Book of Durrow

The beginning of the Gospel of Mark from the Book of Durrow.

The Book of Durrow (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. 4. 15. (57)) is a 7th-century illuminated manuscript in the Insular style. A Gospel Book, it was made either at Durrow Abbey near Durrow in County Offaly, Ireland, or in Northumbria in Northern England; modern and traditional scholarship tends towards Durrow. It was started in 650.^[1]

Background

It is possibly the oldest extant complete illuminated gospel from Ireland. The text includes the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, plus several pieces of prefatory matter. It measures 247 by 228 mm and contains 248 vellum folios. It contains a large illumination program including six extant carpet pages, a full page miniature of the four evangelist's symbols, four full page miniatures, each containing a single evangelist symbol, and six pages with decorated text. It is written in insular script. It has some lacunae.

The earliest known cumdach was made to house and protect the Book of Durrow at the behest of King of Ireland Flann Sinna (879-916).

In the 16th century, when the Durrow Abbey was dissolved, the book disappeared, and was found a century later. It managed to survive during that period having water poured over it by a farmer to cure his cows.

The five pound note of the "Series B" Irish banknotes contained an excerpt from the book.

Matthew 1:18 from the Book of Durrow

Artistic layout

The Book of Durrow is unusual in that it does not use the traditional scheme for assigning the symbols to the Evangelists. Each Gospel begins with an Evangelist's symbol - a man for Matthew, an eagle for Mark (not the lion traditionally used), a calf for Luke and a lion for John (not the eagle traditionally used). Each evangelist symbol, except the Man of Matthew is followed by a carpet page, followed by the initial page. This missing carpet page is assumed to have existed. A first possibility is that it was lost, and a second that it is in fact folio 3, which features swirling abstract decoration.

The first letter of the text is enlarged and decorated, with the following letters surrounded by dots. 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.

There is a sense of space in the design of all the pages of the Book of Durrow. Open vellum balances intensely decorated areas. Animal interlace of very high quality appears on folio 192v. Other motifs include spirals, triskeles, ribbon plaits and circular knots in the carpet pages and borders around the Evangelists.

Order of books: Matthew, John, Luke, Mark.

See also

• List of New Testament Latin manuscripts
• Codex Usserianus II

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Book of Durrow

Further reading

• Calkins, Robert G. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983.
• De Hamel, Christopher. A History of Illuminated Manuscripts. Boston: David R. Godine, 1986.
• O'Sullivan, Aidan. Appreciation and History of Art
• Walther, Ingo F. and Norbert Wolf. Codices Illustres: The world's most famous illuminated manuscripts, 400 to 1600. Köln, TASCHEN, 2005.

External links

• Book of Durrow catalogue entry at University of North Carolina

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