LONG, LONG AGO WHEN THE GEESE WENT barefoot, in the days before men thought they descended from apes, two monks dwelt inside the walls of an abbey. Other monks lived there too, many, many of them—but these two had a distinction that set them apart, and their colleagues in prayer seemed happy to acknowledge it.
You should know the names of these two men; our names are often all we own, if we can be said to own our names. They were called Annan and Senan, and folks could easily tell which was which, because Annan was tall and thin as a string, whereas Senan was short and buttery, a little tub of a fellow. At the time of our story these two benignant and genial men had lived in this abbey for exactly the same number of years each—twenty-five years, a quarter of a century. Everybody loved them, and they loved the world.
It came to pass in the wheel of Time that the old abbot died. The mourning bell rang out sincerely. He had been an unusual man, broad in his views, and he combined kindness with relentlessness of discipline. But he was old, and we all have to move on. He left behind him a successful, well-run abbey—and a great question: Who’s going to be the next abbot?
As you know from your schoolbooks, an abbot presides over a monastery with the greatest power and importance, and some abbots have even become cardinals. This departing abbot had been hailed by the pope in Rome as a man of singular ability and honored with a papal medal.
To everyone’s surprise—and out of the ordinary for such establishments—the dying abbot had chosen not to settle the question of his succession. In this day and age, that kind of question is resolved by the pope or the head of the order of priests represented in that monastery. But in those days they had different rules.
For a start, the abbey didn’t feel as attached to Rome and the pope as Rome and the pope thought they should feel. Those monks believed in choosing their own abbot and would not take kindly to a man imposed on them by the pope. Actually, all the Irish abbeys maintained a powerful independence from Rome and only came into line around the year six-sixty-four after a great argument at a place called Whitby on the eastern coast of England. But that’s another story for another day, maybe when the sun rises higher in the sky and the birds are a bit happier about the weather.
Annan and Senan and their brother monks knew that the choosing of the next abbot would have a certain urgency. Not only that, there were others who had something to say on the matter. When the monks first came there, they received the land to build their monastery from a local farmer, a wealthy man who had been baptized by Patrick himself. This man’s son, grandson, great-grandson, great-great-grandson unto fifteen generations—if twenty years makes a generation—had all continued the bequest of the family lands to the abbey. They had made only one stipulation—that they be comfortable with the choice of each abbot. Therefore, it came to pass that, in effect, they chose the abbot—or certainly helped in the appointment.
At the time the abbot died, the landowner was a widow. Her husband’s death had been premature, but he left her well off, and she took control of everything. She had great capabilities, and she also possessed the rare gift of common sense. So she knew that an abbey without an abbot would be like a ship without a skipper. And by virtue of the deal done thirty years ago, when her husband had renewed the gift of the land to the monks at the appointment of the last abbot, she had the major say in who should be the next one.
This lady also knew that the two best candidates, in everybody’s eyes, had to be Annan and Senan. At the abbot’s funeral she ran a careful eye over them and saw how excellently they got on with each other and with all the monks, and indeed with everyone. As to which would be the better leader, that was most confusing; impossible to tell. Every day for a week she tossed and turned the question back and forth; Annan or Senan; Senan or Annan? The poor woman couldn’t make up her mind, and she became severely addled.
But how could anyone distinguish between the two men? Each had excellent qualifications; each received much respect. It used to be the case that the abbot of a monastery got chosen very simply—whoever seemed the most devout, the man who prayed the deepest and longest, that was the man deemed the holiest, and that was the man they elected. But these two equaled each other in mighty praying—as they did in everything else. And while this problem became the daily topic of conversation in the abbey, the monks turned the soil, they welcomed the rain, they hailed the sun, and they were happy.
The lady at the heart of this decision was named Delia, and she was known to all the monks. She often came to mass in the abbey chapel, and she had her servants bring gifts of food and extra wool, from which the monks wove their robes, even though they had their own sheep. Nobody had any fears as to the decision she might make; they trusted Delia, and they all thought it a good idea that she should have such a say in the choosing of the next abbot.
It often happens that when two perfectly qualified candidates go for the same job, neither of them gets it. The post goes to a third person. He might not be ideal; he might not be as clever, say, or as popular; but it’s a way of breaking a deadlock.
In the case of Annan and Senan, such a compromise would have meant that each man should distance himself from the idea that he might be the next abbot and agree that some other monk, perhaps not as well liked or as well qualified or indeed not as devout or as leaderly, should get the job. But the thorny problem was, no other suitable monk could be found. Not one. They were either too young or too careless or too hasty or too—well, we mustn’t use the word stupid about holy men, but you know what I mean.
Delia, the landowning woman, knew she had to make a decision. Yet all her mental efforts had failed to bring her to a point. So she fashioned a different kind of compromise, an unusual one but potentially full of delight—she decided to hold a competition between the two men. Her decision sprang from the fact that this monastery had grown famous for its scriptorium, the most renowned in all the Christian church.
