gone. I mean

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Speaker 1: you could imagine I'm sweeping it away. I'm still angry.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty tragic. It's rebound in by a more responsible binder. Um.

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Speaker 1: It's getting kind of messed up after this binding though.

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Speaker 1: The pages that are displayed frequently are having pigment damage

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Speaker 1: and it's just getting soiled because it's touched so much.

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Speaker 1: And our final binding we're going to mention is in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three when it's repaired and rebound by Roger Powell,

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Speaker 1: who was a leading conservation book binder, and he puts

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Speaker 1: it into the four volumes that we know today, which

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Speaker 1: correspond to a Gospel. And um, there we go. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk about the book itself. The Book of Kells

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Speaker 1: is comprised of four Gospels in Latin based on a

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Speaker 1: Vulgate text. The Vulgate edition was written by St. Jerome

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Speaker 1: in a d and that is what ultimately became the

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Speaker 1: definitive Latin version of the Bible. Yeah, and the English

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Speaker 1: versions that we know are based in turn off of

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Speaker 1: the Vulgate. It's interesting though this isn't necessarily um about

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Speaker 1: the Book of Kells, but a lot of the illuminated

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Speaker 1: manuscripts at the time are not pure Vulgate. Um. Many

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Speaker 1: Irish trained monks knew earlier translations of the Gospels and

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Speaker 1: knew them, had had them memorized, and they trusted their

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Speaker 1: memories more than the model that they were given to coffee.

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Speaker 1: So there's sort of like freeform Gospels, like transformation of

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Speaker 1: the Bible. The book was made at the height of

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Speaker 1: Ireland's Golden Age, and it represented an enormous commitment at

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Speaker 1: the monastery's time and resources. We've got a lot of

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Speaker 1: gold involved, a lot of expensive pigments, and lots of monks.

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Speaker 1: There's just lots of manpower, a really time intensive book.

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Speaker 1: You cannot get the Book of Kells on your kindle.

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Speaker 1: And we have to also ask what is it for.

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Speaker 1: It's an oversized book, heavily ornamented. I mean that cover

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Speaker 1: originally was gold with jewels all over it. So it's

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Speaker 1: not made for a private devotional. It's not what you

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Speaker 1: retreat to your cell with and look over. It's probably

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Speaker 1: something that would have been carried in ceremonial processions like Easter,

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Speaker 1: for example, and then placed on an altar facing out

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Speaker 1: toward the congregation. And I think this is so interesting,

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Speaker 1: but you have to think, of course, your average member

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Speaker 1: of a congregation at this time would not know how

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Speaker 1: to read, and they wouldn't even speak or understand Latin.

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Speaker 1: They would speak Gaelic. So I'd say that your average

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Speaker 1: book would not have a lot of power over someone

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Speaker 1: who was illiterate and spoke a different language. So therefore

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Speaker 1: you make this book that's so beautiful that it would

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Speaker 1: have inspired anyone illiterate or not, just with all of

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Speaker 1: its colors and all of its symmetry and lots of illustration.

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Speaker 1: Because the monks knew the biblical texts in and out,

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Speaker 1: they filled these copies with meaning using things other than words.

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Speaker 1: So instead they use the symbolism of animals like lions

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Speaker 1: and snakes and peacocks to represent say, the resurrection. The

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Speaker 1: host is depicted in the mouths of mice or lions.

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Speaker 1: There's a cross motif on almost every page, m angels

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Speaker 1: bearing the stigmata pointing at Christ. There are a lot

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Speaker 1: of intricate and really often humorous, definitelys that make it

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Speaker 1: really cool to look at. You should definitely go online

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Speaker 1: and find a bunch of pictures. And I feel like

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Speaker 1: this is a follow along podcast. You can pull up

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Speaker 1: images and reference them. Maybe not when you're driving if

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Speaker 1: you're a commuter listener. So going down into book specifics,

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Speaker 1: the pages are big, like ten by thirteen inches, and

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Speaker 1: there are three hundred forty folio six eight pages and

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Speaker 1: they're written on calf bellum. Probably we're missing about sixty pages,

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Speaker 1: although one page was recovered in the eighteenth century and

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Speaker 1: flipped back into the book, which I think is so awesome.

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Speaker 1: Um the vellum represents about a hundred and eighty five

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Speaker 1: skins of calves um, so you can imagine just the

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Speaker 1: work and effort that would go into creating the parchment.

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Speaker 1: And it's that texture of the parchment that no facimile

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Speaker 1: can reproduce, even if it's really a great coffee, because

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Speaker 1: it's thick and leathery in certain spots, and then it's

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Speaker 1: really been almost to the point of translucence and in others.

