Categories: interesting-sites, church-history
Date: 26 July 2006 07:53:43
Very exciting news: I love looking at prayer books, and those from many, many years ago in particular fascinate me. I love looking at the workmanship: such detail and such beauty: and can only imagine what it would be like to pray with one of them. I saw the Book of Kells while living in Dublin: and thanks to the British Museums' online tour you can see the equally exquisite Lindisfarne Gospels. I also remember being surprised to find a fine collection of mediæval manuscripts, such as this one, while visiting the city of Ballarat in Victoria several years ago: a very pleasant surprise to come across them in a regional centre.
The article's mentioning of bogs also caused me to remember my trip to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, as this is where I first fully comprehended the preserving powers of bogs after seeing not only various personal items but a boat as well that had been retrieved from them.
And now to think an ancient prayer book, possibly from 800 AD, has been discovered within one also. It does indeed testify to the richness of Christian life in Ireland: something I truly felt while I was there -- seeing monasteries, some now abandoned and in ruins, yet still with a deep sense of history and of sacred space, and the wondrous High Crosses around the countryside left a lasting impression on me.