It does not seem fanciful to suggest that similar manu-
scripts were probably produced at monasteries of the
stature of Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, or Terryglass,
County Tipperary, where a “pocket copy” of St. John’s
Gospel and the Stowe Missal (bound together as Dublin,
Royal Irish Academy, D.II.3) may have originated.
Both manuscripts have high-grade decoration in the
small format characteristic of the “pocket gospel”
group of manuscripts. Examples from the group include
the late eighth-century Book of Mulling (Dublin, Trinity
College, 60), from St. Mullins, County Carlow, which
has finely executed portraits of three evangelists, as
well as a sadly damaged diagram, on its final page, of
twelve crosses with inscriptions to accompany a
sequence of prayers. The contemporary Book of
Dimma (Dublin, Trinity College, 59), from Roscrea,
County Tipperary, contains less naturalistic images.
The tradition and skills of insular decoration con-
tinued into the tenth century, seen in, for example, a
fire-damaged Psalter from the Cotton library (London,
British Library, Cotton Vitellius F.XI); the eleventh
century, of which the Liber Hymnorum(Dublin, Trinity
College, 1441) is a handsome example; and the twelfth
century, where a Psalter signed by the scribe Cormac
contains decoration that is assured and coherent (Lon-
don, British Library, Add. 36929).
Styles imported from England after the Norman
invasion of 1169 are reflected in a Psalter from Christ
Church Cathedral, Dublin, produced in 1397 (Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Rawl. C. 185), and an illustrated
early-fifteenth-century missal (London, Lambeth
Palace,213). Both manuscripts probably originated in
England. In the late fourteenth century, the charter roll
of the city of Waterford was decorated in a lively
manner, perhaps locally, while in the early fifteenth
century a decorated copy of Ranulf Higden’s chronicle
(Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawl. B.179) is probably
a Dublin production.
BERNARD MEEHAN
References and Further Reading
Fox, Peter, ed. The Book of Kells, MS 58, Trinity College Library
Dublin: Commentary, pp. 320–321. Faksimile Verlag
Luzern, 1990.
Henry, F. Irish Art in the Early Christian Period (to 800 A.D.)
London, 1965.
———.Irish Art during the Viking Invasions 800–1020 A.D.
London, 1967.
———.Irish Art in the Romanesque Period 1020–1170 A.D.
London, 1970.
Alexander, J. J. G. Century, A Survey of Manuscripts Illumi-
nated in the British Isles.Vol. 1, Insular Manuscripts, 6 th
to the 9 th. London, 1978.
Meehan, Bernard. “Aspects of Manuscript Production in the
Middle Ages.” In The Illustrated Archaeology of Ireland,
edited by M. Ryan, pp. 139–145. Dublin, 1991.
Adomnán of Iona. Life of St. Columba. Edited by Richard
Sharpe. Penguin, 1995.
Meehan, Bernard. “The Book of Kells and the Corbie Psalter
(with a note on Harley 2788).” In “A Miracle of Learning”:
Irish Manuscripts, Their Owners and Their Uses. Festschrift
William O’Sullivan, edited by T. Barnard, K. Simms, and
D. Ó Cróinín, pp. 29–39. Scolar Press, 1998.
———. “‘A Melody of Curves Across the Page’: Art and Cal-
ligraphy in the Book of Armagh.” Irish Arts Review 14
(1998): 91–101.
Herity, Michael and Aidan Breen. The Cathach of Colum Cille.
An introduction and interactive CD-ROM. Dublin: Royal
Irish Academy, 2002.
Dumville, David N. A Palaeographer’s Review: The Insular
System of Scripts in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 38–39.
Kansai: Kansai University Press, 1999.
See alsoArmagh, Book of; Columbanus;
Colum Cille; Durrow, Book of; Early Christian Art;
Kells, Book of; ScriptoriaMARCH AREAS
The March or the marches were terms used by the
central government at Dublin to describe the lands that
lay between the “land of peace” (territory firmly under
the control of the Anglo-Irish) and the “land of war”
(territory under native control). Contemporaries prob-
ably understood what was meant when reference was
made to marches, but this medieval shorthand has
meant that march areas have remained ambiguous to
historians; an ambiguity only added to by the distinc-
tions between marches. For, despite the blanket termi-
nology, not all marches were the same. Physically, they
could vary in terms of height above sea level and land
use. They also varied in terms of the customs or march
law that operated within them. And there were further
variations within given marches: for example, between
those areas of a march where the agents of local gov-
ernment could operate effectively, and the “strong
marches” where the will of the Dublin government
through the person of the sheriff might be less easily
enforced despite the government’s jurisdictional com-
petence. In contrast to the march of Wales, the king’s
writ did run throughout most march areas in Ireland
where the marches were not synonymous with wide
jurisdictional privilege.
What seems certain is that marches were highly
militarized areas where defense was of the utmost
importance. Some historians have focused on other
aspects of the marches and have attempted to define
them in cultural or economic terms, but it is in military
terms that marches were primarily referred to in the
administrative records of the Dublin government.
Marches figured prominently in the statutes issued by
the Dublin parliament of 1297, whose purpose was to
bring order and peace to the lordship of Ireland. These
statutes sought to counter the problems created byMANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATION