It’s a mystery that has plagued scientists, archaeologists, and historians for centuries. Who made the Book of Kells, where was it made, and most importantly, why? The 9th-century book is unlike any other illustrated manuscript ever discovered. Like other monastic books, the Book of Kells contains the four gospels of the Bible, but the artists of the manuscript (documented evidence suggests only two artists worked on the book, one of whom may have also been the scribe) seemed more focused on conveying a marvelous visual narrative rather than simply transcribing the text. If you are lucky enough to see the book at Trinity College Dublin, where it has been kept since 1661, you can see for yourself page after page of microscopically intricate and “almost self-defeating” embellishments, as Dr. Victoria Thompson Whitworth describes them. The 340-page illuminated manuscript, widely considered the greatest medieval manuscript ever produced, has collected a swarm of theories about its genesis. The ambiguous motive behind its creation, along with its hypnotizing illustrations, has fueled centuries of scholarly aspirations to discover its true land of origin.
Long understood to have been created by monks at the famed 5th century monastery of Iona – then part of the kingdom of Ireland – the book has been hailed as an Irish national treasure, attracting over one million visitors to Dublin annually. Yet research by Dr. Whitworth, a British art historian specializing in Pictish stonework, alongside Thomas Keyes, a master craftsman in medieval manuscript production, has introduced a striking alternative theory: the possibility that the Book of Kells is of Scottish origin. To learn more, I attended a talk hosted by the Tarbat Discovery Centre at St. Augustine’s United Church.
During the talk, Dr. Whitworth outlined discoveries made over the last several decades, highlighting design parallels between the Book of Kells and Pictish stone carvings. This claim can be controversial, Whitworth states, “because it is generally held that not a single Pictish manuscript survives.” While the absence of known Pictish manuscripts is often seen as evidence against the Book of Kells’ Scottish origin, Whitworth argues that striking similarities between the book and Pictish carvings found near Portmahomack strongly indicate that the book’s artist(s) employed an abundance of symbolic vocabulary unique to Pictish stonework. These similarities, ranging from complex letter forms to entire layouts replicated from Pictish cross-slabs, suggest a stylistic connection between stoneworkers in Portmahomack and the manuscript’s creators. For decades, these observations lacked material evidence; no monastery in Scotland had been found with the necessary infrastructure to produce vellum pages for such a manuscript.
That all changed when archaeologists discovered a monastery on the grounds of St. Colman’s Church in Portmahomack. Upon this discovery, researchers like Thomas Keyes began considering the possibility that the Book of Kells had been produced there. Keyes’ mastery of medieval parchment-making techniques allowed him to experiment with recreating the tools and materials found at the Tarbat monastery. One of his most striking findings concerns the monastery’s unique use of seaweed to create manuscript pages. Burning seaweed, he explains, would have provided the calcium hydroxide needed to process vellum, an unconventional but practical method for creating lye in the absence of the limestone deposits that were common in places like Northumbria or Iona.
This led Keyes to a remarkable discovery: by allowing the calfskin to soak longer in the weaker seaweed solution, the vellum becomes stronger but also develops small pockmark holes. These holes appear in the Book of Kells, but in no other known manuscripts, strongly indicating that the book’s parchment makers used the same method. “No monastery near limestone is going to end up with a manuscript that looks like the Book of Kells,” stated Keyes, “because it’s not sensible.” This discovery only adds another layer of evidence to the possibility of the Book of Kells being produced in Portmahomack.
Though neither the Portmahomack nor the Iona hypothesis has been definitively proven, the evidence outlined by both speakers opens new possibilities for the continued search for the Book of Kells’ true land of origin. As Dr. Whitworth concluded her speech, she offered a hopeful perspective on the book’s potential Scottish provenance. “I would like to think that we could go from ‘no Pictish manuscripts survive’ to ‘the greatest gospel book of the early medieval world is a Pictish product.’” Will further discoveries in Portmahomack finally convince scholars to reconsider the book’s birthplace? For now, the search continues, and the mystery endures.
Image credits: scribalstyles.net