The Book of Kells

The BBC once suggested it was "Medieval Europe's greatest treasure." The Book of Kells is a Latin Gospel (with added material) created c.800 CE whose precise place of origin is unknown. For centuries it resided at the Abbey of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, which is how it got its current name.

It has 340 vellum leaves, 13 by 9.8 inches, both sides of which are used, totaling 680 pages which were bound into four separate volumes in 1953. Ten of the pages are illustrations, like the "Chi ro" page seen here. Chi ro are the first letters of Christ's name. It stands out because of the ornate illustrations, combining traditional Christian iconography with the complex and intertwined images of animals and humans found in the art of the British Isles. Even the text pages are filled with elaborate decoration. The text, written with iron gall ink, gives evidence of handwriting by at least three different scribes.

For a long time the book was thought to be created in the time of St. Columba, possibly even by him, but the style of the lettering system suggests it was long after. Proponents of the Columba theory suggest that maybe it was created to mark the 200th anniversary of his death. Various theories place its origin at Iona, or Kells, or started at the former and finished at the latter.

Perhaps one of the most interesting parts of its history is that it survived Viking invasions and other events. The Annals of Ulster record (the first reference to the book) that in 1007 "the great Gospel of Columkille,  the chief relic of the Western World, was wickedly stolen during the night from the western sacristy of the great stone church at Cenannas on account of its wrought shrine" (a wrought shrine is the elaborately and richly decorated box for holding a book). The Annals' reference to Columcille (St. Columba's real name) is why scholars link it to him.

The Book of Kells now resides in the Trinity College Library in Dublin. If you'd like your own copy, you can find a facsimile edition here.

For a more lighthearted look at medieval books, how about if tomorrow we look at the first medieval book of jokes?

Extreme Weather

"Volcanic winter" is a frightening phrase. It is the result of a volcanic eruption that spews so much ash and dust into the atmosphere that it encircles the globe and prevents sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. 

A volcanic winter took place in the 530s CE, the most severe drop in temperature in the Common Era. An eruption of sulfate aerosols possibly in late 535 dropped summer temperature averages in 536 by at least 4-5 degrees Fahrenheit. In 539-540, a second volcanic eruption caused summer temperatures to drop another 5 degrees.

This was recorded in the Northern Hemisphere by contemporary writers in Constantinople. Procopius, whose writing revealed the secret of where silk came from, records of 536 

...during this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness … and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear."

Cassiodorus, in a letter in 538, describes the sun's rays being weak, no shadows from people at noon, the sun's heat being feeble, the moon "empty of splendor," prolonged frost, unseasonable drought, frosts during harvest, the need to use stored food because harvests were so poor.

The Annals of Ulster mention a failure of bread in the year 536.

Dendrochronology (tree ring analysis) shows very poor growth in Irish oak in 536. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show substantial sulfate deposits around 534±2 years, which offers evidence for the volcanic eruption. Which volcano was the cause, however, has never been agreed upon. The 536 event was worse than 1816, when the explosion of the Mount Tambora volcano caused the "Year Without a Summer."

As mentioned in the prior post, the line regarding the Battle of Camlann in the Welsh Annals that says of 537 "there was great mortality in Britain and Ireland" is likely a reference to the famine that resulted from the volcanic winter.

The 536 event was not the only severe weather crisis in the Middle Ages. Next time, let's jump forward to the Great Famine of 1315-17.

The Annals of Ulster

History is written by the victors, or so it is said, and I was warned in graduate school always to question an author's intent. Everyone who write something down has an agenda, a point they intend to get across. That point might not be completely objective.

The Annals of Ulster might be in the same category, but their entries are usually simple lists of events without editorializing. This give the historian a separate check on other more detailed accounts, just in case the longer account is presenting a skewed version to get across the author's political point.

Another benefit of the Annals is that they cover more than ten centuries, from 431 CE until 1540, and so reach back further than many historical records. The first entry for 431 is:

Kalends of January
The year 431 from the Incarnation of the Lord.

