{"id":127705,"date":"2025-05-24T10:03:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T10:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/127705\/"},"modified":"2025-05-24T10:03:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T10:03:18","slug":"it-belongs-with-the-books-of-kells-and-durrow-illuminated-manuscripts-back-in-ireland-for-the-first-time-in-more-than-1000-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/127705\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It belongs with the books of Kells and Durrow.\u2019 Illuminated manuscripts back in Ireland for the first time in more than 1,000 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nestled among Alpine foothills and south of the glittering Lake Constance lies the historic city of St Gallen, in Switzerland<\/a>. Natural beauty aside, the city is home to the Abbey of St Gall, a Unesco world heritage site and unexpected repository of Irish history and culture.<\/p>\n

Now famed for its impressive library, the abbey was founded in the eighth century on the site of a hermitage established in 612 by one of Ireland\u2019s lesser-known saints, an Irish monk called Gall or Gallus. Although the monastery was dissolved in 1805, its library was spared and remains brimming with ancient manuscripts today. <\/p>\n

Honouring the two countries\u2019 shared history, the Swiss library has furnished the National Museum of Ireland (NMI)<\/a> with 17 of its illustrious manuscripts for an exhibition celebrating the story of Gall\u2018s journey to continental Europe. This is the library\u2019s largest loan ever; for such an institution to bestow more than a couple of manuscripts at a time is practically unheard of.<\/p>\n

Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe is free to visit in the museum\u2019s Kildare Street location from May 30th until October 24th.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you stood out on O\u2019Connell Street now and asked who was Gallus, I doubt you\u2019d get an answer now,\u201d says D\u00e1ibh\u00ed \u00d3 Cr\u00f3in\u00edn, a recently retired professor at the University of Galway who was instrumental in the exhibition\u2019s conception.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From the archive: Wandering Irish ‘outsider’ stumbled upon site for Swiss city of St GallenOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you asked anybody in Switzerland or Italy or France or Germany, they\u2019d keep you there for hours. They\u2019re very happy about their associations with the Irish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00d3 Cr\u00f3in\u00edn recalls the moment he suggested to library director Dr Cornel Dora that the Abbey of St Gall might temporarily spare some of its collection. The loan that followed allows select manuscripts to return to Irish soil for the first time in a millennium. <\/p>\n

The pair attended a conference together in the British Library in December 2018, shortly after collaborating on an exhibition at St Gallen.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Swiss city of Saint Gallen, with the Abbey of St Gall visible in the centre of the picture. Photograph: iStock <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were having a cup of coffee during one of the breaks and I said to Cornel, \u2018Look, the Brits do this thing well. Why don\u2019t we do this kind of thing? Would you be interested in letting us have some of your manuscripts?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Almost six and a half years later, that idea is coming to life. Accompanying the 17 manuscripts, which range from poems and letters to religious texts, are more than 100 objects gathered from NMI\u2019s collection. <\/p>\n

\n

St Gallen was always conscious of the fact it had an Irish connection. Gall was a very popular saint in the region<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Dr Cornel Dora<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Faddan More psalter, found on a Tipperary bog in 2006, is one highlight. Many recent discoveries are on display for the first time, such as the Lough Kinale Book Shrine and a Viking sword, straight from conservation. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a bit like a dream of mine to do something like this because we have this Irish heritage that is important to us in St Gallen,\u201d says Dora, on a phone call from his home in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Gall was one of 12 companions to another Irish saint and missionary, Columbanus, responsible for several monastic foundations including those at Luxeuil in eastern France, and Bobbio, in northern Italy. <\/p>\n

\"ImageImage from an Irish Evangeliary from the library of the Abbey of St Gall, part of the exhibition Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Irish brought a new fervour into the Christian life here on the Continent,\u201d says Dora of the monks\u2019 European mission. <\/p>\n

Following a dispute between Gall and Columbanus, they parted ways. \u201cGall stayed at Lake Constance and took to the wilderness, the forest. He settled and made a cabin, and about three years later he assembled other monks around him and founded an Irish type of monastery there.\u201d It was on the site of this hermitage, where Gall is buried, that the Abbey of St Gall was founded. <\/p>\n

