OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • Church Reform

    To close this series of essays, below is an introduction to the subject of Church Reform by scholar Dorothy Africa.

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    Church Reform

    The medieval church had to adapt its institutional
    organization and administrative system to a new cultural environment in
    Ireland. The dwindling in size of population centers and the weakening civic
    powers of the state were already evident as Christianity was carried into the
    frontier regions of Gaul and Britain, but in Ireland even the vestiges of Roman
    culture and imperial administration in sub-Roman Britain were absent.
    Consequently, ecclesiastical organization in Ireland was as decentralized as
    its native systems of secular governance, and its centers of ecclesiastical
    prominence were monastic rather than metropolitan. During the sixth century,
    monastic communities were founded throughout Ireland. These centers followed
    customs of life established by their founders, but only a few monastic Rules
    survive from the early monastic period in Ireland between the sixth and twelfth
    centuries. This dearth of information makes references to reform movements
    somewhat misleading because there appears to have been no standard practice to
    reform. The term is useful, however, as a description of periodic efforts made
    within the Irish church to gain or recapture a larger Christian unity of
    practice.

    THE EASTER CONTROVERSY


    The
    earliest movements noted in the annals and other written records were both
    internal dissensions within Ireland, though with larger ramifications
    extending to England and the continent. The first dispute, which erupted in
    the early seventh century and was not resolved until the early eighth
    century, concerned the proper calculation of Easter. The problems over the
    calculation of Easter had their origins in continental practice. The
    mathematical calculations were difficult, and so the church issued standard
    tables, or cycles, listing when the date would fall over a period of years.
    These tables were subject to change or refinement, however, creating a
    potential rift in practice. This potential was realized in Ireland, where the
    most influential communities at Counties Armagh, Bangor, and Iona employed an
    eighty-four-year cycle established in the fifth century, but Irish
    communities in the south appear to have adopted a sixth-century version
    attributed to Victorious of Aquitaine and also favored on the Continent.
    Leading ecclesiastics from both north and south attempted to resolve the
    matter by appealing to Rome, but the papal response failed to settle the
    question. The conflict between the two systems was a major factor in two major
    political confrontations outside Ireland. One took place on the Continent
    between the churches of the insular mission led by Columbanus of Bangor and
    Frankish ecclesiastics in 610, the other in England at the Synod of Whitby in
    664 between supporters of Iona and those backing Wilfrid of York. Eventually,
    the adherents of the older cycle were persuaded to abandon it in favor of the
    majority view in the early eighth     century.
    CÉLI-DÉ

    A
    second issue of potential discord arose within Ireland’s monastic culture in
    the mid-eighth century when some influential figures and communities became
    advocates for the adoption of a stern ascetic regimen. By the early ninth
    century, adherents of these practices had become known as Céli-Dé (Culdees),
    or the companions of God. The term was itself probably older than this
    ascetic movement but became closely identified with it. The ascetic model for
    the movement was the communal life of the early Christian monastic
    communities in Egypt and the desert hermits as described by John Cassian, and
    other hagiographical texts such as The Life of Anthony by Athanasius.
    The attempts to emulate these holy men prompted some to seek out sites of
    extreme isolation. The large number of medieval Irish place-names with the
    element dysert or disert (desert) in them shows that the ideal
    of the desert hermit was popular across Ireland.

    There
    were also groups of Céli-Dé attached to larger monastic communities or
    forming separate monasteries. The monastic community of Tallaght under its
    abbot Maél Rúain (d. 792) was an early proponent and center for the
    asceticism favored by the Céli-Dé. There are some texts attributed to the
    community, the most famous of which is the Martyrology of Tallaght. It
    is clear from their books that communal life was as important as that of the
    hermit to the Céli-Dé, but the focus was clearly on the spiritual
    purification of those committed to the religious life rather than to
    missionary work or pastoral care. In the eleventh century there were a few
    reports of groups of Céli-Dé at some large monasteries, but asceticism no
    longer figured as a flourishing ideal within the church.
    DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION

    Even as
    the ideals of the Céli-Dé ossified as a monastic ideal within the Irish
    church, a new reform movement was on the horizon. During the eleventh
    century, Ireland had come into closer and more frequent communication with
    England and the Continent through a variety of channels. By the late eleventh
    century some of the Viking port communities established in Ireland, such as
    Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, had subordinated themselves to English
    ecclesiastical centers, notably Canterbury and Winchester. There was also a
    series of papal legates to Ireland in the twelfth century, with both
    connections serving to assist indigenous Irish reformers in their efforts to
    renovate and reform Christian social and religious life in Ireland and to
    establish a diocesan system of governance. Reports of the divergence in Ireland
    followed in ecclesiastical customs and law from the rest of the church
    brought intense criticism and rebuke from the outside, heightening the
    concerns of native Irish churchmen. Beginning in the later eleventh century
    and extending into the twelfth, another reform movement arose in Ireland,
    this time centering its attention on ecclesiastical organization and
    institutional structure rather than the inner religious life.

