The monastery in the play we have seen is a very representative monastery. The originator of the monastery is a group called St.Anthony Egypt (250-350), a group of people who lived in seclusion in the desert, and later established the monastery , and later the Italians built monasteries as schools and preserved some Greek manuscripts.
The monastery movement of the Benedictine Order (St Benedict 480-530) developed in the 6th century AD. The Benedictines felt that the Roman secular culture was not holy enough, so they lived in seclusion in the mountains, established a monastery on the mountain and formulated the rules. The monastery generally has a wall, It looks like a farm and is regarded as the most educated way of life. There is a library and a school. Everyone works and sings together, but they cannot get married. Many rich people send their children to this kind of abstinence. Life. The Benedictine Order attracted a group of monks with knowledge of classical culture, and many monks were trained as scribes.
European calligraphy has also experienced a long process of development. Another purpose of setting up a monastery is to teach everyone to write calligraphy, and the Book of Kells is a classic calligraphy work.
The font used is "Uncial", and the "Uncial" font is a faster writing font to get rid of the inconvenience of "Roman Rustic" ("Roman Rustic" - commonly known as the hillbilly (pagan) font) font. Rounded in shape, it is an uppercase typeface, with no serifs (serifs, the fancy extra lines that adorn the typeface) in the early form.
In the 3rd century, the Roman Church adopted Latin as the official language. In order to distinguish it from the hillbilly font, the font "Uncial" was used with reference to Greek characters. In the 4th century, this font became an official large-style calligraphy, 5 became mainstream by the end of the century. However, some writers in the 6th century replaced the original italic with horizontal writing, so that it could not write as fast as before, so it evolved into a decorative font.
In 432 AD, the "Roman Half-Uncial" font was brought to Ireland, the island was relatively isolated, and the situation was relatively peaceful at that time, which created the conditions for the birth of Irish calligraphy. The Book of Kells is the culmination of this type of calligraphy. It is a treasure in the history of Western calligraphy. The extended and ligatured letters show a formal monumental font.
The Book of Kells (or the Book of Kells) was painted by monks on the Isle of Iona in western Scotland around 790. The book consists of four Gospels, each of which begins with an illustration, for a total of two thousand.
The cover font design of the Book of Kells incorporates the Latin alphabet plus runes (runes) (Northern European Oracle), with many beautiful Irish squiggles, and its content is the New Testament of the Bible.
In addition to calligraphy, the manuscript has many decorations and illustrations. Illumination is decoration that adds luster. The root of the word lumen means light. It is often reflected in the refinement of initials, the beautification of edges and illustrations. Seriously, gold and silver pieces are sometimes used for decoration, and they are also collectively called "illuminated manuscripts". These decorations on manuscripts are all to make these classics even greater, and in the case of the ruling class with little culture I won't destroy it, because it looks good. (Although it is sometimes burned because of the iconoclastic movement)
Next, let's recognize what is written on it. First of all, the big decorative font, which looks a bit like the Holy Grail, is the refinement of the first letter: the first letter is very large and is L+I (in order to save space and beauty, put The two letters are spelled together like a painting), and the word on the first line is "LIBER" - which means book.
This is the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew and the very beginning of the New Testament. The second word of this picture is "Generationis" - meaning "family tree"; the third line and the fourth line are the Greek Iesu Christi (Jesus Christ, short for Christ); the next word is Filii (descendant); It is followed by David (the two letters AV are framed in D, followed by the two letters "ID"); then the three bytes are written "FILII" and finally the ii is juxtaposed up and down, and the last bunch of letters is " ABRAHAM", the whole sentence means "the descendants of Abraham, the descendants of David, the genealogy of Jesus."
And the most famous page is this one. F. 34R is taken from Matthew 1:18. The picture is a large XPI, Greek Χριστός, means Christ, this page is the symbol page of Christ.
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