• News
    • News & Views
    • Reviews
    • Highlights
  • Blogs
    • Manuscript Studies
      • Manuscript Studies: Contents List
    • International Congress on Medieval Studies
      • Abstracts of Congress Papers
        • Abstracts of Papers Listed by Author
        • Abstracts of Papers Listed by Year
  • About
    • Mission
    • People
      • Mildred Budny — Her Page
      • Adelaide Bennett Hagens
    • Activities
      • Events
      • Congress Activities
        • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
          • Panels at the M-MLA Convention
        • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • History
      • Seals, Matrices & Documents
      • Genealogies & Archives
  • Bembino
    • Multi-Lingual Bembino
  • Congress
    • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
    • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • Abstracts of Congress Papers
      • Abstracts Listed by Author
      • Abstracts Listed by Year
    • Kalamazoo Archive
    • Panels at the M-MLA Convention
      • Abstracts of Papers for the M-MLA Convention
  • Events
    • The Research Group Speaks: The Series
    • Seminars, Workshops, Colloquia & Symposia (1989–)
      • Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Symposia on ‘The Transmission of the Bible’
      • The New Series
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Program: The Roads Taken
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration Open
    • Abstracts of Papers for Events
      • Abstracts of Papers for Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Abstracts of Papers for Symposia, Workshops & Colloquia
    • Receptions & Parties
    • Business Meetings
    • Photographic Exhibitions & Master Classes
    • Events Archive
  • ShelfLife
    • Journal Description
    • ShelfMarks: The RGME-Newsletter
    • Publications
      • “Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge” (1997)
        • Mildred Budny, ‘Catalogue’
        • The Illustrated Catalogue (1997)
      • The Illustrated Handlist
      • Semi-Official Counterfeiting in France 1380-1422
      • No Snap Decisions: Challenges of Manuscript Photography
    • History and Design of Our Website
  • Galleries
    • Watermarks & the History of Paper
    • Galleries: Contents List
    • Scripts on Parade
    • Texts on Parade
      • Latin Documents & Cartularies
      • New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
    • Posters on Display
    • Layout Designs
  • Donations and Contributions
    • 2019 Anniversary Appeal
    • Orders
  • Contact Us
  • Links
    • Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases: A Handlist of Links
    • Manuscripts & Rare Books
    • Maps, Plans & Drawings
    • Seals, Seal-Matrices & Documents

  • News
    • News & Views
    • Reviews
    • Highlights
  • Blogs
    • Manuscript Studies
      • Manuscript Studies: Contents List
    • International Congress on Medieval Studies
      • Abstracts of Congress Papers
        • Abstracts of Papers Listed by Author
        • Abstracts of Papers Listed by Year
  • About
    • Mission
    • People
      • Mildred Budny — Her Page
      • Adelaide Bennett Hagens
    • Activities
      • Events
      • Congress Activities
        • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
          • Panels at the M-MLA Convention
        • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • History
      • Seals, Matrices & Documents
      • Genealogies & Archives
  • Bembino
    • Multi-Lingual Bembino
  • Congress
    • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
    • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • Abstracts of Congress Papers
      • Abstracts Listed by Author
      • Abstracts Listed by Year
    • Kalamazoo Archive
    • Panels at the M-MLA Convention
      • Abstracts of Papers for the M-MLA Convention
  • Events
    • The Research Group Speaks: The Series
    • Seminars, Workshops, Colloquia & Symposia (1989–)
      • Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Symposia on ‘The Transmission of the Bible’
      • The New Series
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Program: The Roads Taken
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration Open
    • Abstracts of Papers for Events
      • Abstracts of Papers for Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Abstracts of Papers for Symposia, Workshops & Colloquia
    • Receptions & Parties
    • Business Meetings
    • Photographic Exhibitions & Master Classes
    • Events Archive
  • ShelfLife
    • Journal Description
    • ShelfMarks: The RGME-Newsletter
    • Publications
      • “Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge” (1997)
        • Mildred Budny, ‘Catalogue’
        • The Illustrated Catalogue (1997)
      • The Illustrated Handlist
      • Semi-Official Counterfeiting in France 1380-1422
      • No Snap Decisions: Challenges of Manuscript Photography
    • History and Design of Our Website
  • Galleries
    • Watermarks & the History of Paper
    • Galleries: Contents List
    • Scripts on Parade
    • Texts on Parade
      • Latin Documents & Cartularies
      • New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
    • Posters on Display
    • Layout Designs
  • Donations and Contributions
    • 2019 Anniversary Appeal
    • Orders
  • Contact Us
  • Links
    • Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases: A Handlist of Links
    • Manuscripts & Rare Books
    • Maps, Plans & Drawings
    • Seals, Seal-Matrices & Documents

