On The Book of Kells

56 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE On The Book ofKells Lapis Lazuli Precious stones freighted all the way from Afghanistan to lona, where they were ground, stone on stone, yielding only a tiny ratio, one to ten, of the deepest blue, a breath of heaven to stroke the birds wing, curl the lion's tail, color robe and sandal, limn the opening letters of the Book of John on vellum for which two hundred calves were slaughtered, skinned, scraped, and buffed to the glory of the Lord and for the Great Book, that unfinished treasure held aloft at the sacrifice, causing jaws to drop, eyes to widen, knees to bend, before its stunning pigments, crowded pages, mysterious forbidding script. CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Ink When the oak wasps lay their eggs on the oak branch, the tree nurtures them, more carefully than in the fairy tale where bountiful trees speak and hover to protect the innocent. The real oak raises a gall for the wasp eggs until they're ready to bore a hole, escape and flyaway. But who was it who first decided to crush the oak gall? Who saw that the gallic powder mixed with iron and bound with gum Arabic could be dipped and applied to parchment in angles and curls lined up close, tighter than a wasp's nest, to make meaning? 57 58 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE The Lion so the story goes, stood wondering momentarily at the stillborn cubs, as soft and inert as unleavened bread, waited three days, and breathed on them spiro inspire spiro then: a quickening. God is the lion, the dead Son the cub, and we the humble scribes trying to keep within the lines, our fanciful mice chewing on the Host, just below the feet of the risen Lord. CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Peacock Because its flesh was said not to putrify, St. Augustine ordered a cock cooked, removed the breast, saved it for thirty days and took a look. Sure enough, fragrancefree , not food for worms. Thus it is that the bird, Christlike in body and beauty, his slender neck shortened, his feathers curtailed, bends inside the columns and corners ofa crowded page, crouches inside the arch over the door to the next room, grotesque, confined. 59 60 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Vermillion The alchemists desiring gold, as we all do, cooked mercury and sulfur in a fumey pot that yielded, not the precious metal, but smoke like fire, the flamiest red their passion could imagine. The Devil was in this, they feared. Never mind, this hot breath yielded a hue redder than Brazilwood at its reddest, brighter than dragon's blood and hotter. See how thoroughly it bleeds on the gilded page! CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE One Squatting Man Pulling the Beard of another squatting man in a silly old quarrel over beard-beauty or gold or how to read a book. But think what they could be doing: gathering armies, slinging daggers, or, tied up in knots, writhing on the floor, one gripping the other in a hammerlock , spitting and biting, eyes bulging, breath laboring in fits and snorts. So what if the pulling stings and hairs are split, isn't this better than the alternative, doesn't the foolish face-off make us smile? 61 62 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Gold On fine parchment and applied properly, it does not flake. Fish glue, made by grinding fish eyes and jaws, helps hold the gold, as does the Holy Spirit breathed on the page by the gilder himself, exhaling from deep within onto the gesso, on a properly humid day. What served as barometer, we ask, how did the gilder know when to gild when to blow, or, for that matter, how to hold the gold, to keep it from sliding away? SARAH GORDON ...