The Book of Kells — Christ Enthroned
For me, one of the great joys of travel is meeting great art in person – which I’ve collected in a book. Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here is one of my favorites:
Jesus Christ sits on a throne and solemnly holds a very important thing – a book, the Holy Word of God. He has curly flaxen hair on his head and a thoughtful expression. Seated under an arch, he is surrounded by a maze of colorful, intricately woven designs.
This illustration from an old Bible tells the story of Jesus. This particular diagram came at the very point in the story (Matthew 1:18) where this heavenly Jesus was about to be born on earth as a humble man.
This is just one page from the 1,200-year-old Gospel known as the Book of Kells. Perhaps the best example of so-called Dark Age art, this book is a rare example of this difficult time.
It is the year 800. The Roman Empire disintegrated and threw Europe into chaos. Vikings were raping and pillaging. The Christian faith – which had been officially accepted in the last years of the Empire – was now weakening, as Europe was returning to its pagan and illiterate ways. Amid the turmoil, on the far edge of Europe, lived a band of learned Irish monks to tend the embers of civilization.
These monks labored to preserve the word of God in the Book of Kells. They slaughtered 185 calves and dried the hides to make 680 cream-colored pages called vellum. Then the tonsured monks picked up their swan quills and went to work. They carefully wrote the words in Latin, decorated the letters with elaborate cursive, and interspersed the text with full-page illustrations—creating this “illuminated” manuscript. The plan was interrupted in 806 when Vikings brutally sacked the monastery and killed 68 monks. But the survivors fled to the Abbey of Kells (near Dublin) and finished their precious Bibles.
Christ enthroned is only one page — 1/680Th – of this amazing book. Upon closer inspection, Page’s incredible detail work comes to life. On either side of Christ are two mysterious men in robes, and two sinister-looking angels, with wings folded in front. Christ’s head is bowed by a peacock (symbolizing Christ’s resurrection), his feet are entangled in vines (symbolizing his Israelite roots). Admittedly, Christ isn’t terribly realistic: He poses stiffly, like a Byzantine icon, with almond eyes, oddly placed ears, and ET fingers.
The real beauty is in the intricate designs. It’s a forest of spirals, coils, and entwined snakes—yes, those snakes, with little heads popping up here and there. The monks combined Christian symbols (crosses, peacocks, grapes) with pagan Celtic motifs from the world around them (circles, spirals, and interlocking patterns). All this is done in vivid colors – blue, purple, red, green, yellow, and black – carefully drawn with a quill pen. Only two of the book’s 680 pages have no decoration.
As Christianity gained a foothold in Europe, monasteries everywhere began to produce similar monastic writings—albeit as few as the Book of Kells. In 1455, Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press, books became mass produced…and thousands of monks were freed from being the scribes of civilization.