    As
    noted earlier, prominent abbots and other officials of monastic communities
    dominated the affairs of the Irish church in the early medieval period. These
    clerics often came from ecclesiastical families closely related to local
    secular dynasties. In addition, annal records name abbots and other
    ecclesiastical officials who inherited their positions from their fathers or
    were succeeded by their sons, indicating either that they remained laymen, or
    that the Irish church did not require them to be celibate. The Irish church
    was also castigated for its neglect of pastoral care and instruction to the
    laity, in part, perhaps, as a consequence of the ideal of the reclusive
    ascetic cultivated by the Irish religious. Some of the Irish reformers came
    from the same prominent families historically associated with powerful
    monasteries. This insider status gave these men the social and political
    access essential to effecting changes, and the discernment necessary to gauge
    the pace of change acceptable to contemporary society.
    In 1101
    there was enough internal sympathy toward the cause of reform for a synod to
    be convened at Cashel. The most prominent ecclesiastic at the synod was
    Bishop Maél Muire Ua Dunáin. Little is known of his early life and career,
    but he was clearly of high office and greatly revered. Ua Dunáin may have
    begun his ecclesiastical career at the community of Clonard, an old and
    prominent foundation in Meath, where he died in 1117. He was also probably
    acting at the synod as the papal legate of Pope Pascal II. The brief reports
    on the resolutions of the synod indicate that it took cautious steps toward
    reform. The synod moved on several fronts to limit lay control and influence
    over ecclesiastical property and offices. It also issued a decree against
    marriage among close family members.
    Perhaps
    encouraged by the gains of the Cashel synod, another meeting convened ten
    years later at Rath Breasail. Ua Dunáin was in attendance, but the presiding
    ecclesiastic was Gille Easpuig (Gilbert), the bishop of Limerick and
    successor to Ua Dunáin as papal legate. The details of Gilbert’s origins and
    career are also largely unknown. He was probably of Norse-Irish origin and is
    known principally for his surviving work, De statu ecclesiastico, on
    the organization of the church. Also present was Cellach, the prominent
    reform-minded abbot of Armagh. The gathering at Rath Breasail adopted for
    Ireland a full-scale reorganization of the administrative structure of the
    church under two metropolitans, each with a dozen suffragan (diocesan)
    bishops. The two metropolitan seats were assigned to Counties Armagh and Cashel,
    and the dioceses assigned to each were generally named according to the old
    monastic and tribal centers. This allocation was immediately challenged by
    entrenched contemporary powers, secular and lay, resulting in substantial
    changes to the original plan in the immediate aftermath of the conference.
    Continuing the work begun earlier at Cashel, the synod also formally removed
    all churches in Ireland from lay control.
    The
    period between the meeting at Rath Breasail and the Synod of Kells in 1152
    was politically very turbulent, but the reform movement continued to advance
    under the guidance of the successor to Abbot Cellach of Armagh, Maél Maédóc
    Ua Morgair (Malachy). Malachy had ties to native ecclesiastical families
    through both his parents, but he allied himself firmly with the cause of
    reform. He became abbot of Armagh upon the death of Cellach in 1129, and,
    despite initial hostility toward him, he instituted there the observance of
    the canonical hours, the practice of regular confession, and other customs of
    the church. Malachy left the abbacy of Armagh to become first abbot of
    Bangor, and then a regional bishop, but he continued to work for the national
    cause of reform. He was instrumental in the introduction into Ireland of the
    Cistercian order and the spread of the order of Augustine canons. He also
    presided over meetings to amend the diocesan system drawn up at Rath
    Breasail. In 1140 Malachy made a trip to Rome, where he requested palls
    (church vestmants, or cloaks, worn by archbishops) for the two metropolitans
    from Pope Innocent II. The pope directed Malachy to convene another meeting
    to confirm the choice before he would grant the request. Malachy returned to
    his work in Ireland, but did not abandon his hopes for formal recognition of
    the Irish ecclesiastic centers. He presided over a synod at Inis Pádraig near
    Dublin in 1148, which provided the needed confirmation, but he died at
    Clairvaux in 1149 on his way back to Rome. The palls that Malachy had sought
    arrived in Ireland in 1152 and were conferred upon the metropolitan sees
    established by the Synod of Kells held in that year. That synod added two
    additional metropolitan seats at Tuam and Dublin to the original ones at
    Armagh and Cashel, as well as additional dioceses, but otherwise the earlier
    scheme was left largely intact.
    The
    arrival of the Normans in Ireland in force after 1170 brought new leadership
    to the Irish church, but the organizational structure created by the
    reformers remained. The Normans assisted the introduction of continental
    orders and practices into Ireland, but they were not any more successful in
    curbing the Irish social practices so disturbing to the church than the
    earlier reformers had been. Throughout the late medieval period complaints
    about the marital failings of the native Irish and the crassness of the Irish
    clergy continued, though these reports are often suspect in light of the
    political and religious divisions of the period.
    Bibliography
    Bernard
    of Clairvaux. The Life and Death of Saint Malachy the Irishman.
    Translated and annotated by Robert T. Meyer. 1978.
    Bethell,
    Denis. “English Monks and Irish Reform in the Eleventh and Twelfth
    Centuries.” Historical Studies 8 (1971): 111–135.
    Carey,
    John. King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings. 1998.
    Charles-Edwards,
    Thomas M. Early Christian Ireland. 2000.
    Gwynn,
    Aubrey. The Irish Church in the 11th and 12th centuries. Edited by
    Gerard O’Brien. 1992.
    Hughes,
    Kathleen. The Church in Early Irish Society. 1966.
    Dorothy
    Africa