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Speaker 1: And going from pages to script, the letters that make

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Speaker 1: up the gospels, the prefaces, the summaries of the gospel

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Speaker 1: narratives are written in this insular's type of writing that's

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Speaker 1: typical of Scotland, Ireland and Linda's barn at the time,

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Speaker 1: and it was essentially a Newish type of font and

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Speaker 1: the variations of it spread throughout Europe by missionaries. But

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Speaker 1: of course the script doesn't mean anything in the Book

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Speaker 1: of Kells without the illumination. Yeah, it surrounds all of

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Speaker 1: the text and there are only two pages in that

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Speaker 1: whole long thing devoid of ornamentation, which I think is

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Speaker 1: so amazing. They don't picture book, supposed picture book. They

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Speaker 1: embellished keywords and key phrases and decorated initials, their drawings

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Speaker 1: that wrap around the text. It's all perfectly put together

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Speaker 1: to like a puzzle, which is so interesting when you

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Speaker 1: think about multiple people working on one page. There's not

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Speaker 1: work inspired by Celtic metal working and stone crosses and

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Speaker 1: people lay through the words. You really have to look

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Speaker 1: this up. But people just with their legs all folded

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Speaker 1: up in funny Celtic knots and they're tongue tied in

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Speaker 1: bows and it's it's really interesting, and like we've mentioned before,

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Speaker 1: the imagination and humor in these drawings. It's not just

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Speaker 1: stay in religious types of things. The letters seem alive.

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Speaker 1: There are human figures that are fantastically elongated in part

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Speaker 1: and pulling each other's beards. Um. A horse rider is

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Speaker 1: pointing an important part of the text with his toes,

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Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts. It's like, look at this,

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Speaker 1: I'm kicking towards it. There's an inebriated, illustrated man who's

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Speaker 1: sinking against the edge of the page. And there are

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Speaker 1: tons of animals to lizards and cats and lions, moms, otters, fish, mice, hens, lizards, hounds,

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Speaker 1: and it's funny too some of the animals. Obviously, the

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Speaker 1: monks wouldn't have seen these these um you know, monks

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Speaker 1: on iona kills wherever they are um never would have

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Speaker 1: seen a lion, for example, and they must have known

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Speaker 1: kind of how a lion's body was shaped and that

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Speaker 1: it hit a main But consequently they end up looking

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Speaker 1: like dogs with these big funny whiskers. But the animals

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Speaker 1: are used to to indicate things, corrections and additions and

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Speaker 1: a turn in the path which is kind of a

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Speaker 1: change in the direction of the text. So they have roles.

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Speaker 1: And there is feature art as well, complex scenes that

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Speaker 1: take up whole pages, like the arrest of Christ at

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Speaker 1: the Temptation of Christ Virgin and child St. Matthew St. John.

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Speaker 1: But perhaps the most famous is the Cairo, and that

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Speaker 1: gets us to the illuminators, the people who illustrated the book. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The historian fran Sis Henry thinks that there are three

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Speaker 1: principal artists. One is the Goldsmith, and he's probably the

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Speaker 1: most famous. Here. Of course, we don't know who these

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Speaker 1: people really are and what their names would have been, um.

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Speaker 1: But the Goldsmith is considered the great draftsman, and he

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Speaker 1: didn't draw foliage, but he really liked yellow and blue,

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Speaker 1: and he probably illustrated that famous Cairo page and earned

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Speaker 1: his nickname. And if you've ever seen the Cairo this

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Speaker 1: will makes sense to um. He earned his nickname because

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Speaker 1: he's really good at creating the effect of gold filigree

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Speaker 1: on vellum with this yellow color, which was actually Arsenic based.

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Speaker 1: So we can only guess about the goldsmith's health later

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Speaker 1: in life, but a really impressive work. And then we've

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Speaker 1: got the portrait painter who created images of Christ, the

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Speaker 1: four Evangelists, and maybe the simple page in the St.

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Speaker 1: Matthew Gospel. And the third is the illustrator who really

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Speaker 1: like to bright colors and may have been responsible for

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Speaker 1: the Temptation of Christ, the arrest of Christ, and the

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Speaker 1: Virgin and Child image. The Virgin and Child I'd say

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Speaker 1: it is one of the most striking images in the

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Speaker 1: book too. Um. But it's also believed that there were

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Speaker 1: four scribes, and they don't get names that are quite

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Speaker 1: as good as the as the illuminators here, but they're

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Speaker 1: called just A, B, C, and D. And because their

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Speaker 1: hands are so similar, I mean, it's hard for an

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Speaker 1: untrained I like my own to even tell them apart,

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Speaker 1: but they were probably together and work together in the

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Speaker 1: same script. Toorrium, hand A uses this typical brown gall ink.

