chapter 9 The Book of Durrow and the

Nancy Netzer

In his essay in this volume Richard Gameson provides a pic- Stevick,9 Dáibhí Ó Cróinín,10 Uta Roth,11 George ture of the fragmentary knowledge of manuscript produc- Henderson,12 Martin Werner,13 Lloyd Laing,14 Bernard tion in in the seventh and eighth century.1 Meehan,15 Thomas O’Loughlin16 and myself17 have written A staple of every church, he explains, -books were – about the book, but no one has undertaken the kind of ex- and remain despite vast losses – the most plentiful texts. haustive study, incorporating analysis aided by new tech- Among those that survive, only a small number may be at- nology and revising of the 1960 facsimile commentary, that tributed to either of the two Northumbrian scriptoria with Michelle Brown did to accompany the second facsimile of which manuscripts have, so far, been able to be associated, the in 200318 and that Richard Game- namely Wearmouth-Jarrow and Lindisfarne.2 The Lindis- son has further refined in his recent publication to accom- farne Gospels3 is one of them. This reason alone would jus- pany the exhibition.19 The result is that research tify the large number of works assembled around it for on the Book of Durrow occupies what might be character- comparison in the exhibition mounted in Durham in the ized as an unbalanced state. While relationships of some summer of 2013. One object that might have benefited from presence in that setting, were it available for loan, is 9 ‘The Shapes of the Book of Durrow Evangelist Symbols’, Art Bul- the Book of Durrow,4 which often stands enshrined with letin 68 (1986), 182–94. the Book of Kells5 as a ‘treasure’ of Trinity College Library 10 ‘Merovingian Politics and Insular : The Historical in . Having provided the ground for an older Irish Background of the Book of Durrow and Related Manuscripts’, five pound note,6 the manuscript retains its status as a na- and a.d. 500–1200, ed. M. Ryan (Dublin, 1987), tional symbol of Ireland. For all its fame and notwithstand- 40–43. ing agreement among most scholars from a range of 11 ‘Early Insular Manuscripts: and Archaeology, With disciplines that it is the earliest of the extant fully decorat- Special Reference to the Book of Durrow’, Ireland and Insular ed Insular gospel-books, the Book of Durrow has not been Art, ed. Ryan, 23–29. 12 From Durrow to Kells, the Insular Gospels-books 650–800 (Lon- comprehensively studied since Arthur Aston Luce, George don, 1987) and Vision and Image in Early Christian Simms, Peter Meyer and Ludwig Bieler collaborated on the (Cambridge, 1999). commentary volume to its facsimile in 1960.7 Since then, 13 ‘The Cross- in the Book of Durrow: The Cult of the other scholars like Carol Neumann de Vegvar,8 Robert True Cross, Adomnan and ’, Art Bulletin 72 (1990), 174–223; ‘The Book of Durrow and the Question of Programme’, ase 26 (1997), 23–39. 1 I extend thanks to the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Stud- 14 ‘The Provenance of the Book of Durrow’, Scottish Archaeological ies, and especially to David Cowling and Richard and Fiona Game- Review 9–10 (1995), 115–24. son, for inviting me to participate in this pivotal seminar series 15 The Book of Durrow (Dublin, 1996). examining the Lindisfarne Gospels in an expanded context. 16 ‘The Eusebian Apparatus in Some Gospel Books’, Peritia, 2 On the assigning of manuscripts to scriptoria see also Michelle 13 (1999), 1–92. Brown, ‘“Excavating” Northumbrian Manuscripts: Reappraising Re- 17 ‘The Book of Durrow: the Northumbrian Connection’, Northum- gionalism in Insular Manuscript Production’, Early Medieval Nor- bria’s Golden Age, ed. J. Hawkes and S. Mills (Stroud, 1999), thumbria: Kingdoms and Communities, ad 450–110, ed. D. Petts and ­315–26; ‘Framing the Book of Durrow: Inside/Outside the Anglo- S. Turner (Turnhout, 2011), 267–82. Saxon World’ in Form and Order in the Anglo-Saxon World, a.d. 3 bl, Cotton Nero D.iv. 600–1100, Anglo Saxon Studies in Archaeology 16 (Oxford, 2009), 4 tcd, 57. 65–78; ‘New Finds versus the Beginning of the Narrative on Insu- 5 tcd, 58. lar Gospel Books’ in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought in 6 Five pound Series B Irish banknote issued between 1976 and 1982. the Early Medieval Period, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2011), 7 Evangeliorum Quattuor Codex Durmachensis, ed. A.A. Luce, O. 3–13. Simms, P. Meyer, and L. Bieler, 2 vols. (Olten, 1960). 18 LG1. 8 The Northumbrian : A Study in the Transmission of Style 19 From Holy Island to Durham: The Contexts and Meanings of The ( and Toronto, 1987). Lindisfarne Gospels (Durham and London, 2013).