  • The Norman Conquest of Ireland

    Below is a short introductory essay by a modern scholar on the coming of the Normans to Ireland.

    Norman Conquest and Colonization

    Seán Duffy

    The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland began with a trickle of mercenaries from South Wales landing in County Wexford in the summer of 1167, in aid of the exiled king of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada; substantial reinforcements arrived two years later, who were intent on staying and winning Irish lands. The most famous of the invaders was Richard “Strongbow” de Clare, lord of Pembroke and Chepstow (Strigoil), who did not arrive until August 1170, when he married Mac Murchada’s daughter, claimed the right to succeed him as king of Leinster, and conquered Dublin from its Hiberno-Norse rulers. These latter events caused the reigning king of England, Henry II, to reassess the benign but “hands-off” stance that had hitherto characterized his response to the invasion. Since his youth, he had been interested in conquering Ireland himself and adding it to the many territories that were his Angevin “empire.” He had accepted Mac Murchada’s declaration of fealty, made in Aquitaine in 1166 to 1167, carrying the reciprocal duty to protect Diarmait from his enemies, and had authorized him to seek support from among Henry’s vassals.

    The problem was that Strongbow was an errant vassal, out of royal favor after having taken the wrong side in the civil war that preceded Henry’s accession. The latter had denied him the title of earl for his Welsh estates, and was hardly likely to allow him become king of Leinster, which Strongbow was intending to do following Mac Murchada’s death in May 1171. Attempts having failed to forbid Strongbow’s departure for Ireland, to call home his associates, and to blockade their supplies, Henry decided to come to Ireland, to regularize the position of Strongbow and the other adventurers who were making rapid strides there, and to oversee the conquest in person. And so, when he landed near Waterford on 17 October 1171, with five hundred knights and four thousand archers, Henry II became the first English king to enter Ireland.

    It was no glittering prize, although its Viking-founded towns were certainly an asset, and Henry was quick to take possession of them from Strongbow and his followers. Without its wealthy ports, especially Dublin, Leinster was a far less attractive acquisition, and hence Henry allowed Strongbow to hold it in return for supplying the military service of 100 knights. The kings of Thomond and Desmond, Ó Briain and Mac Carthaig, voluntarily came to Henry at Waterford and submitted to him, and most other important kings and prelates did likewise, the kings hoping that Henry might restrain the more acquisitive of the invaders (he did so, to a degree, for several years), while the clergy believed that the Irish church could be more successfully modernized if subjected to English influence, an arrangement formalized at the Synod of Cashel during Henry’s brief visit.