Log in

Archives

Featured Posts

2023 Pre-Symposium on “Intrepid Borders” before the Spring Symposium
Photograph of the stems and white blooms of Snowdrops emerging from a patch of bare ground in the sunlight. Photograph Ⓒ Mildred Budny.
2023 Spring Symposium: “From the Ground Up”
Façade of the Celsus library, in Ephesus, near Selçuk, west Turkey. Photograph (1910): Benh LIEU SONG, via Creative Commons.
2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program
Barbara Heritage on Charlotte Brontë’s Fair Copy of “Shirley”
2023 Pre-Symposium Call for Papers: Intrepid Borders Lightning Talks
ShelfMarks Issue 2 (Volume 2, Number 1 for Winter 2022–2023)
Two Pages from a Roman Breviary in Gothic Script
Donncha MacGabhann at work on his close study of letter forms in the Book of Kells. Photograph via his publisher, Sidestone Press (Leiden 2022)
Donncha MacGabhann on the Making of “The Book of Kells”
2022 Autumn Symposium Program Booklet
How to Be Tarzan in the Catalog, Or, Tarzan-Moves of the Mind
Verso of Leaf from the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, Book III, chapter 7. Photography by Mildred Budny
2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Preparations
The Weber Leaf from “The Warburg Missal” (Otto Ege Manuscript 22)
Folio 4 with Latin Blessings for Holy Water and an Exorcism for Salt
Portfolio 93 of Ege’s “Famous Books in Eight Centuries” in the Collection of Richard Weber
A Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 214’ in the Collection of Richard Weber
Two Ege Leaves and Two Ege Labels in the Collection of Birgitt G. Lopez
2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program
2022 Spring Symposium on “Structures of Knowledge”
Two Old Testament Leaves from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’ at Smith College
Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases (Part I)
I Was Here . . .
Lead the People Forward (by Zoey Kambour)
The Curious Printing History of ‘La Science de l’Arpenteur’
A Leaf in Dallas from “Otto Ege Manuscript 14” (Lectern Bible)
How to Be Indiana Jones in the Catalog
Southern Italian Cuisine Before Columbus
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Anonymous, Still Life of an Illuminated Book, German School, 15th century. Oil on Wood. Opened book with fanned pages. Image via Wikimedia, Public Domain.
Barbara Williams Ellertson and the BASIRA Project, with a Timeline
An Illustrated Leaf from the Shahnameh with a Russian Watermark
J. S. Wagner Collection, Leaf from Ege Manuscript 22, verso, bottom right: Ege's inscription in pencil.
Another Leaf from the Warburg Missal (‘Ege Manuscript 22’)
More Leaves from a Deconstructed Sinhalese Palm-Leaf Manuscript
Otto F. Ege: Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts, Leaf 40, Printed Label, Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University Libraries.
Otto Ege Manuscript 40, Part II: Before and After Ege
rivate Collection, Koran Leaf in Ege's Famous Books in Nine Centuries, Front of Leaf. Reproduced by permission.
Otto Ege’s Portfolio of ‘Famous Books’ and ‘Ege Manuscript 53’ (Quran)
Grapes Watermark in a Selbold Cartulary Fragment.
Selbold Cartulary Fragments
Smeltzer Collection, Subermeyer (1598), Vellum Supports Strip 2 Signature Surname.
Vellum Binding Fragments in a Parisian Printed Book of 1598
Church of Saint Mary, High Ongar, Essex, with 12th-Century Nave. Photograph by John Salmon (8 May 2004), Image via Wikipedia.
A Charter of 1399 from High Ongar in Essex
J. S. Wagner Collection. Leaf from from Prime in a Latin manuscript Breviary. Folio 4 Recto, Initial C for "Confitimini" of Psalm 117 (118), with scrolling foliate decoration.
A Leaf from Prime in a Large-Format Latin Breviary

You are browsing the Blog for Donncha MacGabhann

ShelfMarks Issue 2 (Volume 2, Number 1 for Winter 2022–2023)

December 13, 2022 in ShelfMarks the RGME Newsletter

ShelfMarks masthead corrected 26 Oct 2014

Our occasional RGME-Newsletter resumes

Announcing:
Issue 2
Volume 2, Number 1 (Winter 2022–2023)

[Posted on 10 December 2022]

ShelfMarks, the occasional RGME Newsletter, experienced a long interval between Volumes 1 and 2:  Issues 1 and 2, respectively for Autumn 2014 and Winter 2022–2023.  The first was published on 8 October 2014.  Issue 2 appears, at last, in December 2022.

