A MAJOR exhibition has opened in Trinity College Dublin which brings together for the first time four of the most important artefacts associated with St Column Cille. This year is the 1,400th anniversary of the saint's death.
The exhibition, which runs until May 15th in TCD Library, features the cathach, or psalter, reputedly written by St Colum Cille; its shrine the decorated box in which the cathach was held for safekeeping; the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells.
The TCD Keeper of Manuscripts, Dr Bernard Meehan, said yesterday that if the cathach was written by St Colum Cille - and his research made him believe this was "perfectly possible" - it is the earliest surviving Irish book. The other very early Irish manuscript - the 7th-century gospel, Codex Usserianus Primus - is also held by TCD library.
Colum Cille, also known as Columba, was born in Donegal in 521 or 522, a great-great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the founder of the Ui Neill dynasty. He founded his famous monastery on Iona in Scotland's western isles in 563, started a monastery at Durrow, Co Offaly, in 580, and died in 597.
The exhibition also features the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells, probably dating from the early 8th and early 9th centuries respectively, which were made by the monks of the two abbeys in honour of their founder, the Donegal-born saint.
This exhibition marks the first time the four artefacts - the cathach, its shrine and the Books of Durrow and Kells - have been seen in public together since 1929, when the shrine was deposited in the National Museum while the manuscript remained at the Royal Irish Academy.
It also features other important relics of Colum Cille, including an 11th-century silver and copper alloy crozier associated with the saint.
Dr Meehan said the exhibition was important in that it put the Book of Kells, which was too often viewed in isolation, in the "context of the Columban civilisation of which it was a part." He emphasised the similarities between the world's most famous illustrated gospel manuscript and the earlier psalter manuscript ascribed to Colum Cille.
The exhibition is open from 9.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Saturday, and from noon to 4.30 p.m. on Sundays.