The word scriptorium comes from Latin, and it has to do with writing. A manuscript, for example, takes its name from two Latin words, manus, “the hand,” and scribere, “to write.”
In a scriptorium, monks wrote and painted those wonderful, colored holy books to illustrate the hymns, antiphons, and psalms transcribed in them. Scholars refer to them as illuminated manuscripts, but they were in fact books of sung or spoken prayer, or copies of the Bible and the Gospels, and they stand as the hallmark of early Christian Ireland’s most golden moment, when we were rightly known as the Island of Saints and Scholars.
All of them were illustrated by hand; this was long before printing was invented. The pains taken by the monks in those books show a society that knew its own soul and how to express its feelings and beliefs. Other countries had their illuminated manuscripts too, but the Irish ones have the greatest renown.
These weren’t books as we know them today. Paper hadn’t yet been invented; therefore, each book had to be made of parchment—the skin of a goat or a sheep, specially thinned and stretched so that you can write on it. Their books consisted of many sheets of this vellum, and this made it very heavy, so they fashioned covers for the book, of board and sometimes of metal.
These weren’t light articles to carry around. But the monks often had to haul them from one abbey to the next, because sometimes an abbey would have one book but not another, so they would borrow one and copy it. And the busiest work of all was the copying that abbeys did for their own use, because they needed enough prayer books and hymnbooks and study books to go around.
They worked mainly in Latin, the language of the fallen Roman Empire. Inside the abbeys here in Ireland, young men dedicated their lives to God and were schooled in Latin and Greek, for these had been and continued to be the languages of the church, the languages of sung and spoken worship.
Very fortunately for all of us, as well as copying out the holy books of Christianity, they also wrote down other things. They had learned from the Gospels that the life of Christ had been written by people who traveled with Jesus
or knew him at that time, eyewitness accounts.
Following this example, the monks not only transcribed sacred texts, they also became the first people in Ireland to write down accounts of what the land was like, which families owned it and ruled it, who came to visit, and how many cattle they all owned. They believed people should know these things, and that’s how the first histories of Ireland came to be written.
It wasn’t that some monk sat down and said to himself, I’m going to write down here everything I know about what happened in the past of Ireland. That kind of book, which you learn from in school, didn’t happen for many, many centuries. No, it was just that they wished to preserve the records of their own communities from which they came. And the monks also wrote down, alongside those details of who owned what, stories not unlike the stories I make my living telling up and down the length and breadth of this island.
Above all else, when they had written out a hymn or a psalm, they then ornamented it in the most delightful way, all tracings and drawings and tendrils, in lovely colors. You’ll hear more of that presently if you keep your hat on.
One fine morning, Delia the landowner rode her horse across the fields to the abbey. She forded the same river that the first monks had diverted to release a piece of high ground for building, and she trotted into the monastery yard. Monks rushed to help her from her horse and then led the animal off to give it some feed.
Delia sat on a low wall by the cloisters and asked to see Annan and Senan. Both men were found at prayer in the chapel, but they came immediately to see Delia, whom they respected and liked.
“I can’t decide which of you excellent gentlemen should be the next abbot. Can you help me?”
Blinking in the sunshine, Annan said, “He should,” pointing to Senan.
And Senan said, “He should,” pointing to Annan.
Delia laughed, then sighed.
“Just as I feared. You have no clearer solution than I do. But I didn’t expect you to have. So this is what I have decided. Both of you gentlemen have for some time been jointly in charge of the scriptorium. You run it very well, and everybody works hard, because they all know that whatever you ask them to do, you can do it better and faster yourselves.”
Annan looked at Senan, and Senan looked at Annan, and perhaps they blushed—but they never answered. Maybe they felt embarrassed because monks do not receive very much praise; it runs contrary to the austere spirit of the religious life.
“Therefore,” said Delia, “I’m going to decide this matter by setting a competition between you.”
“A competition?” said Annan.
“A competition?” said Senan.
“I want each of you to make me a page of a holy book. You may decide what text it should be. Then each of you must decorate your page with those wonderful illuminations for which this abbey is famous, the drawings, the colors, the scrolls. You each must do your work in secret, and when you have finished, arrange for the two pages to be manifested in the refectory. The abbey can vote for the page the monks like best. Whosoever emerges with the largest number of votes shall be the next abbot—and I myself shall have a vote.”
Annan looked at Senan, and Senan looked at Annan. They said, “That all seems fair.”
“Will six months be a sufficient time?” she asked. “I dislike that the abbey must be without an abbot.”
They nodded.
“In the meantime, both of you can run the place together.”
They said, “We never quarrel.”
And soon enough matters became plain to everyone.
They thanked Delia, who called for her horse and rode back home across the ford, pleased at a job well done. She could sit back now and wait for the results to come in.