In between, the RGME had to turn to many other tasks — their work and results are reported among, for example, our Events and blogs on Manuscript Studies and our activities at the International Congress on Medieval Studies — and to await the help of a new Co-Editor.  Now, with the formation of the new Editorial Committee in 2022 and many other activities, both resumed and transformed or newly adopted, we turn again to our occasional Newsletter and e-Newsletter, with the help of an Editorial Team.

Issue 2 is freely available for download as a pdf.  See below.

Our Newsletter

Our Newsletter and e-Newsletter ShelfMarks stands among our various Publications, both online and in print.  It aims to report activities, work-in-progress, research results, discoveries, questions, reviews, and news.  The alternate forms in print and digital transmission allows our RGME-Newletter to appear by email, on screens, and it print.

Opening Page of Issue 1 of 'ShelfMarks: The RGME-Newsletter' (Autumn 2014)

Opening Page of ‘ShelfMarks’ Issue 1 (Autumn 2014).

The printed version of ShelfMarks displays our own font Bembino  and our design layout, set out page by page in full.  (8 pages in both the first and second Issues.)  Its PDF form preserves the layout which we created.

The EMAIL version, formerly circulated via MailChimp, provides excerpts and highlights, with links in further directions, set out in web form — plus some images of its own.

To distinguish between these forms, as an aid to bibliographers, book-lovers, and all of our friends, we think of the e-version as a form of ShelfTags for ShelfMarks.  The e-version provides a summary, with illustrations, of what is happening in the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.

ShelfMarks (Print)
ISSN 2377-4096

[ShelfTags for] ShelfMarks (Online)
ISSN 2377-4118

We invite you to explore further, and to join the conversation.

Issue 1 of our Newsletter was edited by Mildred Budny and Jim Tigwell.

Issue 2 is compiled, edited, and partly written by Mildred Budny.  An Editorial Team, with members of the RGME Editorial Committee, aided the work immeasurably.

Please send items, announcements, suggestions for book reviews, and conference or exhibition listings to the Editors:  director@manuscriptevidence.org.
To subscribe, contact director@manuscriptevidence.org.

*****

Contents of  Issue 2: Volume 2, Number 1 (Winter 2022–2023)

Private Collection, MS 1, Folio ‘130’ recto, detail. Photography by Mildred Budny.

1) “The Director’s Cut”

Highlights of RGME activities since Issue 1, described by our Director

Between Issue 1 (Volume 1, Number 1 for Autumn 2014) and Issue 2 (Volume 2, Number 1 for Winter 2022–2023), we greatly developed the scope of our redesigned Website, with active blogs on Manuscript Studies and on our activities at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS).  The website describes our projects and publications, offers galleries of images, and reports our events.  It also provides open access to many of our Publications, including our own multi-lingual font Bembino (now in Version 1.6).

Besides our sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions (as well as Receptions and Open Business Meetings) at the ICMS, developments include organizing Symposia and other events, for which we began to publish Posters and illustrated Booklets.  New genres also have emerged:

1) Research Booklets and Program Booklets

2) Interviews and Surveys

3) A Gallery of specimens (mostly hitherto unpublished) for Watermarks and the History of Paper

4) Episodes for “The Research Group Speaks“

5) Pre-Congress Business Meetings, held online for our wider audience

Since 2020, when our Spring Symposium had to be cancelled, we turned at first, after publishing its Program Booklet anyway, to reporting a backlog of discoveries for our blog on Manuscript Studies.  By 2021, our online activities began in May with the revived ICMS (cancelled in 2020) and a Pre-Congress Business Meeting to plan beforehand.  In July, an online Interview with Barbara Williams Ellertson (about her interests in books and the formation of the BASIRA Project) launched the series wherein “The Research Group Speaks”.  By November 2022, the series had reached Episode 9; more are planned.

In 2022, we resumed our Symposia, online, before the opportunity for in-person events returns.  For the first time, we held two Symposia in a single year.  Thus began the paired Spring and Autumn Symposia devoted to a shared theme:  “Structured Knowledge” in 2022, and, planned for 2024, “Materials and Access”.   With the 2022 Autumn Symposium, we resumed the preparation and publication of its illustrated Booklet, in 54 pages.