\u201cSt Gallen was always conscious of the fact it had an Irish connection. Gall was a very popular saint in the region. Pilgrims came and visited his grave,\u201d says Dora. It is a tradition that continues today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have testimonials that there were Irish men here repeatedly. They really wanted to visit their compatriot Gall. It seems the Irish knew there was an Irish saint in St Gallen. We know about four or five Irish monks who stayed here. One was an recluse, who lived in a confinement that had no door.\u201d<\/p>\n

The manuscripts on loan to NMI comprise a mixture of books thought to be written in Irish monastic settlements, later travelling to Europe with Gall and Columbanus, and texts penned by Irish scribes in St Gallen. <\/p>\n

Maeve Sikora, keeper of Irish antiquities at the museum, is joined by assistant keeper and exhibition curator Matthew Seaver, as the pair give me a preview of the exhibition space and a sneak peek at its \u201caesthetic highlight\u201d \u2013 a mid-eighth century Gospel from St Gallen, thought to originate from the Irish midlands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really in a class of its own. It belongs with [the books of] Kells and Durrow,\u201d says Seaver, as we inspect the text\u2019s vibrantly coloured vellum. On one page a barefoot St Matthew \u2013 in hues of orange, red and blue \u2013 applies a scribal knife or scraper to a page and dips his pen in an inkwell. He is assisted by a dutiful angel. <\/p>\n

For Sikora, the exhibition is about portraying \u201cthe connectedness\u201d between Ireland and continental Europe. \u201cPeople coming and people going. Ideas coming and going. Artefacts coming and going.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The modern European idea shines up for the first time in these letters [from St Columbanus to the pope]<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Dr Cornel Dora<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Manuscripts are complemented by related artefacts, \u201cso you can see an object that looks just like an illustration in one of the manuscripts,\u201d says Seaver.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes a shard of pottery is hard to understand on its own,\u201d says Sikora of the curatorial decision to combine ceramics and works of metal and stone with the manuscripts. <\/p>\n

Pointing to where some of the objects are soon to be displayed, Seaver describes how their journeys were intertwined with those of Irish missionaries like Columbanus and Gall. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe ships that are carrying Columbanus and Gall are carrying these pots. They\u2019re coming from the eastern Mediterranean, then they\u2019re coming from the south of France and toing and froing between Ireland and there in the sixth and seventh centuries. The physical journey is the same as the manuscripts and the people went on, so that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to get across.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Latin grammar book, whose margins are brimming with commentary written in Irish by frustrated monks \u201cremarking on the writing conditions, how bad the ink is, giving out about making mistakes and begging forgiveness\u201d is on display. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018You are only the sixth person to see this since the Vikings\u2019: Behind the scenes at the National Museum of IrelandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cThey write in ogham at one point, saying they are ale-killed, which is essentially hungover,\u201d says Seaver, laughing. The book in question is a copy of the Institutiones Grammaticae of Priscian, well known to Irish scholars in the early Middle Ages.<\/p>\n

Copies of letters from St Columbanus to the pope make for a timely inclusion in the exhibition. According to Dora, \u201cthe modern European idea shines up for the first time in these letters\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fragments of the earliest surviving copy of Isidore\u2019s etymologiae, written by an Irish scribe in the seventh century and later brought to St Gallen, also make an appearance. The etymological encyclopedia was originally compiled by the influential bishop Isidore of Seville.<\/p>\n

Another key aspect of the exhibition is a collaborative student manuscript project, which will be on display alongside a short film documenting it. <\/p>\n

The abbey school in Switzerland was paired up with Irish schools in Ballymote, Co Sligo, Kells in Meath, and Gallen Community School in Offaly. Led by historian and calligrapher Timothy O\u2019Neill, the classes met online where they learned about early medieval culture and how to write in insular script.<\/p>\n

The students then had the opportunity to express their own ideas on vellum, emulating the scribes of medieval Ireland and St Gallen. <\/p>\n

NMI\u2019s exhibition also traces the journey of one of the abbey\u2019s schoolmasters and most famous pilgrims \u2013 Moengal, later named Marcellus. <\/p>\n

Moengal travelled Europe with his uncle Marcus, a bishop. \u201cThey went to Rome and on their return from Rome they went back to St Gallen and decided to stay,\u201d says Seaver. Moengal \u201ctaught a curriculum covering the seven liberal arts to some of the great master craftspeople from St Gallen\u201d, leaving a lasting legacy.<\/p>\n