The only authority we have in reference to the foundation of Kells during the reign of this Diarmait is O’Donnell’s Life of Columba. It is not noticed in our Annals, nor, at least explicitly, in the other Lives of the Saint. According to O’Donnell’s Life, Columba, after founding Durrow, went to Kells[251]—in Irish Cenannus—where it seems the king then lived, although he happened to be absent at this time. The saint when entering the place was very rudely received by certain soldiers of the Royal Guard, to whom he was most probably unknown. But when the king returned home and heard that his soldiers had insulted the greatest saint in Erin at the time, and moreover one of his own royal blood, he resolved to make over the city itself to Columba for a monastery, as an atonement for the rudeness of his soldiers. Columba could expect no more, and thankfully accepted the gift. The donation was also ratified by the sanction of Aedh Slaine, the eldest son of the king, and heir apparent to the throne. In return Columba predicted that Aedh would mount the throne of Erin, and that his reign would be prosperous so long as he abstained from shedding innocent blood—a condition, however, which he afterwards did not observe.
Kells was thus founded about the year A.D. 554, although its foundation is sometimes set down so early as the year A.D. 550. It does not, however, seem to have attained great eminence during the lifetime of St. Columba himself; for its fame was eclipsed by other more celebrated houses founded by the saint. It was only after the decline of Iona in the ninth century, consequent on the ravages of the Danes, that Kells became the chief monastery of the Columbian order both in Erin and Alba, as we shall see further on.
It may be useful, however, at present to make reference to the chief memorials of Columba, which point to his own intimate connection with that establishment. St. Columba’s ‘House’ is the most interesting of the existing antiquities at Kells. We may safely accept the opinion of the learned and accurate Petrie, that St. Columba’s House at Kells and St. Kevin’s at Glendalough were erected by the persons whose names they bear, and that they both served the double purpose of a habitation and an oratory.[252] The building is a plain oblong, twenty-four feet long by twenty-one broad, having a very high-pitched pyramidal stone roof, which is now covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy. The original door was in the west end, but for the purpose of greater security was placed about eight feet from the ground, and must have been reached by a ladder which could easily be drawn up by the inmates in case of alarm or danger. The building contains two apartments; the lower, which was the oratory, is covered with a semicircular stone arching, and was lighted by two small windows—a slender semicircular one in the east gable, and a triangular headed one in the south sidewall. The chamber or sleeping apartment of the saint was in the croft between the convex arching and the roof. It is about six feet high, and is lighted by a small window in the gable. It appears originally to have contained three apartments, in one of which is a large flat stone six feet in length, which is traditionally said to have been Columba’s bed. If we suppose a somewhat similar house to have been at Durrow, it will help to explain Adamnan’s reference to the Great House, and the danger of falling from the ridge of the roof, for in Kells it is thirty-eight feet from the ground.
There is a sculptured cross standing in the market-place of the same character as that of Durrow; there is another fine ancient cross in the churchyard having on the plinth in Irish characters the words—
“Patricii et Columbae (Crux).”
which show that it was erected to commemorate these two great saints, and probably at the time when Kells was the recognised head of all the Columbian foundations. There is a third cross, which Miss Stokes declares to have been the finest of the three, now lying mutilated in the church. These crosses show that ecclesiastical art was carefully and successfully cultivated at Kells, and that the city well deserved the appellation of “Kells of the Crosses.”
The fine round tower of Kells, which is still ninety feet high, marks the importance of the place during the Danish wars, and fixes also the site of the great church, for the towers were almost always built within ten or twelve paces of the great western door of the church towards the left or southern side, looking from the doorway. No trace, however, of the great church now remains at Kells, from the sacristy of which we are told the Great Gospel of Columcille was stolen at night in the year A.D. 1006.[253]
This Great Gospel of Columcille was without any doubt the celebrated MS., known as the Book of Kells, which is now preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. It is highly probable both from intrinsic and extrinsic evidence, that like the Book of Durrow, this celebrated codex was written by Columcille himself, although, doubtless the ornamentation was, at least to some extent, wrought by other, if not by later hands. The tradition of the church itself, as shown from the entry in the Annals quoted above, shows that so early as the year A.D. 1006 it was regarded as a copy of the Gospels, if not written, certainly used by the saint himself. It is called the Great Gospel of Columcille, and truly well deserves that name, for it has been pronounced by Professor J. O. Westwood, of Oxford, to be “unquestionably the most elaborately executed MS. of so early a date now in existence, far excelling in the gigantic size of the letters at the beginning of each Gospel, the excessive minuteness of the ornamental details crowded into whole pages, the number of its very peculiar decorations, the fineness of the writing, and the endless variety of its initial capitals, the famous Gospels of Lindisfarne in the Cottonian Library.” We may add that the Gospel of Lindisfarne was also a work of Irish art, as Lindisfarne itself was originally a monastery founded and peopled by Irish monks from Iona.
No description can give an adequate idea of the Book of Kells—it must be seen and studied to be duly appreciated.
It has had, too, a strange history. It was stolen, as we have seen, by some sacrilegious wretch in A.D. 1006; and at that time it was regarded as the chief relic of the western world. Fortunately it was found after forty days and two months, covered with sods in a bog, but its gold had been stripped off. Some few leaves at the beginning have been lost, and certain deeds and grants of land made to the churches of Kells are recorded in Irish on some of the blank pages probably left there for that purpose. In the time of Usher it was still preserved at Kells; but he secured it when Bishop of Meath, as he himself tells us, to collate the readings with the Vulgate; whether it was by purchase or otherwise we cannot say.[254] It passed to Trinity College with Usher’s collection, and, like many of the other ancient treasures of Celtic Ireland, is preserved there at present.