The Book of Durrow is an illuminated manuscript dated to c. 700 that consists of text from the four Gospels gospel books, written in an Irish adaption of Vulgate Latin, and illustrated in the Insular script style.
Its origin and dating has been subject to much debate. The book was created in or near Durrow, County Offaly, on a site founded by Colum Cille (or Columba) (c. 521-97), rather than the sometimes proposed origin of Northumbria, a region that had close political and artistic ties with Ireland, and like Scotland, also venerated Colum Cille.
Historical records indicate that the book was probably at Durrow Abbey by 916, making it one of the earliest extant Insular manuscripts. It is badly damaged, and has been repaired and rebound many times over the centuries. Today it is in the Library of Trinity College Dublin (TCD MS 57).
Description
It is the oldest extant complete illuminated Insular gospel book, for example predating the Book of Kells by over a century. The text includes the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, plus several pieces of prefatory matter and canon tables. Its pages measure 245 by 145 mm and there are 248 vellum folios. It contains a large illumination programme including six extant carpet pages, a full page miniature of the four evangelists' symbols, four full page miniatures, each containing a single evangelist symbol, and six pages with significant decorated initials and text. It is written in majuscule insular script (in effect the block capitals of the day), with some lacunae.
The page size has been reduced by subsequent rebindings, and most leaves are now single when unbound, where many or most would originally have been in "bifolia" or folded pairs. It is clear that some pages have been inserted in the wrong places. The main significance of this is that it is unclear if there was originally a seventh carpet page. Now Matthew does not have one, but there is, most unusually, one as the last page in the book. Perhaps there were only ever six: one at the start of the book with a cross, one opposite the next page with the four symbols (as now), and one opposite each individual symbol at the start of each gospel. Otherwise the original programme of illumination seems to be complete, which is rare in manuscripts of this age.
In the standard account of the development of the Insular gospel book, the Book of Durrow follows the fragmentary Northumbrian Gospel Book Fragment (Durham Cathedral Library, A. II. 10.) and precedes the Book of Lindisfarne, which was begun around 700.
Illumination
The illumination of the book shows especially well the varied origins of the Insular style, and has been a focus for the intense art-historical discussion of the issue. One thing that is clear is that the artist was unused to representing the human figure; his main attempt, the Man symbol for Matthew, has been described as a "walking buckle". Apart from Anglo-Saxon metalwork, and Coptic and Syriac manuscript illustrations, the figure has been compared to a bronze figure with a panel of geometric enamel on his trunk, from a bucket found in Norway. Christopher de Hamel writes that, "Like the Book of Kells, [the Book of Durrow] carries the legend that it was copied by Saint Columba... It too has a set of Canon tables, six elaborate carpet pages, five full-page images of the symbols of the Evangelists (one on folio 2r showing all four, the others at the start of each Gospel), five very large initials up to full page in size, and very numerous smaller initials. The Book of Durrow is not as elaborate as the Book of Kells or as large, but it shows all those incipient features of swirling Celtic interlace and infill."
The animal iconography derives from Germanic zoomorphic designs; the depictions of the Jesus and the Evangelists from Pictish stones. The geometric borders and the carpet pages cause more disagreement. The interlace, like that of the Durham fragment, is mostly large compared to the Book of Lindisfarne, but the extreme level of detail found in later Insular books begins here in the Celtic spirals and other curvilinear decoration used in initials and in sections of carpet pages. The page illustrated at left has animal interlace around the sides that is drawn from Germanic Migration Period Animal Style II, as found for example in the Anglo-Saxon jewellery at Sutton Hoo, and on the Benty Grange hanging bowl. But the circular panel in the centre seems, although not as precisely as other parts of the book, to draw on Celtic sources, although the three white circles at the edge recall Germanic metalwork studs in enamel or other techniques.