Palladius, having been consecrated by Celestine, bishop of the city of Rome, is sent to Ireland in the consulship of Aetius and Valerius as first bishop to the Irish so that they might believe in Christ—in the eighth year of Theodosius.

The first several decades are compiled from other accounts, before the contemporary writers take over.  For the next year, for instance, we see:

432
Kalends of January sixth feria, fifth of the moon, [AM]4636. AD 432 according to Dyonisius.

Patrick arrived in Ireland in the ninth year of the reign of Theodosius the Less and in the first year of the episcopate of Xistus, 42nd bishop of the Roman Church. So Bede, Maxcellinus and Isidore compute in their chronicles.

The contributors to the Annals seemed to like following kings and their events and battles, as well as the activity of the viking invaders of Ireland. Another benefit to historians is that the Annals are written mostly in the Irish language, with only a few entries in Latin. Linguists have used the Annals to study the evolution of the Irish language.

But here's a question: if you're writing a history of Ireland, and obviously St. Patrick is an important part of that, it might make sense to use that as your starting point. They started, however, with Palladius. So ... who was he?

The Battle of Clontarf

The Battle of Clontarf took place on 23 April 1014. It turned Brian Boru into a national hero, although that may have had more to do with public sentiment and creative re-telling than factual outcome, since Boru did not survive.

Boru (c.941 - 23 April 1014) had grown in power until his kingdom of Munster was unparalleled in Irish history. The king of Leinster, Máel Mórda, challenged Boru at the Battle of Glenmama on 30 December 999, lost and had to submit. A few years after, in 1002, Brian Boru's political and military authority caused him to be recognized as "High King" of Ireland.

Meanwhile, Viking raids on Ireland the previous few centuries had resulted in settlements on the coast, including one that grew into the Kingdom of Dublin. At the time of Clontarf, the king of Dublin, Sitric Silkenbeard, was nephew to the king of Leinster.

They all should have been on good terms. Brian's ex-wife Gormlaith was Máel Mórda's sister, and Sitric was her son by a previous husband. One of Brian's daughters from a previous marriage, Sláine, was Sitric's wife! Unfortunately, the lust for power does not take a backseat just because of familial ties.

In 1013, Máel Mórda and Sitric Silkenbeard rebelled against Boru's authority. Boru decided he needed to make a strong statement, so he sent his son Murchad into Leinster who "plundered the land ..., burned the whole country, and took great spoils and countless captives." [Annals of Ulster]

Other skirmishes led Brian Boru to bring his army to Leinster in September 1013, where he positioned them outside Dublin. Sitric sailed east to find Viking support. According to Njal's Saga, he approached both the Earl of Orkney and a warrior from the Isle of Man and offered each to be the king of Ireland if they would aid him against Boru. (Njal's Saga is a later work of poetry and cannot always be relied on for factual details. See what it says about valkyries.)

Sitric's viking allies sailed to Dublin the week before Easter. (Easter in 1014 was 25 April, about as late as it can get, so the weather was amenable to sailing and fighting.) The armies met at Clontarf (the name means "meadow of the bull"), an area north of Dublin, on Good Friday. A blow-by-blow of the Battle of Clontarf does not exist in the contemporary Annals of Ulster or the Annals of Inisfallen, nor in the poetic Njal's Saga. The dead included Brian Boru, his son Murchad, his grandson Toirdelbach, his nephew Conaing.

On the other side, Sitric survived, because he stayed in Dublin to protect it; he could see the fighting from the city walls. His brother Amlaíb led the Leinster forces, and died because of it. Máel Mórda was killed, as were the two leaders from Orkney and the Isle of Man.

In all, estimates are that 7,000 - 10,000 were killed in the battle, but not all by bloodshed. The battle started at dawn and continued all day. The tide was in near the end of the day, preventing the retreating vikings from reaching their ships, and many drowned while trying to retreat. The viking and Dublin influence on Ireland was severely diminished.

