File:Old English libraries; the making, collection and use of books during the middle ages (1912) (14784556095).jpg

Identifier: cu31924029526112 (find matches)
Title: Old English libraries; the making, collection and use of books during the middle ages
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Savage, Ernest Albert, 1877-1966 Hutt, James, 1870-
Subjects: Libraries Libraries
Publisher: London : Methuen & Co. Ltd. Chicago, A.C. McClurg & co.
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
Of divergent spirals and interlaced ribbonwork the frontispiece of St. Jeromes Epistle in the Book of Durrow affords notable examples. Two of the peculiar features of Irish decoration—the rows of red dots round adesign and the dragons head—appear in the earliest, ornearly the earliest, Irish manuscript extant, namely, theCathach Psalter, now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Whether the essential and peculiar features ofthis ornamentation are purely indigenous, as ProfessorWestwood contends, or whether they are of Gallo-Romanorigin, as Fleury argues, is a moot point, calling for complicated discussion which would be out of placehere. The amount of illumination in the existing manuscripts varies, but the pages chosen for illuminating are nearlyalways the same. In the Book of Kells the illuminations consists of three portraits of the Evangelists, three scenes from the life of Christ, three combined symbols of the four Evangelists, eight pages of the Eusebian canons, and many PLATE ni
Text Appearing After Image:
« so< h<O a H o M 2 Xen ? INTRODUCTORY i; initials. The Book of Durham contains four portraits ofthe Evangelists, six initial pages, one ornamental pagebefore each Gospel, and before St. Jeromes Epistle, andeight pages of the Eusebian canons. The Book of Durrowhas sixteen illuminated pages: four of the symbols of theEvangelists, six pages of initials, one ornamental page atthe frontispiece, one before the letter of St. Jerome, andone before each Gospel. The oldest Irish manuscript in existence is probablythe Domnach Airgrid, or manuscript of the Silver Shrine,also called St. Patricks Gospels. Dr. Petrie believed theDomnach to be the identical reliquary given by St. Patrickto St. Mac Cairthinn, when the latter was put in charge ofthe see of Clogher, in the fifth century. As a manuscriptcopy of the Gospels apparently of that early age is foundwith it, there is every reason to believe it to be that identicalone for which the box was originally made. ^ But bothcase and manuscript a

Note About Images