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Speaker 1: Hand B is this black ink, which I had no idea.

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Speaker 1: It was a novelty at the time and probably signified

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Speaker 1: some kind of Mediterranean contact. It's weird to think that

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Speaker 1: black ink wouldn't be your standard. And hand C is

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Speaker 1: responsible for lots of the book, according to scholars, and

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Speaker 1: Handy had a large, confident script that's a little easier

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Speaker 1: to tell, which you would have to have some confidence

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Speaker 1: to to to write this stuff. You had to write

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Speaker 1: quickly on vellum um to keep a nice flow to

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Speaker 1: this script. And we've talked about how open and clear

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Speaker 1: this kind of writing is. If you if you understood Latin,

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Speaker 1: you'd probably be able to read it um. It's not

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Speaker 1: that cramped, difficult style of writing that you would maybe

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Speaker 1: expect from the period. And contemporary calligraphers have messed around

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Speaker 1: with the style of writing and figured out that a

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Speaker 1: page of script without the decorations, you know, just the

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Speaker 1: writing might have taken only a few hours. The decoration,

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Speaker 1: of course, would have taken a lot longer. But it's

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Speaker 1: interesting to think of how fast you could make a

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Speaker 1: book of tells, but I still think of writing for

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Speaker 1: a few hours on one page. How if you made

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Speaker 1: a mistake, it would just be I think I would

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Speaker 1: be devastated. I would not be a good scribe. But

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Speaker 1: there aren't many corrections, or at least there are many

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Speaker 1: corrections that are are noted. And instead of just scribbling

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Speaker 1: something out or like what I would probably do, try

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Speaker 1: to turn it into the right letter, they just superscript

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Speaker 1: the new letter above the incorrect one and mark out

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Speaker 1: the old one with a dot in the center, which

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Speaker 1: consequently makes it look pretty good. So how did they

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Speaker 1: make this book? If you know there aren't a ton

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Speaker 1: of corrections and everything. How did it work? We'll talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the actual writing process. Scribes used

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Speaker 1: quills from feathers of swans or geese, and you can

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Speaker 1: actually get a pretty good idea of what the scribe

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Speaker 1: at work might look like. Um, when you see the

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Speaker 1: image of John the evangelist, who's depicted with his quill

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Speaker 1: hard at work on the Gospel. And the makers of

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Speaker 1: the book like to remind their readers what they were reading,

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Speaker 1: and I would think remind them of of the monk's

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Speaker 1: own role in Mega Yeah, because I mean, after all,

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Speaker 1: copying Um, copying the Bible like this is an act

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Speaker 1: of devotion in itself, and so books appear in the

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Speaker 1: manuscript more than thirty times. Angels hold them, evangelists Jesus

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Speaker 1: um just sort of reminding people of that whole larger connection.

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Speaker 1: The painting was done with fine brushes, probably made from

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Speaker 1: the fur of the pine martin, which is a weasily

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Speaker 1: type of animal and kind of cute too. It is

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Speaker 1: super cute. We google image did lapis Lazily was the

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Speaker 1: most expensive pigment used. The only known source for it

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Speaker 1: in the ninth century was one mine in the Ebotic

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Speaker 1: Shawn area of Afghanistan, so it consequently it cost a fortune.

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Speaker 1: Traders auld charge whatever they wanted for it, and other

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Speaker 1: imported pigments from the Mediterranean include the maroon colors and purple,

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Speaker 1: and there's um. White and red are often derived from

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Speaker 1: white lead or red lead, another kind of toxic pigment

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Speaker 1: to be working with. Red could also come from a

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Speaker 1: pregnant Mediterranean insect, the Kermacoccus vermino, which I just wonder

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Speaker 1: how people discover stuff like this. If you step on

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Speaker 1: a bug and you notice some nice red looking ink

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Speaker 1: come out of it. You don't have to go through

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Speaker 1: that much trouble at the office. You could get your

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Speaker 1: green from a vertigree a copper acetate, but this didn't

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Speaker 1: do as well um over time, since it corrodes the

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Speaker 1: vellum when it stamp. Because I think sometimes you have

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Speaker 1: to mix it with you. It might have to be

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Speaker 1: prepared with vinegar um. But the artists also used tools.

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Speaker 1: They had rulers and set squares and compasses. Sometimes you

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Speaker 1: can even see the very very faint trace lines from

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Speaker 1: the compasses and these templates. And but some of the

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Speaker 1: illuminations are so small, and there are these intense geometric

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Speaker 1: designs that have lines that are less than half a

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Speaker 1: millimeter apart. You wonder how they did this even with tools.

