Above: Book of Kells

The opinion is held widely but, it would seem, erroneously, that the copy of the Four Gospels seen in St. Brigid’s Convent Kildare, by Giraldus Cambrensis in 1185 was no other than the Book of Kells. This marvellous volume is often referred to as the Gospel-book of Kildare and, if other than the Book of Kells, has disappeared for ever. Of it Giraldus said : " It contains the Four Gospels according to St. Jerome, and almost every page is illustrated by drawings illuminated with a variety of brilliant colours. In one page we see the countenance of the Divine Majesty supernaturally pictured, in another the mystic forms of the Evangelists, with either six, four or  two wings :   here is depicted the eagle, there the calf; here the face of a man, there of a lion, with other figures in almost endless variety. . . If you apply yourself to a close examination and are able to penetrate the secrets of the art displayed in these pictures, you will find them so delicate and exquisite, so finely drawn, and the work of interlacing so elaborate, while the colours with which they are illuminated are so blended, and still so fresh, that you will be ready to assert all this is the work of angelic  not of  human skill.    The  more often and closely I scrutinise them, the more I am surprised, always finding them new, and discovering fresh causes for increased admiration."
This book, Giraldus says further, was reputed to have been written in the time of the virgin, St. Brigid. Others attribute the "Book of Kells" in its original form to Colm Cille.
Excellent though the penwork of the Book of Kells unquestionably is, it is held by some to be surpassed by portions of the Book of Armagh, completed in 807 by Ferdomnach the scribe, who died in 845. Of this work Professor Westwood, who examined it with a magnifying glass says :   "I have counted in a small space, scarcely three quarters of an inch in length by half an inch in width, in the Book of Armagh no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines edged with black ones." Other beautifully ornamented and illuminated manuscripts are the Book of Durrow and the Garland of Howth preserved in Trinity College, Dublin, the Stowe Missal in the Royal Irish Academy, and the Gospels of Mac Riaghail, written by a scribe of Biorra in the beginning of the ninth century, and preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.