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MISS ELEANOR E. HULL, ON THE 



ordinary work of a large establishment all time that could be 

 spared froni' the offices of the Church was given to instruction, 

 reading and writing, and to the making of book-satchels, the 

 covers of books, and ecclesiastical bells and crosses. The 

 industry of some of the great teachers in copying books, chiefly 

 copies of the Psalms and the Gospels, was extraordinary. St. 

 Columba is said to have written 300 books with his own 

 hand, and his life is sown with instances of his industry in this 

 particular. St. Finnian of Clonard is stated to have given a 

 copy of the Gospels to every church he founded. 



In the earliest period few, if any, of these copies were 

 illuminated; they were written solely with a view to supplying 

 the needs of the churches and religious foundations all over the 

 country, but two at least of the most beautiful and valuable 

 specimens of Irish manuscript illumination, the Book of Durrow, 

 and the yet more famous Book of Kells, now in T.C.D. Library, 

 come to us from the seventh and eighth centuries, and prove 

 beyond a doubt that the art of illumination had at that early 

 period reached its fullest development. They are, in both cases, 

 copies of the Gospels, belonging respectively to the Columban 

 monasteries of D arrow (Queen's co.) and Kells (co. Meath). 



In a country entirely without towns or stone buildings of 

 any kind except what are known as the primitive " bee-hive " 

 huts or cells inhabited alike by primitive pagan and early 

 anchorite on the desolate coasts and islands of the west of 

 Ireland, the monastic settlement, which was surrounded by a 

 wall or " cashel," came to be looked upon as a " city," the name 

 by which it is usually known. When the Northmen came to 

 Ireland the only points of attack that offered themselves, besides 

 a few scattered villages of huts, were the monastic settlements, 

 and it is no doubt to this fact that we owe the repeated 

 destructions of the monasteries so often spoken of during the 

 Norse invasions. There was, in fact, nothing else for tliem to 

 destroy. A sharp attack, with a few lighted brands flung upon 

 the thatched roof of the oratory, would soon spread to the cells, 

 and the group of tiny Imts would quickly be destroyed. The 

 Northmen, securing what booty they couki in the way of Church 

 vessels, relitjuaries and book-covers, would pass on to another 

 place, le.'iving tlie flaming or charred fragments of the 

 monastery behind them. On their return half a year or a year 

 hence they would find the place built up agahi, the oratories 

 reconstructed and the life going on as before. It is <.nly in 

 tliis way tliat we can account for the fact that the Annals 

 relate tlie destruction of a monastic establishment sometimes 



