![]() Since 1953, it has been bound in four volumes, 330 mm by 250 mm (13 inches by 9.8 inches). The manuscript today comprises 340 leaves or folios the recto and verso of each leaf total 680 pages. Many of these minor decorative elements are imbued with Christian symbolism and so further emphasise the themes of the major illustrations. Figures of humans, animals and mythical beasts, together with Celtic knots and interlacing patterns in vibrant colours, enliven the manuscript's pages. ![]() The decoration combines traditional Christian iconography with the ornate swirling motifs typical of Insular art. The illustrations and ornamentation of the Book of Kells surpass those of other Insular Gospel books in extravagance and complexity. The manuscript takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, County Meath, which was its home for centuries. It is regarded as a masterwork of Western calligraphy and the pinnacle of Insular illumination. The text of the Gospels is largely drawn from the Vulgate, although it also includes several passages drawn from the earlier versions of the Bible known as the Vetus Latina. It is believed to have been created c. 800 AD. It was created in a Columban monastery in either Ireland, Scotland or England, and may have had contributions from various Columban institutions from each of these areas. , sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. The Book of Kells ( Latin: Codex Cenannensis Irish: Leabhar Cheanannais Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. The Turin Erotic Papyrus: The Oldest Known Depiction of Human Sexuality (Circa 1150 B.C.E.)īased in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles, the video series The City in Cinema , the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at on Faceboo k.Columban monasteries in Ireland, Scotland & England The Art of Swimming, 1587: A Manual with Woodcut Illustrations While the remedies themselves might never have been particularly effective, their accompanying illustrations do remain strange and amusing even a millennium later - and isn’t laughter supposed to be the best medicine?ġ,000-Year-Old Manuscript of Beowulf Digitized and Now OnlineĢ,000-Year-Old Manuscript of the Ten Commandments Gets Digitized: See/Download “Nash Papyrus” in High Resolution As with many a Medieval work, the book freely mixes fact and lore: to pick the mandrake root (pictured at the top of the post), “said to shine at night and to flee from impure persons,” the guide recommends “an iron tool (to dig around it), an ivory staff (to dig the plant itself up), a dog (to help you pull it out), and quick reflexes.” You can behold these and other pages of the Cotton MS Vitellius C III in zoomable high resolution at the British Library’s online manuscript viewer. Quite a few of the species with which the guide deals would have been directly known to few or no Anglo-Saxons in those days, and some of the entries, such as the one describing dragonswort as ideally “grown in dragon’s blood,” seem more fanciful than others. (Somehow one doesn’t imagine those latter sections playing quite as well with today’s alternative-medicine market.) Each entry about a plant or animal features “its name in various languages descriptions of ailments it can be used to treat and instructions for finding and preparing it.” The manuscript‘s Old English is actually the translation of “a text which used to be attributed to a 4th-century writer known as Pseudo-Apuleius, now recognized as several different Late Antique authors whose texts were subsequently combined.” It also includes “translations of Late Antique texts on the medicinal properties of badgers” and another text “on medicines derived from parts of four-legged animals.” Just recently, the British Library digitized the oldest such volume, a thousand-year-old illuminated manuscript known as the Cotton MS Vitellius C III. The book, writes the British Library’s Alison Hudson, “is the only surviving illustrated Old English herbal, or book describing plants and their uses.” (The sole condition note: “leaves damaged by fire in 1731.”) In a way, those books have a place in a long tradition, stretching back to a time well before modern medicine existed as something to be an alternative to. Publishers have put out guides to their use by the dozens. If you don’t much care for modern medicine, entire industries have arisen to provide you with more “alternative” or “natural” varieties of remedies, mostly involving the consumption of plants.
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