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Tag: Bernard Meehan

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The Dublin Apocalypse

The Library is digitising apocalypse manuscripts like there’s no tomorrow. The Dublin Apocalypse (TCD MS 64) contains the Latin text of the Book of Revelation, heavily decorated with 73 vibrant miniatures, and you can now see the Final Judgement in gold and vivid colour on our Digital Collections.

IE TCD MS 64, folio 31r

The imaging of this volume was completed to coincide with a one-day symposium based on the Dublin Apocalypse, taking place in the Neill Lecture Theatre of the Trinity Long Room Hub on Friday, 1 February 2019 from 9.45am. The event will draw together experts in their fields to discuss multiple aspects of the Dublin Apocalypse and its broader context. Attendance at what is sure to be an fascinating event is free but registration is essential at https://dublinapocalypse.eventbrite.ie.

IE TCD MS 64, folio 6r

Nigel Morgan, Professor Emeritus of the University of Cambridge, will discuss the iconography of the manuscript through an art historical lens. Michael Michael’s and Frederica Law-Turner’s papers will cast light on the Ormesby Psalter and delve into the East Anglian school of manuscripts. James T. Palmer, of the University of St Andrews, will study the circulation, interpretation, and use of the Book of Revelation in the Middle Ages.  

Bernard Meehan, former Head of Research Collections and Keeper of Manuscripts at the Library of Trinity College Dublin will recount the curious story of how the manuscript arrived at the College through an unusual deal between the Board and a former Provost. Finally, Laura Cleaver, Ussher Lecturer in Medieval Art in Trinity, will address early-twentieth century facsimiles of the text and their impact. 

So, if you’re seeking a friend for the end of the world or simply interested in one of the Library’s medieval treasures, please join us for insightful discussion and some free coffee.

Leanne Harrington

IE TCD MS 64, folio 14v
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The Book from the Tomb

Last night saw the launch of The St Cuthbert Gospel: Studies on the Insular Manuscript of the Gospel of John edited by Dr Claire Breay, Lead Curator, Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts, the British Library, and Dr Bernard Meehan, Head of Research Collections and Keeper of Manuscripts, the Library of Trinity College Dublin.

Dr Claire Breay and Dr Bernard Meehan

The book was launched by Helen Shenton, Trinity College Librarian and College Archivist. Helen was one of the last students of Roger Powell who famously rebound the Book of Kells. Her training included constructing a perfect model of the St Cuthbert Gospel, which she brought along for the occasion.

The evening also included presentations from both of the editors including a film of a CT scan of the gospel unveiling the structure beneath the decoration on the original binding.

Helen Shenton, Trinity College Librarian and College Archivist

The St Cuthbert Gospel (formerly known as the Stonyhurst Gospel) is the earliest intact European book and is a landmark in the cultural history of western Europe. Now dated to the early 8th century, it contains a manuscript copy of John’s Gospel in Latin. It retains its original binding, strikingly decorated with a vine and chalice motif. It is intimately associated with Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, being found in the saint’s coffin when it was opened at Durham Cathedral in 1104. Having been on loan to the British Library since 1979, it was bought for the national collection following a major fundraising campaign in 2011–12. It is now BL Additional MS 89000.

Dr Claire Breay showing the CT scan of the St Cuthbert Gospel

This new collection of essays is the most substantial study of the manuscript since the 1960s. It includes commentary on Cuthbert in his historical context; the codicology, script, text and medieval history of the manuscript; the structure and decoration of the binding; the Irish pocket Gospels, with which it shares several characteristics; the other relics found in Cuthbert’s coffin; and the post-medieval movements of the manuscript.

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Friends indeed! Unprecedented philanthropic response secures unique artefact for Ireland

TCD MS 11500One of the few remaining manuscripts from the medieval Cistercian abbey of St Mary ‘near Dublin’ has returned to Ireland after four centuries.

Lost to the world of scholarship since the 18th century, the fourteenth-century St Mary’s Abbey manuscript has not been in Ireland since the 16th century. It is the first Irish medieval manuscript to have been offered for sale in over a century.