    However, Henry did not meet the high king, Ruaidrí Ó Conchobair (Rory O’Connor), and the Anglo-Norman settlement did not proceed easily when faced with his opposition, although his armies proved ineffective against the sophistication of the Norman military machine and the invulnerability to Irish assault of the castles with which they were busy dotting the landscape. A compromise was required, and in 1175 the “treaty” of Windsor was negotiated whereby Ruaidrí accepted the Anglo-Norman colony, which was confined within its existing boundaries (Leinster, Munster from Waterford to Dungarvan, and Meath, which Henry had given to Hugh de Lacy in 1172), while Henry acknowledged Ruaidrí as the paramount power elsewhere. However, this had little appeal for the land-hungry colonists and was soon abandoned in favor of a policy of all-out conquest, with speculative grants of Desmond and Thomond being made to favorites of the king, while John de Courcy won east Ulster for himself in 1177. In that year, a royal council was held at Oxford at which the youngest of Henry’s four sons, John, was made lord of Ireland. He was not expected to succeed to the throne, and so Henry envisaged a loose constitutional arrangement whereby Ireland would be ruled by a junior branch of the English royal family.

    It was 1185 before John visited Ireland, but his youthful folly in his dealings with the Irish kings alienated them from their new lord, who was busy building castles on Leinster’s frontier and granting lands in Munster to the ancestors of the Butlers and Burkes, while what is now County Louth was also taken from the Irish. In terms of fostering relations with the Irish, John’s expedition proved disastrous, but it did advance the conquest and saw the establishment in Ireland of a form of government modeled on that of England, a pattern that has prevailed. John’s later expedition in 1210 was hardly more productive since he was again inept in his treatment of the native rulers, although he reasserted his faltering authority over the colonists and further expanded the apparatus and reach of royal government. In the meantime, in 1199, John had ascended the throne, and hence the lordship of Ireland and kingship of England were, by an accident of history, reunited in the same person, as remained the case long thereafter.

    By the time of John’s second visit the country had been immeasurably transformed. The power of the Irish kings, except in the northwestern quadrant of the island, had been minimized, and their best ancestral lands taken from them by Anglo-Norman barons intent on expanding even further. They were able to do so by virtue of their advanced military equipment and tactics and their policy of encastellation. Beginning with rapidly erected timber structures atop earthen mounds (the motte-and-bailey), they were soon constructing massive stone fortresses like Trim and Carrickfergus, a sign for all to see that they were there to stay. But these would have meant nothing to the Irish if conquest were not followed by large-scale colonization. Only then, by the banishment of the native population from the fertile plains or their reduction to servile status, and the introduction of a new, loyal English population, could the colony feel secure and, just as important, provide a profit for those adventurers who had risked all on crossing the Irish Sea to start a new life.

    In the aftermath of the invasion, therefore, Ireland witnessed nothing short of an economic and agricultural revolution. The great lords parceled up their conquests among members of the lesser gentry from their homelands who were prepared to join them on this new frontier. The latter in turn persuaded others to follow suit (probably not too difficult at a time of population growth), and as each took ownership of their new estates, they enticed over their English and Welsh tenants, offering more attractive terms of tenure. They built new towns and boroughs and persuaded burgesses to inhabit them by less rigorous taxes and regulation. Just as towns needed merchants, traders, and craftsmen, so too manors needed laborers and parishes needed priests. Everything required to turn this new colony into a facsimile of England was found and shipped over from the neighboring isle, and within a generation or two the transformation was immense. But it was never complete. In the north and west, and in the uplands and bogs, the native Irish remained intact. Denied access to the law and treated as enemies in their own land, they remained a potential threat, and although the colony continued to expand until about the year 1300, its unfinished nature meant that an Irish resurgence was inevitable.

    Bibliography

    Cosgrove, Art, ed. A New History of Ireland. Vol. 2, Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534. 1987. Reprint, 1993.
    Duffy, Seán. Ireland in the Middle Ages. 1997.
    Flanagan, Marie Therese. Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship. 1989.
    Orpen, Goddard Henry, ed. The Song of Dermot and the Earl. 1892.
    Orpen, Goddard Henry. Ireland under the Normans. 4 vols. 1911–1920.
    Scott, Alexander Brian, and Francis Xavier Martin, eds. Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis. 1978.

