Beyond the Book of Kells

This lecture is part of a series entitled “Beyond the Book of Kells: The stories of eight other medieval manuscripts from the library of Trinity College Dublin.”

In this talk Dr Niamh Patwell from UCD will discuss TCD MS 70: A Wycliffite Psalter. The rejection of Latin as the language of religion in favour of vernaculars in the 1960s is well known; attempts to convey the word of God in English in the fourteenth century will be less familiar. TCD 70, with its basic instructional works introducing the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith and text of the Psalms in English, represents just such an early attempt to democratise access to scripture, at a time when there was the danger such activity would be condemned as heretical.

Further Information

To over 600,000 visitors a year, Trinity is synonymous with the Book of Kells. But that ninth-century manuscript is only part of the story. Ranging in date from the fifth century to the sixteenth, and with origins from across Western Europe, Trinity’s six hundred medieval manuscripts contain languages from Latin and Greek to Old Irish, Old English, Welsh, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Provencal, and Vaudois. The texts embody in microcosm the entire gamut of medieval thought. This series of lectures from manuscript experts – Irish and international – will offer the public an opportunity to encounter eight other extraordinary books from Trinity’s collections, from the ninth-century Book of Armagh to a key manuscript of one of the great medieval English poets, William Langland.

The “Beyond the Book of Kells” lecture series is lead by Dr Mark Faulkner of Trinity College's School of English. It is held as part of the Manuscript, Print, and Book Cultures research theme, in association with the Trinity Long Room Hub, the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, and the Library of Trinity College Dublin.

The manuscripts have been digitised to coincide with this lecture series.