Issue 2 of the RGME Newsletter joins this spirit, and this accomplishment, of revivals.  They form part of the work toward 2023 and beyond.  For our Anniversary Year in 2024, the RGME would celebrate

1) 25 years as a nonprofit educational corporation, officially recognized as a 501(c)(3) organization based in Princeton, New Jersey

2) 35 years as an international scholarly society, founded in the United Kingdom as part of a collaborative research project (1987–1994) at Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge

Like Issue 1, Issue 2 offers the opportunity to celebrate and advance our activities.

"The Bouquet List: A Gathering of Books", a review by Mildred Budny with motto: "A Rose by Another Name is a Bouquet of n Circles" (Anonymous)

2) “The Bouquet List:  A Gathering of Books”

The second in the series of reviews by Mildred Budny

The title alludes to the widespread medieval genre of florilegia (“gatherings of flowers”).  We may think of the blooms in our gatherings as forms of Bouquets of Circles, or roses, in a mathematical sense, relating to overlapping or interlinked circles or ovals joined at a center.

The series is designed mainly for notices of books prepared by, or partly by, RGME Associates, Officers, and Volunteers, or related to RGME events.  The books under consideration in this issue (with RGME names in bold):

  1. Gregory T. Clark, Art in a Time of War: The Master of Morgan 453 and Manuscript Illumination in Paris during the English Occupation (1419-1435) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2016). ISBN 978-0-88844-197-3.
  2. Tributes to Adelaide Bennett Hagens: Manuscripts, Iconography, and the Medieval Viewer, edited by Pamela A. Patton and Judith K. Golden (London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publications, 2017). ISBN 978-1-909400-79-5.
  3. Celia Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus and its Sister Bibles: Scripture, Liturgy, and Art in the Milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden: Brill, 2019). ISBN 978-90-39013-3.
  4. Dan Attrell and David Porreca, Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic, translated with an Introduction (University Park: Penn State Press, 2019). ISBN 978-0-271-08212-7.
  5. Michael A. Conrad, Ludische Prais und Kontingenz-bewältigung im Spielebuch Alfons’ X. und anderen Quellen des 13. Jahrhunderts. Spiel als Modell guten Entscheidens (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022). ISBN 978-3-11-076440-6.
  6. Donncha MacGabhann, The Book of Kells: A Masterwork Revealed (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2022). ISBN 978-9-46-426123-3.

Folio 5r from the Codex Amiatinus (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Amiatinus 1). Image via Creative Commons.

3)”Links to Explore”

Directions for web-references in the form of endnotes.

[Note:
Over time, and with changes in the names or structures of organizations or services, some links in the list for Issue 1 (see ShelfMarks) became unusable.  We try to remedy the lapses where they come to notice.]

4) “The 2022 RGME Participants’ Survey”

A report by the Editorial Team, showing that Your Voices are Heard.

In 2022, the RGME carried out two Surveys.  The first addressed the Editorial Committee (a creation of 2022), while the second turned to our wider audience of Participants.  Prepared by Jessica L. Savage (who designed the Surveys), the Reports of Responses to both Surveys in turn showed a broad range of interests, which may guide planning for future events and topics, and offers to present at RGME events and to help in other ways.

We thank the Respondents for their comments, suggestions, and wishes.

Word Cloud of Responses to the 2022 Editorial Committee Survey. Prepared by Jessica L. Savage.

The Tradition Resumes

For comparison, and as a demonstration of continuity within change, we exhibit the front pages, or covers, of Issues 1 and 2.  Gladly, after eagerly awaiting its appearance, we welcome Issue 2 into the fold of RGME Publications.

Issue 1:

Opening Page of Issue 1 of 'ShelfMarks: The RGME-Newsletter' (Autumn 2014)

Opening Page of ‘ShelfMarks’ 1

Issue 2:

ShelfMarks Issue 2, Page 1 (Front Cover)

Printed Version of ShelfMarks

The PDF version of this issue is available for download here.  (Issue 1 is here.)

Issue 2.  We offer its pdf (8 pages in quarto format) in two versions.

  • As consecutive pages (eight 8 1/2″ × 11″ sheets)
  • As a foldable booklet (printable on two 11 1/2″ × 17″ sheets, to be folded in half)

Please note: If you click to open the PDF in your browser, it may strip out the links. We suggest that you download the PDF and open it in Acrobat Reader to activate the hyperlinks.

Email Version of ShelfMarks

The EMAIL version, as a form of ShelfTags for ShelfMarks, with some extra images, is available here.

