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The beginning of the Gospel of Mark from the Book of Durrow.

The Book of Durrow (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 57) is a 7th century illuminated manuscript in the Insular style made either at Durrow Abbey near Durrow in County Offaly Ireland, or in Northumbria in Northern England, with modern and traditional scholarship tending towards Durrow. It was started in 650^[1]. It is a Gospel Book, possibly the oldest extant complete illuminated gospel from Ireland or Britain. The text includes the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, plus several pieces of prefatory matter. It measures 247 by 228 mm and contains 248 vellum folios. It contains a large illumination program including six extant carpet pages, a full page miniature of the four evangelist's symbols, four full page miniatures, each containing a single evangelist symbol, and six pages with decorated text. It is written in insular script.

The earliest known cumdach was made to house and protect the Book of Durrow at the behest of King of Ireland Flann Sinna (879-916).

In the 16th century, when the Durrow Abbey was dissolved, the book disappeared, and was found a century later. It managed to survive during that period having water poured over it by a farmer to cure his cows.

The five pound note of the "Series B" banknotes of the Republic of Ireland contained an excerpt from the book.

Each Gospel begins with an Evangelist's symbol - a man for Matthew, a lion for Mark, a calf for Luke and an eagle for John. The next page is a carpet page, followed by the initial page.

The first letter of the text is enlarged and decorated, with the following letters surrounded by dots. Parallels with metalwork can be noted in the rectangular body of St Matthew, which looks like a millefiori decoration, and in details of the carpet pages.

There is a sense of space in the design of all the pages of the Book of Durrow. Open vellum balances intensely decorated areas. Animal interlace of very high quality appears on one page. Other motifs include spirals, triskeles, ribbon plaits and circular knots in the carpet pages and borders around the Evangelists

1. ^ Illustrated Dictionary of Irish History. Mac Annaidh, S (ed). Gill and Macmillan, Dublin. 2001

• Calkins, Robert G. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983.
• De Hamel, Christopher. A History of Illuminated Manuscripts. Boston: David R. Godine, 1986.
• Book of Durrow catalogue entry at University of North Carolina
• O'Sullivan, Aidan. Appreciation and History of Art