Why a few books became famous
Thousands of medieval manuscripts survive, but a handful are known far beyond specialist circles. They tend to be famous for some mix of beauty, age, rarity and mystery. Some are large and bold. Others are tiny and intimate. This article looks at a few well-known examples, with a note on how much is certain and how much is debated. It is a sampler, not a ranking.
The Book of Kells
The Book of Kells is a gospel book made in the Insular tradition, usually dated to around 800. It is associated with the Columban monastic network, linked to Iona and Kells, though scholars discuss exactly where it was made and where it was finished. It is now kept at Trinity College Dublin.
It is admired for its pages of intricate ornament. Pages devoted to the opening words of Gospel texts are filled with spirals, interlace, small human and animal figures, and fantastical lettering that sometimes makes the words hard to read at first glance. There are also full-page images, including portraits and pages of pattern. The detail is so fine that it rewards slow looking.
The Gospel text itself is not a plain copy, and it contains some irregularities, which scholars have studied. Its artists likely belonged to a monastic community, and its decoration shows the Celtic kingdoms’ skill in metalwork-like pattern translated into paint.
The Lindisfarne Gospels
The Lindisfarne Gospels, now in the British Library, were made in northern England around the early eighth century, traditionally linked to the monastery on Lindisfarne. Like the Book of Kells, it combines interlace and animal ornament with portraits of the Evangelists. Its style shows several influences, from local Northumbrian art to Mediterranean models.
A later note added to the book, in Old English, identifies the people who are said to have made and bound it. Scholars treat the account with care, since it was added long after the book was created.
The Carolingian and Ottonian showpieces
Court workshops in the age of Charlemagne produced gospel books with gold lettering, purple-dyed pages in some cases, and classically inspired portraits. A century or two later, books made in German workshops, such as those associated with Reichenau, show monumental figures in luminous scenes. These manuscripts remind us that royal and imperial patrons used books as statements of power as well as faith.
The Luttrell Psalter
Made in England, probably in the 1330s for a landowner named Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, this psalter is famous for its margins. Alongside religious images, it has scenes of peasants plowing and sowing, and a rich supply of monsters and hybrid creatures. It is often used as a source of images for rural life in the period, though historians caution that the pictures are stylized and made for a wealthy patron, not neutral records.
Books of hours
Books of hours were made in huge numbers, but a few individual examples stand out.
The Très Riches Heures was made for a French prince, the Duke of Berry, in the early fifteenth century. It is celebrated for its calendar pages, where each month is shown with seasonal labors and a castle or landscape beyond. The work was begun by the Limbourg brothers, who died before it was finished, and it was completed later by other artists. It is now held in a museum in France.
Other widely admired examples include books made for royal and noble owners in France and Flanders. Alongside these courtly volumes, many smaller books of hours survive, owned by merchants and townspeople. These less showy books are less famous, but they are a better guide to what ordinary wealthy people actually owned.
Bibles and psalters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
Large illustrated Bibles and psalters from the Romanesque and Gothic periods are also well known. Some are enormous, with full-page paintings and gold backgrounds. Others, such as small pocket Bibles, show a different kind of achievement: a complete text written in tiny script on thin parchment. Many were made in the workshops of cities, including medieval Paris.
Secular and scientific favorites
Not all famous manuscripts are religious. Bestiaries, which describe animals both real and imaginary with moral lessons, are popular. So are illustrated romances, chronicles and herbals. Some copies of the Canterbury Tales are admired for their illustrations, and mappa mundi, world maps drawn on parchment, are a category of their own.
What makes them admired
A few themes recur in what people value about these books.
- Craft: the sheer skill of the pen and brush, often at tiny scale.
- Materials: gold, rare pigments and fine parchment signal investment and care.
- Imagination: the strange creatures, the borders that run wild, the calendars that show life through the year.
- Survival: that fragile objects have lasted centuries is itself remarkable.
- Human traces: scribal notes, owner’s marks and later additions remind us that someone made, read and treasured these books.
A caution about famous examples
Famous books are not typical. They are the finest, the best kept and often the best documented. A fair picture of the medieval book also needs the humble copies, the textbooks and the worn working books that rarely reach museum cases. The marvels are real, but they show the top of a much larger pile.