  • Manuscript Writing and Illumination

    Below is a very useful introduction to the writing and illumination of manuscripts within the Irish Church, which I originally found online here.
    Manuscript Writing and Illumination

    Michael Ryan
    The promotion of Latin literacy was a high priority for the young Irish church, and later tradition frequently describes Saint Patrick leaving the necessary books in churches that he had founded. Saint Columba (Colmcille; died at Iona in 597 C.E.) was said to have been involved in a dispute in his youth about copying a new version of the psalter, and to have been copying a manuscript on his last day on earth. In later times some books were regarded as precious relics and enshrined in metal reliquaries—a practice that may have originated in an Irish reflex of the Roman tradition of keeping the book for papal masses in a sealed casket.
    Scholars have disputed the locations where important Irish manuscripts of the early medieval period were written. In some cases it is impossible to establish the provenance of a manuscript, so the term insular is often used in preference to more precise geographical ascriptions. The earliest extended text to survive from Ireland is the bundle of wax tablets from Springmount Bog, Co. Antrim, on which a student practiced the psalms in a script that owes much to late Roman cursive writing but is already distinctively Irish. The first almost complete manuscript that has come down to us is the Cathach of Saint Columba, a psalter, or book of the psalms, written on vellum in an Irish half-uncial script around the year 600 C.E. It was preserved until modern times by the O’Donnells (the saint’s kin). The Cathach already shows the principal stylistic traits of later Irish manuscripts. Psalms begin with an enlarged capital, often embellished, followed by letters of smaller size that diminish in height until they merge with the body of the text—the effect is called diminuendo. The ornament is very simple: Letters are enriched by spiral scrolls and simple trumpet devices in the La Tène tradition, and Christian symbols (a dolphin or fish and the cross) appear. (The La Tène style is an abstract art form based on stylized vegetal motifs, spirals, and curvilinear scrolls associated with the Iron Age Celtic peoples of mainland Europe, Ireland, and Britain.) A fragmentary gospel book of about the same date in Trinity College Library, Codex Usserianus Primus, has a singe leaf devoted entirely to a painted cross of eastern style with an abbreviated Chi-Rho (monogram of Christ) and alpha and omega. Nothing further is known of Irish manuscript production until the later seventh century, by which time Irish missions in north Britain and on the continent had created an entirely new climate. Influences from Anglo-Saxon England, Gaul, and probably Italy gave rise to a new eclectic ornamental style in monastic scriptoria.
    The first manifestation of the mature insular style is the Book of Durrow, a luxury codex of the New Testament with prefatory matter and canon tables, which was preserved at Durrow, Co. Offaly, until it was given to Trinity College in the seventeenth century. With its remarkable carpet pages devoted entirely to ornament and to the cross and its highly original depiction of the symbols of the evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the authors of the Gospels), it is a splendid hybrid. The spiral and trumpet scrolls of the La Tène tradition dominate its decoration—one carpet page is a remarkable evocation of the spirit of the bronzesmith and enameller. The initial letters and diminuendo of the Cathach have been recreated here with great virtuosity and magnificence. Interlace, varied in rhythm and color, makes its appearance for the first time in insular art. A page devoted to animal art of Germanic inspiration has led some to attribute the manuscript to Northumbria or Iona. The careful observer will see even on pages that are ostensibly wholly “Celtic” stylized animal heads, but expressed in the idiom of spirals and trumpets. Gospels are prefaced by whole-page representations of the evangelists’ symbols,and the genealogy of Christ in Matthew’s gospel is introduced by a finely decorated Chi-Rho.
    The Anglo-Saxon –style beasts have been compared to metalwork from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, suggesting an early seventh-century date for Durrow, but a late seventh-century date is more plausible. The arthistorical arguments can tell us nothing about provenance, for the style could well have been present in the Irish midlands in the seventh century. The Book of Durrow is associated with Columba, and it is clearly related to the tradition of the later Book of Kells. The style could conceivably have been practiced in Durrow, itself a Columban monastery. Probably, though, it was produced in Iona and belonged to a tradition that was intimately connected, as the evangelists’ symbols show, with the emergence of very similar beast symbols on Pictish carved stones, and in contact with both the Irish and Anglo-Saxon worlds.
