318 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



study. And it is absolutely incredible that the work— the mere penman- 

 ship, apart from the ornament — should have been completed in twelve days. 

 Moreover, it is unlikely, for palaeographical reasons — though here, perhaps, 

 we stand on less sure ground' — that it was the work of Columba of lona, 

 who seems to be the person named in the colophon as the scrihe.' 



Are we, then, to set down the scribe's note as a tissue of falsehoods ? If 

 so, it cannot have deceived many. The scribe, and the artists who adorned 

 the book, must have been engaged upon it for a long period. And every 

 monk in the scriptorium where it was produced must have known that it 

 was in progress. If the colophon is a lying statement, intended to persuade 

 men that St. Columba wrote this manuscript, it was a lie, not of the scribe 

 himself, but of the community to which he belonged. And even if we accept 

 this, we have not explained how the book came to be called a libelhis, nor how 

 the community dared to clothe the forged colophon in the form of an 

 invocation of St. Patrick. 



Dr. Abbott's hypothesis is much more probable, and may be accepted 

 without hesitation.' He held that St. Columba wrote, in a small and rapid 

 hand, in twelve days,* a copy of the Gospels, and appended to it a note 

 in which this fact was stated. Of that little book an elaborate copy was 

 subsequently made, which is the manuscript now known as the Book of 

 Durrow. The colophon reproduced above was simply transcribed from the 

 exemplar. Its statements are therefore applicable, not to the volume in 

 which it is found, but to the libellus of St. Columba. 



' But see Appendix II, p. 406. 



- 1 once doubted thi.s. See my " Chapters on the Book of Mulling," p. 16. But I 

 now regard the reasons which I gave for my scepticism as insufficient. 



^ " Hermathena," vol. viii, p. 199 ff. I have presented the argument in my own way, 

 and have made some additions to it for which I have no desire to claim the authority of 

 my lamented friend. 



^ In a private communicationProfessor W. M. Lindsay calls my attention to the colophon 

 of the Munich ms. 14437: '"Augustinus in epist. i S. lohannis " (Pal. Soc. i, pi. 123). 

 It states that the manuscript was written by two scribes in seven days. Presumably, 

 therefore, it might have been written by one in fourteen days. The performance was 

 obviously a Urur deforce. It has 109 leaves, and if we may judge from the published page 

 its text is less in extent than that of the four Gospels, apart from argnmenta and other 

 additional matter, by aboiit one-sixth. Plainly, moreover, its script is comparatively 

 rapid. It supplies, therefore, convincing evidence that the Durrow Gospels, with their 

 slowly formed letters, could not possibly have been written in twelve days. For further 

 information as to the rate at which scribes worked, see an article by Professor Lindsay in 

 "Hermathena," xviii, 44 f., and Plummer, ii, 24 (Vita S. Cronani, 9), 133 (Vita S. 

 Lasriani, 11). I have satisfied myself by actual trial that the text of the Gospels could 

 be written in a modem hand, with sufficient care to ensure that every letter could be 

 easily read by a person unacquainted with the Latin language, in 112 hours, that is, in 

 twelve days of rather more than nine working hours. 