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004337848_010 The Book of Durrow and the Lindisfarne Gospels 167 of its features have been rethought in the process of new blank page at the end of the Book of Durrow (fol. 248v) a research on other manuscripts and new archaeological scribe has penned a legal document ceding lands from an- discoveries, understanding of many aspects still reflects other monastery to . Presumably an effort to the scholarly mindset of the mid-twentieth century. An ex- associate the transaction with God’s word, this addition of ample of rethinking would be George and Isabel Hender- the late eleventh or early twelfth century (datable by style son’s suggestion in a paper on the recently-discovered of script) delivers an important clue to the book’s prove- that Durrow might have been pro- nance, showing that it was at that time a possession of duced in south-east England, a place to which no early In- Durrow Abbey. The document probably explains why the sular manuscripts previously have been assigned, but manuscript was given the name Book of Durrow, seem- where books must have been introduced early in the sev- ingly by James Ussher,23 who refers to it in 1639 as the enth century to aid Augustine’s mission.20 Such an assign- ‘Durrogh’ vulgate.24 ment, however, emphasizes analogues for some decorative In 1677 the antiquary Roderick O’Flaherty, saw the man- motifs at the expense of distancing other of the book’s fea- uscript in Trinity College Library and wrote a note (now tures from their accepted contexts – a danger of any non- bound at the beginning of the manuscript) describing a holistic treatment of a manuscript. silver shrine () that encased it. The shrine was lost Until about 1930, it was taken for granted that the Book in 1689 when James ii entered Ireland and soldiers were of Durrow was made at the monastery of Durrow, a place garrisoned at Trinity College during the Williamite wars. of great learning from which, however, no evidence of O’Flaherty records an inscription on the silver shrine in- manuscript production exists.21 The monastery was voking ‘the prayer and blessing of St. Colum Cille for Flann founded by St. possibly as early as 553.22 On a son of Maolsachnaill, King of Ireland, who had the shrine made’. Flann ruled between 877 and 916, thereby indicating 20 George and Isabel Henderson, ‘The implications of the Stafford- that the Book of Durrow was probably in Ireland, not nec- shire Hoard for the understanding of the origins and develop- essarily at Durrow, by sometime between 877 and 916. By ment of the Insular art style as it appears in manuscripts and then the codex was considered a of St Columba,25 ’, http://finds.org.uk/staffshoardsymposium/papers/ge which may explain why it managed to survive. orgeandisabelhenderson. The Henderson’s unexplored specula- The only words in the volume that the scribe pens relat- tion seems to build on Lawrence Nees’s theory (‘Weaving gar- ing to himself are the two colophons at the end of John’s nets: Thoughts about two “excessively rare” belt mounts from Gospel (fol. 247v). One simply asks ‘Pray for me, my broth- ’, Making and Meaning in Insular Art, ed. R. Moss er, the lord be with you’ (Ora pro me frater mi dns tecum (Dublin, 2007), 1–17) that decoration in early Insular manu- scripts may have influenced metalwork at Sutton Hoo. The idea sit). The other which may have provided the scribe’s was picked up by Leslie Webster (Anglo-Saxon Art: A New History name,26 alas, has been erased and over-written in a hand (London, 2012), p. 78) who, on the basis of comparisons to re- (or hands) that suggest(s) the alteration took place shortly cently discovered metalwork from Staffordshire and elsewhere, after the book was written. The text now claims that the suggests an origin for Durrow in an ‘Irish foundation in East An- codex was penned by St. Columba,27 who died in 597 well glia, such as that founded by the monk Fursa in the Roman fort before traditional understanding of manuscript at Burgh Castle in Norfolk’. See also George Henderson’s discus- sion of Durrow’s East Anglian connection in Vision and Image in Early Christian England, pp. 32–5, where he introduces the pos- 23 Ussher collated Durrow’s gospel text sometime between about sibility of an East Anglian origin. 1621 and 1623, when he was bishop of Meath. 21 During Columba’s life and for centuries after his death, Durrow 24 William O’Sullivan, ‘The Donor of the ’, Irish His- monastery was a famous school. (he, III.4) refers to Dur- torical Studies 11 (1958), 5–7. row as Monasterium nobile in Hibernia (‘the noble monastery in 25 Meehan, The Book of Durrow, pp. 13–6. The Annals of Tigernach Ireland’). mentions two gospel-books that were taken to the monastery of 22 Bede states that Columba founded Durrow before he came to Kells from Donegal along with of St. Columba in 1090. If Britain, but Adomnán in his Life of Columba, says that Columba Durrow was one of these two books (for which there is no evi- went from Iona to found Durrow at which time he was feted by dence), it must have gone from the Kells monastery to Durrow Alither, abbot of Clonmacnois, nearby. The Annals of Ulster re- sometime between 1090 and the end of the eleventh/beginning cord that Alither became abbot of Clonmacnois in 585, so if of the twelfth century. Adomnan is correct, the founding of Durrow would be after 585 26 Gameson, From Holy Island to Durham, p. 19. and before Alither’s death in 597. Henderson, From Durrow to 27 For discussions of the colophon see Codex Durmachensis, ed. Kells, pp. 29–30, proposes that Columba may have had land at Luce, pp. 17–24; Meehan, The Book of Durrow, pp. 26–8; ­Neumann Durrow before he went to Iona. de Vegvar, The Northumbrian Renaissance, p. 83; and David