Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [129]
“So they say,” he replied. Many people ascribed the Kells Gospels to Saint Colum Cille. The royal saint, direct descendant of Niall of the Nine Hostages himself—his name meant the Dove of the Church—who had founded the famous island monastery of Iona off the coast of northern Britain, was a noted calligrapher, certainly. But Colum Cille had lived only a century after Saint Patrick, and it seemed to Osgar, who had examined a number of books in the monastery library, that the great book was of a later date. Two centuries ago, Kells had been founded as a refuge for some of the monks of the Iona community after the island monastery had been attacked by Vikings. A few of the illustrations were incomplete; so perhaps the great book had been prepared in Iona and the Vikings had interrupted its completion.
“I have been watching you, you know.”
“You have?” In the two months since he’d been there, the keeper of the scriptorium had hardly said a word to him beyond what was necessary, and when once or twice he had seen the old man looking at him severely, he had the feeling that the Kells man probably disapproved of him. He wondered what he’d done wrong. But to his surprise, when he turned his head, he saw that the old monk’s mouth was drawn into a smile.
“You’re a scholar. I can see it. The moment I saw you I said to myself, ‘Now there’s a true scholar of our island race.’ ”
Osgar was as pleased as he was surprised. Ever since his uncle’s lectures to him on the subject when he was a child, he had felt a justifiable pride in the achievements of his countrymen. For with barbarians occupying much of the world, it had been the missionary monks from the western isle who had gone out into the old Celtic areas of the ruined Roman Empire to reassert Christian civilization. From Colum Cille’s Iona they had established other notable centres, like the great western monastery of Lindisfarne, and converted most of the northern part of England. Others had gone to Gaul, Germany, and Burgundy, and even over the Alps into northern Italy. In due course, the founders of monasteries had been followed by Celtic pilgrims, in remarkable numbers, making their way southwards down the pilgrim routes that led towards Rome. Not only had the Celtic Church carried back the torch of truth; it had become one of the greatest guardians of classical culture. Latin Bibles and their commentaries, the works of the greatest Latin authors—Virgil, Horace, Ovid—even some of the philosophers: all these were copied and treasured. English princes sent their young men to study on the western island, where some of the monasteries were almost like academies; the island’s scholars were known in courts all over Europe. “These island Celts,” it was said, “are the finest grammarians.”
Personally, Osgar thought this proficiency owed much to the great tradition of the island’s complex but poetic Celtic tongue. Indeed, he privately doubted whether the speakers of Anglo-Saxon could ever really appreciate classical literature. And he remembered how another of the monks at Glendalough had once remarked, “Anglo-Saxon: that’s how a thatched house would talk if it could.” And he was glad that the monastic chroniclers had also taken care to record the old Celtic tradition in writing. From the ancient brehon law codes of the tribes and the druids to the old oral tales sung by the bards, the island’s monks had set them down with their chronicles of past events. The stories of Cuchulainn, Finn mac Cumaill, and the other Celtic heroes and gods were now to be found in monastic libraries, alongside the classical texts and scriptures. Not only that. A new literary tradition had arisen as the Irish monks, steeped in the sonorous tradition of their Latin hymns, had taken the rich alliteration of the ancient Celtic verse and transformed it into a written Irish poetry more echoing, more haunting than even the pagan original had been. Admittedly, the stories had often been changed a bit. There were things in some of those old tales, Osgar