Professor Seán Duffy, Jane Maxwell and Dr Bernard Meehan
Professor Seán Duffy, Jane Maxwell and Dr Bernard Meehan

The level of enthusiasm among scholars, across the university and among the wider historically-minded community in Ireland, for the return of this manuscript to Dublin, was given practical expression once the sale had been announced last Summer: the Library turned to its alumni and friends, seeking the necessary support for this acquisition, and the response was unprecedented. Apart from the generosity of  departments and groups within College, support was also received from the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, the Cistercian Order in Ireland, Glenstal Abbey and the Sisters of Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary in Roscrea. 

IMG_9718 croppedIMG_9719 croppedA press launch announcing the acquisition, on 19 March, was followed by an event to thank the donors who were invited to a special viewing of the new arrival. They were then addressed by the Keeper of Manuscripts Bernard Meehan, the Professor of Medieval History at Trinity Seán Duffy and scholar Br Colmán Ó Clábaigh, OSB.

Jane Maxwell

Links to media coverage

RTE

UTV Ireland

The Independent

The Irish Examiner

The Herald

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Designing ‘The Secret of Kells’

IMG_9697Designing the Secret of Kells, by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, with a foreword by Charles Solomon (Trinquétte Publishing, 2014)

For historians and curators, the imaginative recreation of the past presents particular, but frequently unacknowledged, difficulties. The skills needed to establish chronologies, or to tease out the causation behind historical events, or to make academic judgements about works of art, are quite different from those needed to convince an audience of the reality of the past. For this, works like Michael Crichton’s Timeline, or the movie of The Name of the Rose, allow us to glimpse a remote physical and intellectual past.IMG_9707 In the animated film The Secret of Kells, nominated for an Oscar award in 2009, the atmosphere of Ireland’s medieval monasteries and their famous artistic output is captured brilliantly by Cartoon Saloon of Kilkenny. Dwelling on the turbulence of the times, the film reveals a monastic world which is both open to visitors from abroad yet at risk from outside forces. In its inspired artistic asides, it mirrors the extraordinary qualities of the Book of Kells itself and seems to follow in a technical line from the work of the stained-glass artist Harry Clarke. When snow falls on the monastery, individual flakes take the form of crosses drawn in a myriad of designs. Such scenes call for repeated viewings and live long in the memory.IMG_9706 cropped

IMG_9704 croppedIn this new publication, Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart of Cartoon Saloon explain how they did it, and, of equal interest, they say who did what. We learn that Ross Stewart designed the scriptorium at Iona, that Tomm Moore devised the individual characters in the scriptorium, one of them a tribute to the actor Mick Lally, who played Brother Aidan and died in 2010, shortly after the release of the film, and that Adrien Merigeau was responsible for a different realisation of the scriptorium. Many a scholar of the Book of Kells would wish for such a guide.IMG_9712

 

Bernard Meehan

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The St Cuthbert Gospel, John, and the Irish ‘pocket’ Gospels

The Book of Armagh TCD MS 52 f 103r
The Book of Armagh TCD MS 52 f 103r

Dr Bernard Meehan, Head of Research Collections and Keeper of Manuscripts will give a talk entitled ‘The St Cuthbert Gospel, John, and the Irish ‘pocket’ Gospels’, on Wednesday 3 December 2014 at 6.30 pm, at the Trinity Long Room Hub.

It has long been recognised that John and John’s Gospel held a special place in the early Irish church; early manuscripts survive that contain the text only of John, independent of the other Gospels. The St Cuthbert Gospel (British Library MS 89000), in its original binding, is the most famous such survival. Dr Meehan’s involvement with the project to produce a facsimile and commentary volume of the Cuthbert manuscript has involved study of the few manuscripts with which it can be compared. The 5th/6th-century copy of John in Bibliothèque nationale de France latin MS 10439, and the volume containing extracts from that Gospel bound with the Stowe Missal (Royal Irish Academy MS D.II.3), are closest to it in respect of format, while features of its binding can be compared to the bindings of Irish ‘pocket’ Gospels such as the Stowe Missal, the Cadmug Gospels (Fulda, Landesbibliothek, Codex Bonifatianus 3) and the Book of Armagh (TCD MS 52). This paper will look at these points of comparison and at how Irish attitudes to John seem to be reflected in the layout and decoration of the Stowe John, the Book of Armagh and the Book of Dimma (TCD MS 59).

For further details please contact the organiser Mr Greg Hulsman; e-mail: hulsmang@tcd.ie; or the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.