After Boru's death, his remaining forces were led by Máel Sechnaill Mac Domnaill. He had been High King before Brian Boru, and was restored to that position after Clontarf, since Boru's male issue had been killed.

It was not called the Battle of Clontarf at the time: the 12th-century Book of Leinster has a list of kings where it states that Brian Boru died in the "Battle of Clontarf Weir." The date of the battle itself may be false, Good Friday being first mentioned in later medieval sources. There is a theory that Good Friday was chosen symbolically to link Brian Boru's death with that of Christ's sacrifice. Boru was hailed ever after as a national hero, although his victory was a pyrrhic one.

I'll talk a little more about the value of the Annals of Ulster next time.

Vikings in Ireland

A sign of Viking presence in Ireland:
a Viking ship built in Dublin c. 1042

As alluded to in the post on King Edmund I, Ireland was the target of raids from Scandinavian countries almost as much as England. Based on hints in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, some believe the earliest raids took place in 795 at the island of Lambay off the coast north of Dublin. (In fact, "Lambay" is from Old Norse for "lamb island.")

There were, in fact, two separate periods of Viking incursion, separated by less than a single generation. The first was from 795 until 902, when (according to the Annals of Ulster, mentioned here) "The heathens were driven from Ireland." Those heathens (descendants and followers of Ivar the Boneless) seemed to hang about the Irish Sea, hassling Northumbria and Strathclyde. They returned to the mainland in 914, taking over Dublin.

Ireland was a good place from which to stage incursions into northern England. It was this clan of Ivar's that produced King Olaf III Guthfrithsson, who succeeded his father to become King of York and was driven out by King Edmund in 942.

Although typical Viking raids tended to plunder monasteries and towns and then depart, Ireland was good land for settlements. Viking and Irish intermarried, and produced a group now called "Norse-Gaels." Between the 12th and 14th centuries, the English referred to the Norse-Gaelic people living in Ireland as Ostmen, "East men," because of their origin in Scandinavia. They were considered ethnically and legally distinct from Irish, and lived in their own communities. The modern Oxmantown, now a suburb of Dublin, derives its name from Ostmentown, where Norse-Gaels lived outside of Dublin. According to a 2006 paper, Norse DNA is still found in the Irish population, especially in the areas of Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Wexford.

Halley's Comet

Halley's Comet on the Bayeaux Tapestry

The nice thing about astronomy is that some celestial events are so predictably cyclical that they can help confirm dates in history, or be spotted in the historical record. Halley's Comet has appeared numerous times while human beings have been on Earth, and many of those appearances have been noted by record-keepers.

BCE records suggest Halley's was spotted as early as 467 BCE by the Greeks and the Chinese, but the first report detailed enough to be certain of Halley's pattern was in 240 BCE by a Chinese chronicle.

The 1493 Nuremberg Chronicles used many early sources, one of which mentioned the comet appearing over Europe in 684. The 837 approach—recorded by astronomers in Germany as well as across the Middle East and Asia—was the closest the comet ever came to earth: a mere 3.2 million miles away, and took place on 10 April. The Annals of Ulster—an Irish chronicle extending from 431 to 1540 CE—says of 912 "A dark and rainy year. A comet appeared."

1066 saw the appearance of an invading Norman army in England and the appearance of the comet in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the Irish Annals of the Four Masters, and later in the Bayeaux Tapestry.

Drawing and note from Eadwine Psalter

The Bayeaux Tapestry wasn't the only attempt to record visually what they saw in the sky. The 1145 appearance was drawn up by a monk, Eadwine, who was copying a psalter at Canterbury Cathedral. On the bottom of the page with the Fifth Psalm, Eadwine added a drawing and a note: “Concerning the star ‘comet’. The star ‘comet’ has a ray such as this, and in English it is called the long-haired star.* It appears rarely during the course of many years, and then as a portent.”

The next appearance of Halley's is scheduled for 28 July 2061.

*comet is from Greek and means "hair" or "long hair."