Tall, stringy Annan and little buttery Senan sat down on a wall and looked at each other.
“Well, now!” said Annan.
“Well, indeed!” said Senan.
“I suppose we have to have some rules.”
“You’re right. We have to observe the secrecy.”
“Suppose we lend each other things—brushes and tools and the like?”
Annan said, “But I suppose we can’t lend each other paints or colors.”
Senan said, “And may I put something else to you?”
The two men held their heads close together and soon could be observed in the deepest and most animated, whispered discussion. So intensely did they converse that the other monks began to wonder why.
In due course they attributed it to the contest whose details had just been announced. The word spread through the abbey, and all were delighted. They thought it a fair and honorable way of managing things, and they also knew that the two pages when finished would provide glorious inspiration. That night, the evening meal buzzed with talk.
However, Annan and Senan had been discussing something else and something greater, which they never divulged until the contest had ended. In that powerful conversation, they agreed that the task they had been set should form the basis for a very great book, a large and brilliant work of art. Instead of being pressed into everyday use, this book would be employed to enhance the altar of the abbey on special days, a sacred ornament.
As a first step, they agreed on the text—nothing less than the four Gospels in Latin: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Next they said that every page of this book would receive decoration, and some pages would bear no text, would exist only as sheets of beautiful painting in deep and lovely colors.
Then they considered the size of the book, both its number of pages and its bulk. The length had to remain undetermined, because it would depend on the height and size of the letters in the writing. But they reckoned that they should be able to measure that factor very soon after the entire scriptorium began work, and indeed they would specify the size of the lettering to be used.
As for the physical dimensions, they wanted something very noticeable, and they began to cut their parchment to a measure they thought fitting and respectable for such an important work. Having looked at big, little, and smaller pages, they chose to make the book rectangular. Eventually, when written on, cut, and trimmed, each page measured just over a foot high and nearly ten inches wide, and the book grew to be the size of a biggish dictionary. When finished, it contained nearly seven hundred pages, only a few of which had no painting.
Each of the four Gospels, they decided, would begin in exactly the same way—with three special pages. The first page would contain the four portraits of the Evangelists; the next would show the face of the Evangelist whose Gospel then followed; and the third page would have the opening words in Latin of that Gospel. They would now, in their competition, create that first and second page.
Annan and Senan had different skills. In Annan’s case he liked to make the parchment take on the appearance of metalwork, so that his pages with their glinting colors always looked as if they had been made by a goldsmith or silversmith. If you met Senan, however, you would observe that he peered closely at you; Senan loved looking at people, and therefore he liked to draw portraits.
The rest of the skills for the total book would come from the body of the scriptorium. Neither Annan nor Senan had any interest in doing pages of lettering, and that is why some of the pages had no words, no script. For instance, the page Annan now decided to create consisted only of glorious decoration, whereas Senan would create a page of the Evangelists’ shining faces.
Both monks sought an effect that sacred art intended to achieve. It was said that if you couldn’t read the prayers in Latin, and yet you wanted to pray and let your spirit ascend in order to get as close to God as you could, you need only concentrate your gaze on one of those illustrated pages, and it would send you into a kind of holy trance. Getting to that point of artistry was one of the great achievements of the past.
They started work right away. That very night Annan tidied his cell, brought in his workbench from the scriptorium, and set it up under his window, where he could get plenty of light. Sen
an did the same, and as their cells adjoined each other, each knew his friend sat on the other side of the wall, working hard. For six months they labored while the ships sailed the seas and the clouds sailed the sky.
To the abbey slaughterhouse they sent for special parchment, the best they could get, taken from the skin of the finest sheep they bred in the abbey farm. Good vellum has to be strong enough not to break, yet thin enough to let the light through. You should be able to see its veins and notches when you hold it up to the light. To get it right so that the letters look perfect on it, you have to stretch it, as you’d stretch a sheet of canvas to make a painting on.
They stretched their sheets on little wooden frames, and they prepared their paints. I do not know whether it can be quite accurate to call them paints—they were a kind of cross between ink and paint.
They had various substances from which they drew color. For a certain kind of blue, they had the powder of lapis lazuli, which came from the mines of Afghanistan. When they wanted a brilliant red, they had the crushings of an insect that came from Mexico, where it feeds on cactus, and that color is called cochineal. For green, they pulped nettles and mixed in a little butter or goose grease to hold the mixture firm. Their yellow came from a streak of sulfur in rocks not too far away and a yellow clay with which they mixed it.
Then they had the many vegetable colors they took from the plants they grew in the monastery garden, all pulped and crushed and mixed in water or sour milk, until they had prepared all the colors of seven rainbows. To keep these firm for the purpose of painting them on the parchment and to make sure the colors did not run, they mixed in some white of egg, which stiffens the mixture, as everyone knows who has ever baked a cake.