Vox Leonis

Day 1: The Four Symbols Page (f. 129v)

Three of the four gospels in the Book of Kells are introduced by glorious 'Four Symbols' pages: full-page illuminations of the Four Living Creatures - Human Being, Lion, Calf, and Eagle - who first appear in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, in a (frankly, pyschedelic) vision of the Angelic Presences who attend on the Very Presence of God; and were then re-utilised by John of Patmos in his New Testament Revelation, which describes those same Angelic Presence falling in worship before the Lion-that-is-a-Lamb - an indication of the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

These four Creatures were quickly associated with the four gospels, and the four evangelists, becoming symbols which both represented them and provided keys to their deeper meaning. Perhaps the classic expression of this symbolic reading of the Four Creatures - after it was firmly established; it took a while for consensus, on which Creature should be paired with which Gospel, to settle down - can be found in Pope Gregory the Great's late-sixth-century Homilies on Ezekiel.

And they are everywhere in the Book of Kells, engaged in constant interplay and transformation, exploring, revealing, and proclaiming the unity and diversity of the four gospels which the Book contains.

The Lion, for example, represents the Resurrection, and Christ's Kingship: but it is not as if these themes and focuses are confined solely to the Gospel of Mark. Christ's sacrifice, represented by the Calf, receives just as much prominence in Matthew, Mark, and John, as it does in Luke. And Christ's humanity - the Human Being - and divinity - the Eagle - find full expression in all four gospels.

Which is why, in Kells, the Four Creatures are always in interplay. As here, where Mark, on the upper right, has Luke and John at his feet. Similarly, Luke's Calf is paired with the Lion and Eagle, and John's Eagle with the Lion and Calf. And, as always in Kells, to remind us that the Good News of Christ is always surprising, too full of depth and wonder to fit neatly into any box: the Human Being of Matthew breaks the pattern, lest we fall too easy into stale assumptions. The double-angel on the upper left may point towards the beginning of Mark's gospel, which identifies John the Baptist as the 'angelus Dei'; or it may be intended to recall the Evangelist John, Eoin Bruinne, who rested on the breast of Christ; it may even be a nod towards the fact that Matthew's gospel has just concluded, literally on the other side of this page.

I must admit that the Four Symbols page before Mark has probably always been my favourite from the Book of Kells.
I love that we get the wheels from the vision of Ezekiel.
And the great golden Cross that dominates, well, everything.

All the Four Symbols Pages in Kells are intended, on one level, to provide a glimpse into the Great Heavenly Liturgy, the perpetual adoration of the Godhead by the Four Living Creatures, as originally described by Ezekiel and John. This is brought home by the fact that each of the Creatures, on this page, holds two flabella: liturgical fans (the things within each rectangle which look like blue and yellow petaled discs, on sticks, with danglings - crossed, of course, recalling the shape of a X, since Kells will never miss an opportunity to remind us of the point and the purpose of all existence, the One whom the Creatures adore: XPISTOS - the Christ).

In this page, as in the Sanctus during the Liturgy, we are caught up into the clash of God-become-man, where the Great Trisagion which resounds through the Heavens becomes the cry of acknowledgement of a man riding to his death on a donkey:
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

Or, in John's words, from his vision on the island: "Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered" (Revelation 5:6).

Dublin, Trinity College, MS 58, f. 129v:
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/folios/zc77sq320?locale=en

Day -1: The Argumentum of Mark (ff. 15v-16v)

Immediately following the 'Breues Causae' comes the 'Argumentum', a short prologue providing biographical information about the evangelist and a summary of the major themes and teachings of his gospel.

One of the so-called 'Monarchian Prologues', it is a dense, complicated, and difficult text: even the way language is used is obscure, and can be confusing.

The 'Monarchian Prologues' are found in a wide range of Italian, Northumbrian, and Irish, as well as Insular-related, manuscripts: their name derives from an earlier recognition that they may have been produced by an author who subscribed to the Monarchian heresy; although contemporary scholars are more inclined to attribute authorship to a Priscillianist, perhaps even Priscillian of Ávila himself.

Their inclusion in the Book of Kells is by no means unusual - as mentioned, they can be found in a wide variety of Gospel Books of a similar, and, indeed, much earlier, date.

But still, this complex text, bordering on the mystical, perhaps more-than-bordering on the heretical, leaves me in somewhat of a conundrum as to how to treat of it in a Facebook post!
I will say that its emphasis on Mark's Old Testament Priesthood, and on his combination of Malachi and Isaiah to identify John the Baptist as 'angel / messenger of God', the 'voice calling in the wilderness', may provide helpful insights into how the very last page of Mark is handled in the Book of Kells, and how the artist(s) approach(es) the transition from Mark's conclusion to the beginning of Luke.

But I am not particularly concerned, at least today, about what the evangelist may, or may not, have done to his thumb.

So, instead, I will share two images: the first from the very conclusion of the 'Argumentum'; the next from the very beginning.

F. 16v (detail): the concluding words of the 'Argumentum', a reworking of 1 Corinthians 3:7-8, rather beautifully laid out across the page.
"quoniam qui plantat Et qui inrigat unum
sunt. qui autem incrementum
pręstat deus est"
Since the one who plants and the one who waters are one.
But the one who brings forth growth
is God.

F. 15v (detail): two lions, facing each other and pressing their front paws together, decorate the opening word of the text: 'Marcus', the evangelist's name. The tongue of the lower lion rolls out of its mouth into an abundance of interlace: a voice calling out in the wilderness.

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Translation of the Monarchian Prologue to Mark: by John Chapman, _Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), pp. 235-36.