    Two manuscripts now in Durham and probably originally in the monastery of Lindisfarne (founded by Aidan of Iona in the 630s) belong to the mixed traditions of Northumbrian Christianity, which owed much to Irish ecclesiastics. One of these shows the development of a more fluid animal style that would be greatly elaborated in the eighth century; the other has the imprint of a now lost crucifixion scene in which Christ’s body is enveloped in a tightly wound garment. This is the earliest evidence that painted scenes were part of the insular repertoire.
    The Lindisfarne Gospels, associated with the cult of Saint Cuthbert, are remarkable. The book may have been created for the translation of Cuthbert’s relics in 698 C.E. to Lindisfarne. It is the greatest and most elaborate of the earliest insular gospel books. Arthistorically, a date of about 700 C.E. for the manuscript is plausible. Its animal ornament with tightly wound, fabulous, but entirely believable interlaced beasts, its elegantly caricatured birds, a remarkable cross-carpet page, stunning zoomorphized spiral scrollwork, and beautiful script make the book a tour de force. Symbolism of beasts and birds is prominent, but its evangelist portraits, bearing the unmistakable impress of the Mediterranean culture of the monasteries of Monkwear-mouth and Jarrow, place this manuscript at the heart of the Northumbrian Renaissance. Nevertheless, the style of ornament is uncannily close to that of the Tara Brooch and Donore Hoard—both from eastern Ireland—and of the Hunterston Brooch from Ayrshire in Scotland (almost certainly of Irish manufacture). These seem to locate the origin of its decoration partly in the art of the metalworkers patronized by Irish potentates. The legacy of Lindisfarne is apparent in the greatly inferior Lichfield Gospels and in the persistence of elements of the La Tène style in later Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.
    Irish and Anglo-Saxon manuscript styles diverged during the eighth century. The sample of Irish survivors is very small, and only a few “pocket” gospel books are known. These have a smaller, often cursive script, simplified decoration of capitals, and charming if rather naïve evangelist portraits and symbols. Good examples are the Book of Mulling and the Book of Dimma in Trinity College and part of the Stowe Missal in the Royal Irish Academy—the latter almost certainly dates from after 800 C.E.
    Opinion is sharply divided on the date and origin of the famous Book of Kells. The current consensus is that it was created on the island of Iona toward the end of the eighth century. The book was probably brought to Kells, Co. Meath, a refuge of Columban monks from the Viking onslaught, in the tenth century C.E. It was at Kells in 1007 C.E. when it was stolen from the church and later found with the ornaments torn off the cover. The Annals of Ulster, recording both the theft and the recovery in that year, call it “the chief relic of the western world.” It was given to Trinity College in the seventeenth century. Though 340 folios survive, the book is incomplete. Kells has highly decorated canon tables, carpet pages, evangelist portraits and symbols, and figured scenes (the Temptation, the Virgin and Child, the Arrest of Christ)—all the work of a number of artists who employed with élan interlace, animal interlace, and beast ornament, especially of felines (lions?), birds, and serpents. There are vignettes in minor initials and interlinear paintings—an eagle seizing a fish, a warrior, chickens, and butterflies—some of which reflect on the adjacent text.
    Christological symbolism is everywhere. A particularly important page is devoted to the Chi-Rho that introduces the genealogy of Christ. This is a remarkable composition based on La Tène spirals and trumpets, combined with tiny illustrations of cats, mice, and butterflies, and other extraordinary displays of fine, almost microscopic decoration. A fragmentary manuscript in Turin may have approached Kells in ambition, and another in the Library of Sankt Gallen shared the Kells scriptorium’s interest in figured scenes, but neither approaches Kells in virtuosity and ornamental skill.
    In the ninth century a gospel book decorated with animal ornament, evangelist portraits, and fine geometric ornament was written by MacRegol, abbot of Birr (d. 822). It is preserved in the Bodleian Library. A much more elegant product is the Book of Armagh, created by the scribe Ferdomnach for the Abbot Torbach early in the ninth century. It contains the four gospels, documents relating to Saint Patrick, and a life of Saint Martin of Tours. Its elegant script and evangelist symbols are in black ink.
    The high style of manuscript production was dealt a fatal blow by the Viking wars of the ninth and tenth centuries, and later books do not approach in quality and ambition the work of the early period.
    Bibliography
    Alexander, J. J. G. Insular Illuminated Manuscripts, 6th to 9th Century. 1978.
    Fox, P., ed. The Book of Kells Ms 58 Trinity College Library Dublin. 1990.
    Henry, F. Irish Art in the Early Christian Period to AD 800. 1965.
    Henry, F. Irish Art during the Viking Invasions, 800–1020 AD. 1967.
    Meehan, B. The Book of Kells. 1994.
    Meehan, B. The Book of Durrow, a Medieval Masterpiece at Trinity College, Dublin. 1996.
    O’Mahoney, F., ed. The Book of Kells: Proceedings of a Conference at Trinity College, Dublin, 6–9 September, 1992. 1994.