This doesn’t have anything to do with Dunstan except that it’s about Christianity in the British Isles a couple of hundred years before his time! But, some people have kindly asked to hear a little about our trip, so I’m going to tell you a very little right now – about the Book of Kells. Raise your hand if you’ve heard of it? … The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript, which is a fancy way of saying that it’s a handwritten book with pictures, made in the time when all books were handwritten. It contains the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It was probably started in the 700s, maybe the 600s, on the island of Iona off the coast of Scotland, where there was an abbey, a monastic center, founded by the great Celtic evangelist Saint Colmcille (or Columba) in the 500s. It was probably finished at Kells, in Ireland, in the 800s. 

The book of Kells is a wonder of the world, and has been for 12 or 13 hundred years. There’s no nothing I could really say, or share in a picture or two, that would convey its beauty and power. You just have to promise me that you’ll look it up online later. The book reflects the work of somewhere between five and eight artists and calligraphers who wrote and drew its pages, so artfully and beautifully, giving glory to God by not only recording the text of the Gospels but illustrating it so that it still takes people’s breath away a millennium later. It also reflects the work of those who prepared parchment and cut quills and gathered materials to make pigments. It’s an extraordinary work of devotion and skill. 

We got to see it, in Dublin. Phil and I were both struck by how good it looks. The images are crisp, the colors are vibrant. You would not guess that it’s 1200 years old. It’s also smaller than I imagined – about this big, which makes the skill of artists and calligraphers all the more staggering. 

The fact that the Book still exists today is also the work of countless unknown people down to the centuries, who have tended and protected it. It is a miracle several times over that it still exists. 

Beginning in the late 700s, Vikings began to raid the coasts of the British Isles. They would attack settlements, killing people, burning homes, and stealing anything of value. In some areas they also established settlements of their own, eventually taking over much of southern and eastern Great Britain. 

The Vikings attacked Iona Abbey repeatedly in the 790s and early 800s, stealing and destroying holy treasures. In 806, 68 monks were massacred. After that attack, a group of monks fled across the North Channel to Ireland, to settle at Kells, in hopes of escaping further violence. They brought some of their surviving treasures with them – including, probably, the book that would become known as the Book of Kells. Most scholars think the book was finished at Kells during the 800s. Kells itself was raided by Vikings several times during the 900s. The book was actually stolen in 1007 – a medieval account of the theft describes the Book as “the most precious object in the western world.” But the book was found after two months, half-buried in the ground, its jeweled gold cover torn off but otherwise intact. In the mid-1600s, the radical Puritan English leader Oliver Cromwell, who hated any expressions of religious faith through images or beauty, had troops stationed in the church at Kells. The book could easily have fallen victim to the destructive contempt of Cromwell’s soldiers. But the Earl of Kells sent the book to the great library at Trinity College in Dublin for safekeeping – where it remains today. 

We got to visit Kells, at the end of our trip. The Abbey is long gone, but there are traces, like several beautiful 10th or 11th century stone crosses which would’ve helped mark the sacred site. There’s a round tower high on a hill in the center of the city, next to the 18th century church built where the abbey once stood. The tower has five windows, which look out on all the major roads coming into the city.

There’s also a strange little building nearby, known as Colmcille’s House, likely built in the 900s. It may have been a place of remembrance and honor for this great Celtic Christian saint. The building looks ill at ease among modern houses; it ought to be surrounded by wattle and daub huts and the smoke of cook fires and the bleating of sheep. Through a friend of a friend, we were allowed inside. There’s a high vaulted stone ceiling; in the ceiling there’s a tiny hatch to an even higher room that may have been a place to hide out, with a few people and a few precious objects. Maybe the Book survived a few Viking raids in that tiny room.

I’m really struck by the juxtaposition between the fearful, watchful architecture of those remnants of the Abbey at Kells, and the very real dangers and terrors they reflect, and the beauty and workmanship of the Book created there. People could have chosen to make simpler, hastier books – with just the Gospel text, or minimal decoration – to simply transmit the core information without creating books of such preciousness that they would be tempting to steal and tragic to lose. But that’s not what people did. Dislocated, grieving, fearful, the monastic community of Iona which became the monastic community of Kells doubled down on beauty. On using the utmost human craft and skill to honor God by making a wonder. And this isn’t unique; there are stories that rhyme with this one littered across human history. Berthold Brecht once wrote, “In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing, about the dark times.” 

This is one of the beautiful and holy truths about humanity: In times of danger, struggle, uncertainty, fear, we still want to make beauty. We still want to tend what is precious. We still want to offer our gifts and skills to something that matters, something bigger than ourselves. The Book of Kells shines the light of the Gospel across the millennia, but it also shines the light of the human spirit, of comfort and courage down through the ages.