Remember, you may Subscribe here.

Please Contact us or leave Comments here with your questions, suggestions, and comments.

 

Roses as n=6, n=7. and n=8 in designs by Mildred Budny

*****

Tags: 2022 RGME Surveys, Adelaide Bennett Hagens, Book of Kells, Celia Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, Dan Attrell, David Porreca, Donncha MacGabhann, Gregory Clark, Manuscript studies, Michael Allman Conrad, Monkwearmouth, Morgan Ms 453, Picatrix, ShelfMarks the RGME Newsletter, The Bouquet List
No Comments »

Donncha MacGabhann on the Making of “The Book of Kells”

November 1, 2022 in Announcements, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Speaks (The Series)

The Research Group Speaks
Episode 9
Saturday 19 November 2022 online

“The Book of Kells:  A Masterwork Revealed”

Donncha MacGabhann at work on his close study of letter forms in the Book of Kells. Photograph via his publisher, Sidestone Press (Leiden 2022)

Donncha MacGabhann at work on his close study of letter forms in the Book of Kells. Photograph via his publisher, Sidestone Press (Leiden 2022)

– An informal Interview/Conversation with Donncha MacGabhann, Associate of the RGME, about his newly published book

[Posted on 31 October 2022 by Mildred Budny, with updates]

For Episode 9 in the online series of The Research Group Speaks, we present an informal Conversation or Interview with the author about his new book on The Book of Kells:  The Making of a Masterwork (Leiden, 2022).

The Book has emerged from Donncha’s detailed study for the Ph. D. dissertation (London, 2016), as well as his own experience as an artist.  For our Episode, he will tell us about the making of his Book on the making of the Book of Kells . . .

To Register for the event, see Below.

The Book of Kells

One of the chief treasures of the Library of Trinity College Dublin (since at least 1661), and the subject of widespread fame, the Book of Kells might need no introduction.

The Long Room of the Old Library, Trinity College Dublin, seen from the entrance (2015). Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0.

  • Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I. [58], the Codex Cennanensis, now comprising 340 vellum folios, bound (since 1953) in four volumes, one for each Gospel.

The online Library catalogue offers concise descriptions.  About the contents, for example, some essential facts:

The Book of Kells (Leabhar Cheanannais, Trinity College Dublin MS 58) contains the four Gospels in Latin based on the Vulgate text which St Jerome [circa 342 – circa 347 – 30 September 420] completed in 384AD, intermixed with readings from the earlier Old Latin translation. The gospel texts are prefaced by other texts, including “canon tables”, or concordances of gospel passages common to two or more the Evangelists; summaries of the gospel narratives (Breves causae); and prefaces characterizing the Evangelists (Argumenta).

A different approach can be found, for example, in a concise guide for the curious:

  • Ten Things You Should Know about the Book of Kells, or the Book of Columba
    — along with, say, 10 Things You Should Know About The Gutenberg Bible.

Have a Look:

  • The Book itself, in online facsimile: Book of Kells. IE TCD MS 58
  • Its introduction: Book of Kells

For my part, one of the principal highlights — not the only one — of my long study of early medieval manuscripts from the British Isles, their companions, and their contexts (for example, British Library, Manuscript Royal 1 E. vi: The Anatomy of an Anglo-Saxon Bible Fragment and Deciphering the Art of Interlace), was the opportunity to examine directly, turning the pages, two volumes of the Book of Kells. That experience, over some days, augmented and amplified the observations of the volumes on display, along with other treasures, in the imposing Long Hall of the Library. The opportunity, with permission, to look at the Book itself took place in the Director’s office, with the clear light of natural light during an unusually dry summer with cloudless skies. Memorable indeed.  #turnedthepages.

A few years later, while part of the Book came on tour among the travelling Treasures of Ireland (1982 and 1983), I could see part of it again, in museums in Paris and in New York, under subdued light and behind the glass case. Different views, same astonishing monument.

Very, very many people can say that they have seen the Book of Kells.  Attracted by its fame, visitors to the Library, where it has been displayed since the nineteenth century, number on average some 500,000 each year.  On her visit, Queen Victoria (1819–1901) was encouraged to sign it — as an extraordinary form of ‘Visitors’ Book’.

Over the centuries, many have commented upon the Book of Kells.  They include scholars, historians, palaeographers, art historians, authors, artists, and others.  Some observers have taken inspiration from it in multiple ways, verbal and visual, to form creative works of their own, ranging from, say, Finnegans Wake (1939) to The Secret of Kells (2009).

