‘It belongs with the books of Kells and Durrow.' Illuminated manuscripts back in Ireland for the first time in more than 1,000 years

Irish Times

24-05-2025

Nestled among Alpine foothills and south of the glittering Lake Constance lies the historic city of St Gallen, in
Switzerland
. Natural beauty aside, the city is home to the Abbey of St Gall, a Unesco world heritage site and unexpected repository of Irish history and culture.
Now famed for its impressive library, the abbey was founded in the eighth century on the site of a hermitage established in 612 by one of Ireland's lesser-known saints, an Irish monk called Gall or Gallus. Although the monastery was dissolved in 1805, its library was spared and remains brimming with ancient manuscripts today.
Honouring the two countries' shared history, the Swiss library has furnished the
National Museum of Ireland (NMI)
with 17 of its illustrious manuscripts for an exhibition celebrating the story of Gall's journey to continental Europe. This is the library's largest loan ever; for such an institution to bestow more than a couple of manuscripts at a time is practically unheard of.
Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe is free to visit in the museum's Kildare Street location from May 30th until October 24th.
READ MORE
'If you stood out on O'Connell Street now and asked who was Gallus, I doubt you'd get an answer now,' says Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, a recently retired professor at the University of Galway who was instrumental in the exhibition's conception.
[
From the archive: Wandering Irish 'outsider' stumbled upon site for Swiss city of St Gallen
Opens in new window
]
'But if you asked anybody in Switzerland or Italy or France or Germany, they'd keep you there for hours. They're very happy about their associations with the Irish.'
Ó Cróinín recalls the moment he suggested to library director Dr Cornel Dora that the Abbey of St Gall might temporarily spare some of its collection. The loan that followed allows select manuscripts to return to Irish soil for the first time in a millennium.
The pair attended a conference together in the British Library in December 2018, shortly after collaborating on an exhibition at St Gallen.
The Swiss city of Saint Gallen, with the Abbey of St Gall visible in the centre of the picture. Photograph: iStock
'We were having a cup of coffee during one of the breaks and I said to Cornel, 'Look, the Brits do this thing well. Why don't we do this kind of thing? Would you be interested in letting us have some of your manuscripts?''
Almost six and a half years later, that idea is coming to life. Accompanying the 17 manuscripts, which range from poems and letters to religious texts, are more than 100 objects gathered from NMI's collection.
St Gallen was always conscious of the fact it had an Irish connection. Gall was a very popular saint in the region
—
Dr Cornel Dora
The Faddan More psalter, found on a Tipperary bog in 2006, is one highlight. Many recent discoveries are on display for the first time, such as the Lough Kinale Book Shrine and a Viking sword, straight from conservation.
'It is a bit like a dream of mine to do something like this because we have this Irish heritage that is important to us in St Gallen,' says Dora, on a phone call from his home in Switzerland.
Gall was one of 12 companions to another Irish saint and missionary, Columbanus, responsible for several monastic foundations including those at Luxeuil in eastern France, and Bobbio, in northern Italy.
Image from an Irish Evangeliary from the library of the Abbey of St Gall, part of the exhibition Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe
'The Irish brought a new fervour into the Christian life here on the Continent,' says Dora of the monks' European mission.
Following a dispute between Gall and Columbanus, they parted ways. 'Gall stayed at Lake Constance and took to the wilderness, the forest. He settled and made a cabin, and about three years later he assembled other monks around him and founded an Irish type of monastery there.' It was on the site of this hermitage, where Gall is buried, that the Abbey of St Gall was founded.
'St Gallen was always conscious of the fact it had an Irish connection. Gall was a very popular saint in the region. Pilgrims came and visited his grave,' says Dora. It is a tradition that continues today.
'We have testimonials that there were Irish men here repeatedly. They really wanted to visit their compatriot Gall. It seems the Irish knew there was an Irish saint in St Gallen. We know about four or five Irish monks who stayed here. One was an recluse, who lived in a confinement that had no door.'
The manuscripts on loan to NMI comprise a mixture of books thought to be written in Irish monastic settlements, later travelling to Europe with Gall and Columbanus, and texts penned by Irish scribes in St Gallen.
Maeve Sikora, keeper of Irish antiquities at the museum, is joined by assistant keeper and exhibition curator Matthew Seaver, as the pair give me a preview of the exhibition space and a sneak peek at its 'aesthetic highlight' – a mid-eighth century Gospel from St Gallen, thought to originate from the Irish midlands.
'It's really in a class of its own. It belongs with [the books of] Kells and Durrow,' says Seaver, as we inspect the text's vibrantly coloured vellum. On one page a barefoot St Matthew – in hues of orange, red and blue – applies a scribal knife or scraper to a page and dips his pen in an inkwell. He is assisted by a dutiful angel.
For Sikora, the exhibition is about portraying 'the connectedness' between Ireland and continental Europe. 'People coming and people going. Ideas coming and going. Artefacts coming and going.'
The modern European idea shines up for the first time in these letters [from St Columbanus to the pope]
—
Dr Cornel Dora
Manuscripts are complemented by related artefacts, 'so you can see an object that looks just like an illustration in one of the manuscripts,' says Seaver.
'Sometimes a shard of pottery is hard to understand on its own,' says Sikora of the curatorial decision to combine ceramics and works of metal and stone with the manuscripts.
Pointing to where some of the objects are soon to be displayed, Seaver describes how their journeys were intertwined with those of Irish missionaries like Columbanus and Gall.
'The ships that are carrying Columbanus and Gall are carrying these pots. They're coming from the eastern Mediterranean, then they're coming from the south of France and toing and froing between Ireland and there in the sixth and seventh centuries. The physical journey is the same as the manuscripts and the people went on, so that's what we're trying to get across.'
A Latin grammar book, whose margins are brimming with commentary written in Irish by frustrated monks 'remarking on the writing conditions, how bad the ink is, giving out about making mistakes and begging forgiveness' is on display.
[
'You are only the sixth person to see this since the Vikings': Behind the scenes at the National Museum of Ireland
Opens in new window
]
'They write in ogham at one point, saying they are ale-killed, which is essentially hungover,' says Seaver, laughing. The book in question is a copy of the Institutiones Grammaticae of Priscian, well known to Irish scholars in the early Middle Ages.
Copies of letters from St Columbanus to the pope make for a timely inclusion in the exhibition. According to Dora, 'the modern European idea shines up for the first time in these letters'.
Fragments of the earliest surviving copy of Isidore's etymologiae, written by an Irish scribe in the seventh century and later brought to St Gallen, also make an appearance. The etymological encyclopedia was originally compiled by the influential bishop Isidore of Seville.
Another key aspect of the exhibition is a collaborative student manuscript project, which will be on display alongside a short film documenting it.
The abbey school in Switzerland was paired up with Irish schools in Ballymote, Co Sligo, Kells in Meath, and Gallen Community School in Offaly. Led by historian and calligrapher Timothy O'Neill, the classes met online where they learned about early medieval culture and how to write in insular script.
The students then had the opportunity to express their own ideas on vellum, emulating the scribes of medieval Ireland and St Gallen.
NMI's exhibition also traces the journey of one of the abbey's schoolmasters and most famous pilgrims – Moengal, later named Marcellus.
Moengal travelled Europe with his uncle Marcus, a bishop. 'They went to Rome and on their return from Rome they went back to St Gallen and decided to stay,' says Seaver. Moengal 'taught a curriculum covering the seven liberal arts to some of the great master craftspeople from St Gallen', leaving a lasting legacy.
Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe is at the National Museum, Kildare Street, Dublin, from May 30th until October 24th.