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Speaker 1: How is it possible? Well, that's why we have Cornell

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Speaker 1: because Cornell paleontologist John Sisney believes, according to Cornell News,

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Speaker 1: that the Celtic monks and this is a quote from him,

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Speaker 1: trained their eyes to cross above the plane of the

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Speaker 1: manuscript so they could visually superimpose side by side elements

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Speaker 1: of a replicated pattern and thereby create three D images

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Speaker 1: that magnified differences between the patterns up to thirty times.

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Speaker 1: So basically it let them replicate designs across the page

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Speaker 1: and then also gives some vision that's capable of this

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Speaker 1: submillimeter precision before you have something like microscopes. I think

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Speaker 1: this is so crazy. If you cross your eyes and

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Speaker 1: practice enough. We've been crossing our eyes at each other

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Speaker 1: there all day. No, I have not gotten this amazing

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Speaker 1: vision yet. Um. But he called this free fusion stereo comparison,

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Speaker 1: and it's not something that the Celtic monks would have

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Speaker 1: shared freely because it kind of gave them a leg

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Speaker 1: up in the illumination world. Um. But you can tell

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Speaker 1: because of some clues. One thing is that the element

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Speaker 1: spacing is usually about the distance between an average person's pupils.

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Speaker 1: They probably made the templates by drawing a design repeatedly

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Speaker 1: cutting out airs as they kept on doing it until

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Speaker 1: they finally have one that's ready. And you can tell

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Speaker 1: this too, because sometimes you'll see a minor mistake that's

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Speaker 1: repeated throughout the pattern, throughout the rows and columns, suggesting

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Speaker 1: that you know they did work from a template. Since

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Speaker 1: such precision and time can't be replicated today, it's good

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Speaker 1: that we have some really nice copies eximile He's made

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Speaker 1: in the eight is involved the invention of its own

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Speaker 1: special camera. Since the book couldn't leave Trinity, couldn't be unbound,

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Speaker 1: and couldn't be touched by anyone or anything. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: had to invent this camera that had a light section

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Speaker 1: to press down the pages so that they were flat

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Speaker 1: enough to photograph. And this copying specximily can re recreate

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Speaker 1: or recapture every wash of paint in every little beetle hole,

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Speaker 1: basically everything except the texture of the vellum. It's so fantastic,

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Speaker 1: and it's so fantastic that Kel's still wants the original

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Speaker 1: of this book. The city made a push for one

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Speaker 1: of the manuscripts to return to them and two thousand

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Speaker 1: and take up a spot in a heritage exhibit that

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Speaker 1: they've set up um, but the heritage center had to

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Speaker 1: close because of issues with a leaky roof, So the

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Speaker 1: city's making another push for a manuscript in the wake

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Speaker 1: of the Secret of Kell's, an animated film which was

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Speaker 1: nominated for an Oscar and of course appropriately hand drawn,

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Speaker 1: which Sarah and I really haven't heard before. The really

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Speaker 1: want to see it. We also want our own book

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Speaker 1: of Kels, but that brings us today to our listener mail. So,

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Speaker 1: keeping with our story about the Book of Kells and

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Speaker 1: about great Irish folk tales and fairy tales, we have

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Speaker 1: a correction or a comment from Allison about our episode

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Speaker 1: on the Real blue Beard, and she wanted to mention

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Speaker 1: that it was Beauty and the Beast was not written

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Speaker 1: by Charles Perrol but actually Madame de villinove Um, And yeah,

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Speaker 1: we wanted to make that clear in case it wasn't.

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Speaker 1: We We didn't actually think that Charles Perraul wrote the book, right,

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Speaker 1: We just but we would like to clarify and because

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Speaker 1: that wasn't clear to everyone else here but Alison it is.

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Speaker 1: I agree with you. The Beauty and the Beast history

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Speaker 1: is a really fun one and we're really into fairy

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Speaker 1: tales in general. So if there's something you'd like to

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Speaker 1: hear about specifically, please email us at History Podcast at

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00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:57,119
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. We'd also like to remind

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Speaker 1: you that we have a Twitter and you can follow

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Speaker 1: us and learn that all the interesting stuff we're learning

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00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:04,920
Speaker 1: about at missed in History, and you should check out

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00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 1: our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com

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00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:12,520
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:14,800
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and be sure to check

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00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:17,000
Speaker 1: out this stuff you missed in history class, flogged on

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Speaker 1: the how stuff works dot com home page