"Mark, the evangelist of God, and the son by baptism of Peter and his disciple in the divine word, exercising the priesthood in Israel, being a Levite after the flesh, after he had been converted to the faith of Christ, wrote his Gospel in Italy, showing in it what he owed to his birth and what to Christ. For he commenced the beginning of his introduction with the voice of the prophet's cry, thus showing the order of his Levitical election, so that, by pronouncing the predestinated John, son of Zacharias, to have been sent out as the voice of an angel, he showed as the beginning of the Gospel preaching not simply the Word made flesh, but also the Body of the Lord having the Word of the Divine Voice for all the functions of a soul; so that any who reads this might know how to recognize to whom he owed the beginning of flesh in the Lord, and the Tabernacle of God coming among men, being himself flesh, and might find in himself through the Word of the Voice what he had lost in the consonants. Thereafter, entering upon the work of the perfect Gospel, and beginning to preach God from the Baptism of the Lord, he did not labour to mention the birth of the flesh which he had already conquered in what preceded, but with his whole strength (totus) he produced the expulsion into the desert, the fast for a mystic number of days, the temptation by the devil, the fellowship with the wild beasts, and the ministry of the angels, that, by teaching us to understand, and describing each point briefly, he might at once establish the truth of the facts, and affirm the fullness of the work that was to be perfected. Further, he is said to have cut off his thumb after he had received the faith, in order that he might be accounted unfit for the priesthood. But the predestinated election which corresponded to his faith so prevailed, that even by this he did not lose in the work of the Word what he had formerly received by his birth; for he was bishop of Alexandria, whose (i.e. a bishop's) work it is to know in detail and dispose the sayings of the Gospel in his heart, and recognize the discipline of the law in himself, and understand the Divine Nature of the Lord in the flesh ; which things we ourselves also desire to be searched for, and after being searched for to be recognized, having as a reward of this exhortation, that 'he that planteth and he that watereth are one, but it is God that giveth the increase.'"

A transcription of the original Latin text (as found in the Codex Amiatinus) is available through Wikisource here:
https://la.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Novum_Testamentum_(Codex_Amiatinus)/Praefatio_in_Evangelium_secundum_Marcum

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Dublin, Trinity College, MS 58, ff. 15v-16v:
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/qv33rw808
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/jm214p33h
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/1z40ks98f

Day -2: The Breues Causae of Mark (ff. 13r-15v)

The 'Breues Causae' - perhaps 'Table of Contents' might be the most sensible translation - form part of the prefatory material in the Book of Kells, providing a brief summary of the contents of each of the four gospels.

In many ways, they are not dissimilar from the sub-headings we often find in contemporary Bible translations, dividing up the text into manageable units and identifying the contents of each.
A translation of the Latin text found on f. 13r (relating to the Gospel of Mark) might provide a taste of what these 'Breues Causae' look like (perhaps consider comparing these to the sub-headings in your own Bible to see what has and hasn't changed in the ways we think about dividing up the gospel text):

"And John was baptising Jesus, and the Spirit of God came over him, and Jesus was tempted in the desert.

And after John was handed over, Jesus preached and called the disciples. And cured the human being from the unclean spirit.

He freed Peter's mother-in-law from attacks of fevers. And the crowds sought him out so that they might be saved.

The l***r asked Jesus and he cleansed him."

The text on these pages has numerous examples of 'cenn fo eitte' ('head under wing', also called 'turn in the path', an Irish scribal practice where, once the scribe reaches the end of the line, (s)he continues the text in any blank space remaining in the line _above_, filling that space before proceeding to the line _below_).

It also, as so often in the Book of Kells, makes very effective use of page breaks, carefully managing the lay-out of the text to call attention to, or to frame, specific phrases in significant ways.

For example, the heading "And Jesus said 'Who do people say I am?' And he said 'The one who wishes to follow me, let them bear their cross'" runs across the page-break of f. 14r and f. 14v.

The result is a division, a break, a pause, as the reader turns the page - to be confronted with the words: sequi tollat crucem suam; "to follow let them bear their cross."

This specific phrase is also, through this careful use of layout and pagination (and, indeed, 'cenn fo eitte'), brought into direct conjunction with the very next heading - "And on the mountain Moses and Elijah were seen with Jesus" - thereby highlighting the evangelist's own concern with the intimate link berween the Transfiguration and Christ's Death and Resurrection: "As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead" (Mark 9:9).

'Sequi, tollat crucem suam' indeed.

But perhaps what struck me most in the 'Breues Causae' of Mark was ... the silences: the lack of prominence, or elaboration, or illumination, of subjects a reader today might consider to be 'very important matters indeed'.

On f. 15r, for example, we find the heading: "Et dixit Iesus 'Hoc est corpus meum. Et sangues [sic] qui pro multis effudetur [sic]'"; "And Jesus said 'This is my Body. And Blood which is poured out for many.'"
A heading which receives not the slightest bit of prominence or attention from scribe or artist.

And, just a few lines down the page, we come to the following headings:

"When Jesus was being led to the assembly of Caiaphas, a certain clothed man was following. And Jesus was led to the Passion.
After the Resurrection he appeared to the apostles ..."

Not one word about the trial, or crucifixion.
Not one word about the burial.
Not even one word about the Rising.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday - the most important events, these monks would no doubt have held, in the entire history of creation - are passed over in the 'Breues Causae'. In silence.

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Dublin, Trinity College, MS 58, ff. 13r-15v.
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/jm214p327
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/5m60qs062
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/k930bx234
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/j9602072c
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/t435gd175
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/parent/hm50tr726/folios/qv33rw808

Image from f. 13r (detail).