I hope to someday gI back and see it for myself. I found the course fascinating. The activities were varied and the extra reading material was very useful. Presentations were clear and articles were interesting to read. The level was just right and the extra online resources prompted further investigation. Category: FutureLearn Local , Learning. Category: Current Issues , General.
Category: Digital Skills , Learning , What is. We offer a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world. These are delivered one step at a time, and are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, so you can fit learning around your life.
You can unlock new opportunities with unlimited access to hundreds of online short courses for a year by subscribing to our Unlimited package. Build your knowledge with top universities and organisations.
Learn more about how FutureLearn is transforming access to education. Learn more about this course. View transcript. The Book of Kells is what we call a gospel book. It contains the four gospels which come from the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The book itself is very precious to us, the manuscript of the Book of Kells, because it comes from an era in Ireland, a time of great learning, from the eighth and ninth century. And we have very few manuscripts left with us from that period.
However, we know that there was lots of learning in Ireland at that time because we have records of stories which tell us of learned people who came from mainland Europe to learn even more, to study in the Irish monasteries. And we also have many accounts of Irish scholars, Irish monks, Irish pilgrims, going to mainland Europe, and bringing their learning with them. We have evidence of that in some gospel books, which still exist in England and in mainland Europe.
Although there are a number of surviving manuscripts from the period, the Book of Kells really excels. Orpiment yellow arsenic sulphide was used to produce a vibrant yellow pigment.
Red came from red lead or from organic sources which are difficult at present to identify. A copper green, reacting with damp, was responsible for perforating the vellum on a number of folios.
Monks from the original monastery founded by St Columba also set up other monastic communities including one on the great rock of Lindisfarne in Northumberland, established by the Ionan monk Aidan in There monks created the lovely Lindisfarne Gospel but the Irish would claim the Book of Kells is the finest of its kind. One of the experts on the manuscript Bernard Meehan writes "For many in Ireland it symbolises the power of learning, the impact of Christianity on the life of the country, and the spirit of artistic imagination.
So why did the monks go to so much trouble to create these amazing pages? It's as if the book itself flaunted the spiritual qualities of the text to those who saw it. The large pages and illustrations could be seen from further back in the church to make an impact on a congregation that for the most part couldn't read or write. Recent research has shown that books were used in religious processions, enhancing the notion that they were almost objects of worship themselves or at least had talismanic properties for a medieval populace.
There won't be many modern visitors who will be convinced of that but take a look at the images yourself and you will be transported into a magical world of awe-inspiring skill. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. Share using Email. By Martha Kearney 26th April Monks created an illuminated Bible of astonishing beauty sometime between the 6th and 8th centuries. Imagine the monks in their stone huts, battered by sea winds, bent over their painstaking work. Light of the dark ages The scale and ambition of The Book of Kells is incredible.
The majority academic opinion now tends to attribute it to the scriptorium of Iona Argyllshire , but conflicting claims have located it in Northumbria or in Pictland in eastern Scotland. A monastery founded around by St Colum Cille on Iona, an island off Mull in western Scotland, became the principal house of a large monastic confederation. In , following a Viking raid on the island which left 68 of the community dead, the Columban monks took refuge in a new monastery at Kells, County Meath, and for many years the two monasteries were governed as a single community.
It must have been close to the year that the Book of Kells was written, although there is no way of knowing if the book was produced wholly at Iona or at Kells, or partially at each location. There are full pages of decoration for the canon tables; symbols of the evangelists Matthew the Man , Mark the Lion , Luke the Calf and John the Eagle ; the opening words of the Gospels; the Virgin and Child; a portrait of Christ; complex narrative scenes, the earliest to survive in gospel manuscripts, representing the arrest of Christ and his temptation by the Devil.
There are portraits of Matthew and John, but no portrait of Mark or Luke survives. These were probably executed, like other major pages of the manuscript, on single leaves and they are presumed to have become detached over time and lost. In all, around 30 folios went missing in the medieval and early modern periods. Three artists seem to have produced the major decorated pages.
One of them, whose work can be seen on the Chi Rho page, was capable of ornament of such extraordinary fineness and delicacy that his skills have been likened to those of a goldsmith. In this paper the history of the Book of Kells will be examined, as well as the materials used to make the Book. To this day there is still debate and controversy over where exactly the highly considered Irish, Book of Kells originates from.
The theories of present are that the Book of Kells was created in either Kells, an island between Ireland and Scotland called Iona, or from a church in Northumberland. Another theory says that it may have been begun in Iona, but finished in Kells. While no one can be precisely sure where it was created , the calligraphy and illuminations can all be traced to Ireland and its Gaelic past.
Something that is known for sure is that the monks who created the Book of Kells were Columban monks, who were originally from Iona , but had relocated to Kells by the early 9 th century, the same time that the Book of Kells was known to have first appeared. From this time to the Book of Kells was actually in Kells until it was decided that it ought to be moved to Dublin for safe-keeping.
Then in the Book was given to Trinity College Library and has been on display there since the midth century. Its pages, or as they are called, folios are made from vellum. Vellum is made from the skin of calves, sheep or less frequently, goat kids, but in the case of the Book of Kells, calfskin was predominantly used.
0コメント