Donncha MacGabhann’s long-term study, considering detail after detail of script and ornament, of the original Book of Kells as a whole brings fresh views of its process of creation, as the scribes worked their way across the pages and into an accomplishment truly worthy of curiosity, admiration, and wonder.  Aware of Donncha’s study for some years, I have looked forward to his book revealing the results of his research.

Donncha MacGabhann’s Book on Kells

About Donncha, see, for example,

  • Donncha MacGabhann Curriculum Vitae
  • Curriculum Vitae.

His Book, just about to appear in print, examines

  • The Book of Kells. A Masterwork Revealed: Creators, Collaboration, and Campaigns
    (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2022).
    Paperback ISBN: 9789464261226 | Hardback ISBN: 9789464261233 |
    Ebook only (pdf) and Ebook (read online for free)Format: 210x280mm | 324 pp. | Language: English | 11 illus. (bw) | 109 illus. (fc) |
    Keywords: Book of Kells; insular manuscripts; insular art; palaeography; Early Medieval gospel books; Early Medieval Christianity; art history; calligraphy |

 

From the publisher comes this description:

Front Cover of Donncha MacGabhann, “The Book of Kells: A Masterwork Revealed” (2022).

Sublime calligraphy, marvelous art, and amazing initials, have charmed and captivated the audience of the Book of Kells for over twelve hundred years. This remarkable illuminated Gospel book attracts the attention of scholars as well as those more generally interested in the fabulous artifacts of the past.

Everybody knows it was made by an extensive team of scribes and artists. Donncha MacGabhann knew that too. However, he was certain that a thorough examination could clearly identify the various contributions of its creators.

His life and work as an artist and teacher inspired the belief that a close visual study could solve some of its enduring puzzles. The deeper he delved, the more he was convinced that Kells is entirely the work of two individuals. This evolved into a novel paradigm through which he came to know and understand the manuscript. Following years of meticulous research, this book tells the story of Kells’ two Masters and their collaboration to create a Gospel book of unprecedented magnificence. Most poignantly, it reveals the struggle of the lone survivor of the two-man team to attempt the completion of their magnum opus.

The most important outcomes of this book go far beyond the simple attribution of work to different hands. Much more significantly, it affords insights into the imagination which inspired its creators, especially the unique vision of Kells’ great Scribe-Artist. Collectively, these new perspectives reveal a previously unknown ‘Book of Kells, ‘ one which, as it were, has remained hidden in plain sight.

Descriptions of Donncha’s book and its contents, approach, discoveries, and significance appear among various booksellers, as with

  • https://www.bookdepository.com/Book-Kells-Donncha-MacGabhann/9789464261226

The Process of Research and Discovery

In Donncha’s own words, as the research unfolded:

Dublin, Trinity College, MS A. 1 (58), folio 34r. Chi-Rho Initial Page (Matthew 1:18). Image via Wikimedia Commons; Public Domain in the US.

Key research interests include Insular palaeography and illumination. My current focus is to extend and develop the research which was the basis for my PhD (2016). My thesis investigation was concentrated on the makers and the making of The Book of Kells. This provides the first in-depth and comprehensive analysis of both the illumination and the scribal work in the manuscript.

My research was significantly informed by the experience gained in my career as an Artist and Art-Teacher. Complementary to the more traditional modes of academic enquiry this enabled me to draw on a skill-set which was integral to the development of my research methodology. This methodology of close visual analysis was central to my approach.

My immediate aim is communicate, through publication, the results of my doctoral research to the scholarly community. It is also my intention to extend the application of the methodology developed in my thesis to a number of other Insular manuscripts and to consider the implications of the revision of hands in the material culture of the Insular world more broadly. (Donncha MacGabhann)

Donncha’s Ph.D. dissertation is freely available for download:

  • The making of the Book of Kells: two Masters and two Campaigns (Doctoral thesis, University of London, 2016)  https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/6920/ (via Creative Commons)

Its Abstract:

This thesis investigates the number of individuals involved in the making of the Book of Kells. It demonstrates that only two individuals, identified as the Scribe-Artist and the Master-Artist, were involved in its creation. It also demonstrates that the script is the work of a single individual – the Scribe-Artist. More specific questions are answered regarding the working relationships between the book’s creators and the sequence of production. This thesis also demonstrates that the manuscript was created over two separate campaigns of work. The comprehensive nature of this study focuses on all aspects of the manuscript including, script, initials, display-lettering, decoration and illumination.

