Image & Vision: Reflecting with the Book of Kells

Image and Vision is a most charming and illuminating introduction to the beauties, humour and puzzles of the greatest of our early medieval manuscripts.

Concentrating on twelve of the magnificent illuminations in the Book of Kells, this beautiful book provides clear and accessible guidelines on ways to reflect and meditate on these illuminations and scriptures as a whole.

Dr Brian Lacey, author of Adomnán, Adhamhnán, Eunan: the Life and afterlife of a Donegal Saint  writes:

Unlike much of what is said about the Book of Kells by modern experts, Dr Power’s study is written from the point of view of someone who also shares a faith that is at least similar to those who made the original work. Her book reminds us primarily – whether as readers we are ‘believers’ or not – that this magnificent copy of the four Gospels was created first and foremost for the worship of God. That is not to play down her scholarly and critical knowledge of the Bible, and history, art and theology of Christianity – a ‘theology of beauty’ as she once refers to it. Indeed, when discussing an image accompanying St Luke’s Gospel on folio 285r she mentions the ‘communal theology that led to the creation of [that] illumination.’ As the title suggests this is a book of meditations on a selection of those ‘illuminations’. She teases out the possible interpretations as they appear to her and to others now, distinguishing the manuscript as it presents after twelve hundred years of vicissitudes. Even apparent errors or unfinished details allow her to speculate on their possible meaning. But apart from the layers of learned allusions, she is emphatic that ‘the people who created the Book of Kells clearly enjoyed their work’. Repeatedly she refers to the ‘joy’ and the ‘fun’ to be found in its pages. Dr Power’s book is a most charming and ‘illuminating’ introduction to the beauties, humour and puzzles of the greatest of our early medieval manuscripts.