Jude Seal's Notebook

  GOSPEL BOOKS: The Book of Kells Latin: Codex Cenannensis Irish: Leabhar Cheanannais ; MS ID: Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I The Book of Kells is probably one of the most recognisable early medieval manuscripts from the British Isles (For why I use the term British Isles generally see here ).   It was created at the Columban monastery somewhere in either Ireland, Scotland, or England.   The manuscript consists of 340 folios bound into four volumes with a combined page count of 680.   The text is written using iron gall ink, with the vibrant colours were made up of a variety of mixtures, with some of the ingredients for the pigment having been imported.   Created at the very beginning of the ninth century, it came to the monastery at Kells, and is now held by Trinity College Dublin, where any two of the four volumes are on display at any one time. The text contains the four Canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, along with additi...

MS Royal 13 B VIII , Gerald of Wales' Topographia Hiberniae, England, c.1196-c.1223 The website TV Tropes is one which, like Wikipedia, is easy to venture into, and then find yourself going down a metaphorical rabbit hole.   One of its features is that each trope often has a name drawn from one of   the works which has used it . One trope is Aerith and Bob – the usage of very common-sounding names amongst more fantastical ones – which creates a sense of dissonance.   Even when justified by the story line (such as a character from the 20 th century being catapulted into a pseudo-medieval fantasy world) if creates a certain degree of dissonance.   It is worth noting that the definition excludes those cases where this is deliberate or a translation convention in the manner of Tolkien's use of different historical languages for different culture.   When reading down a list of medieval saints the appearance of Saint Kevin might produce the same eff...