Detail from Front Cover of Donncha MacGabhann, “The Book of Kells: A Masterwork Revealed” (2022): Black-and-white reproduction by the author of the ornamented center of the Chi-Rho Initial Page (Dublin, Trinity College, MS 58, folio 34r).

Previews

We met Donncha when he spoke for the RMGE about a facet of the Ph.D. research on the manuscript for one of our Sessions at the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2014).  The Session considered “Individual Style or House Style?  Assessing Scribal Contributions, Artistic Production, and Creative Achievements”.

Donncha’s paper examined the scribal uses of two forms or grades of late-antique and early-medieval script, Half-Uncial and Uncial, for the letter a at line-endings, where options for compression and variation could call for choice and artistic expression.

Half-Uncial a and Uncial a at Line-Ends:
The Division of Hands in the Book of Kells
and an Insight
into the ‘Calligraphic Imagination’ Evident in the Script

The abstract for Donncha’s paper appears on our website: MacGabhann 2014 Congress.

At the Congress, although we had corresponded earlier, we could meet Donncha, learn about his careful studies, his approaches to the creation and understanding of forms of the written word, and his observations about the original materials, in manuscript and in print, offered for display at some of our sessions.

David Sorenson and Donncha MacGabhann examine manuscript materials

David Sorenson and Donnach MacGabhann examine manuscript materials after the RGME Writing Materials Session at the 2014 Congress. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Several papers published in the course of the research spell out the methodological approach.  For example,

Palaeographer Erika Eisenlohr has stated that ‘the similarity or dissimilarity of hands in Kells has so far mainly been based on more general impressions of the scripts’ (1994). My research attempts a more comprehensive investigation of the evidence including illuminated pages, script and illumination of the canon tables, mise-en-page, punctuation, display script, decorated initials, regular script and elaborations to the script.

— Donncha MacGabhann, Abstract for “The et-ligature in the Book of Kells (Revealing the ‘calligraphic imagination’ of its great scribe)” (2017), in Conor Newman, Mags Manion, and Fiona Gavin, eds., Islands in a Global Context. Proceedings of the seventh Conference on Insular Art, held at the National University of Ireland, Galway, 16–20 July, 2014 (Dublin, 2017), pp. 138–48.

The Script(s) of Kells

Discussion of the varieties of script, ornamented letter forms, and other forms of ornament in the Book of Kells continues in its own right over time.  It also forms, or should form, an integral part in an ongoing consideration of many features of the book, both individually and in combination.  That is:  the various texts (Gospel texts, their companion texts including prefaces, summaries, and canon tables with numerals and titles, as well as added texts such as Irish charters), illustrations, canon arcades and frameworks, scribal characteristics, writing materials (animal skins, inks, pigments, their binding agents, traces of layout marks, and so on), layers of accretion, condition, sewing patterns, binding history, library history, layout, design, artistry, and more.

Many features figure, to varying degrees, in assessments of the likely place and date of production of the manuscript.  Those assessments may remain open to exploration and refinement, as research advances, methods of exploration expand, attitudes may direct, and discoveries emerge.

Reproductions, Photographic and Pre-Photographic

Poster for lecture on 'Manuscripts versus Photography: Image and "Imago" in a Digital Age' by Mildred Budny at Princeton University on 19 November 2010. Photograph by Mildred Budny of MS 10, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque des Annonciades,reproduced by permission.

Poster, designed by the RGME, for a lecture on 19 November 2020. Image: Photograph by Mildred Budny of Boulogne-sur-mer, Bibliothèque des Annonciades, MS 11, reproduced by permission.

With restricted access nowadays to the treasured original, and with the proliferation of digital means of reproduction and dissemination, close study of the multiple features of the manuscript would mostly rest upon consultation of such reproductions, however high in quality or ‘fidelity’.  That those reproductive materials would, in no small measure, determine, affect, or direct the nature of the forms of study — as well as, it may be, the interpretations of that (indirect) evidence — should be evident.

Such factors in the study of manuscripts under current, prevailing, conditions in the age of photographic reproduction and the age of the internet remain a subject of considerable interest for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.  For example:

  • Mildred Budny, “No Snap Decisions:  Challenges of Manuscript Photography”.  Paper delivered at the Session on “Imaging Manuscripts for the Twenty-First Century:  Photographs and Beyond” (1994), sponsored by the RGME at the 1994 International Congress on Medieval Studies.
    Published, with its Abstract, Text, and Images, here.
  • “Manuscripts versus Photography:  Image and Imago in a Digital Age”.  Lecture for the Program in Medieval Studies, Princeton University (19 November 2010).

Our events continue to consider such factors of manuscript studies, whether as, perhaps, part-and-parcel, bread-and-butter, or meat-and-potatoes.  That is, as Food for Thought.

As always, our interest in the processes of production and the people behind the books, keenly explored in cases of the medieval objects, extends also to the processes which underpin, sustain, and shape the studies themselves of those materials.  These interests are manifest in many RGME activities, as with continuing explorations of relationships between “Manuscripts and Photography” in Seminars, Workshops, Conference Sessions, and Symposia; and in Episodes of our series wherein The Research Group Speaks.  On such occasions, we might have opportunity to hear the authors of close studies of manuscripts or other materials speak about the origins, progress, and processes of their research, as well as its results.  Such is the case for this Episode with Donncha MacGabhann, as his new book, long in the making, reaches publication.

Drawings of elements in the Book of Kells — as appear among Donncha’s figures — belong to a venerable tradition which reaches back to pre-photographic means of reproduction.  Notable examples in that tradition include images from the manuscript carefully prepared by the observant entymologist and antiquarian John Obadiah Westwood (1805–1893).  Examples appear in these of Westwood’s publications:

  • Palaeographia sacra pictoria: Being a series of illustrations of the ancient versions of the Bible, copied from illuminated manuscripts, executed between the fourth and sixteenth centuries (London, 1845)
  • Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts (London, 1868)
    Also, in excerpts: Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts (London, 1868)

Close examination fostered by line-by-line reproduction, from one surface to another, may develop a keen awareness of specific details, in much the same way that detailed verbal descriptions can do, as with a catalogue or ‘inventory’ of features within a manuscript (or other monument).  I myself learned the lasting value of preparing such descriptions — from the originals, aided by my photographic reproductions including macro-photography — for features of manuscripts in the Illustrated Catalogue, one of the co-publications of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.

From observations of the evidence, by various means and methods, the interpretations may follow, redirect, or revise.

In the new book, the choice of methodology of palaeographical examination, centered upon photographic reproductions and drawings, focuses upon excerpts of specimen letters and initials.  Arrayed on these pages (printed or digital) in groups or rows of related letter-forms, the specimens stand removed or isolated from the ebb-and-flow of their naturally-occurring lines and columns of running texts upon their pages, and their openings, across the unfolding of the original book as a whole.

Mostly at a distance perforce from that original (even when viewed through the glass case of its exhibited pages), and very exceptionally in a direct encounter, we might find ways variously to imagine, to ‘reconstruct’, or to recollect, the process of turning its very pages and sensing the feel of the width of its leaves as their edges are turned.

Donncha’s Book on The Book of Kells
in our Episode for 19 November 2022

The publication of Donncha MacGabhann’s book is expected on 31 October 2022.  The book can be ordered in print and pdf forms from the publisher and other booksellers.  From the publisher’s website, it can be read online free of charge.  See:

  • The Book of Kells. A Masterwork Revealed: Creators, Collaboration, and Campaigns

Episode 9 in the online series of “The Research Group Speaks” is planned for Saturday 19 November 2022, via Zoom, at 12 pm EST (GMT – 5) for about 1 1/2 hours, with discussion and Q&A.  You are welcome to join us.

Registration for the Episode

If you wish to attend, please register here:

  • The Research Group Speaks, 9: Donncha MacGabhann on Making the Book of Kells

If you have questions or issues with the registration process, please contact director@manuscriptevidence.org.

Future Episodes

Future Episodes are planned.  See

  • “The Research Group Speaks”: The Series.

Suggestion Box

Please leave your Comments or questions here, Contact Us, or visit

  • our FaceBook Page
  • our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
  • our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

Donations and contributions, in funds or in kind, are welcome and easy to give.  See Contributions and Donations.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga: The mid 15th-century Saint Vincent Panels, attributed to Nuno Gonçalves. Image (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Nuno_Gon%C3%A7alves._Paineis_de_S%C3%A3o_Vicente_de_Fora.jpg) via Creative Commons.

*****

Front Cover of Donncha MacGabhann, “The Book of Kells: A Masterwork Revealed” (2022).

*****

Tags: Book of Kells, Donncha MacGabhann, Early Medieval Gospel Books, early medieval manuscripts, Finnegans Wake, Manuscript Photography, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, Palaeography, The Research Group Speaks, The Secret of Kells, Trinity College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin MS A 1 [58]
No Comments »

  • Top


is proudly powered by WordPress. WordPress Themes X2 developed by ThemeKraft.