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Views from the Choir Loft

The Book of Kells Online

Fr. David Friel · January 26, 2020

Just two weeks ago, I featured the tremendous digitization project of the Vatican Apostolic Library (VAT), known as DigiVatLib. Since then, two more treasure troves of online resources have come to my attention. I would like to share these with you today.

First, one of the greatest pieces of the world’s cultural inheritance is the Book of Kells. Described by the Annals of Ulster (A.D. 1007) as “the chief relic of the Western world,” the manuscript is a 680-page book of the Gospels, richly decorated in the tradition of Insular illumination. Long attributed to St. Columbkille (d. 597), the manuscript was more likely crafted by later monks of Iona around the year 800. The volume takes its name from the Abbey of Kells (County Meath), where it was housed for centuries, and it is now displayed to the public at Trinity College Library in Dublin. The folios of this manuscript were scanned in 1990, but they were rescanned two decades later with state-of-the-art technology. Since 2013, the entire Book of Kells has been available online. What a gift it is to have this masterpiece so easily accessible.

The second online resource I would like to recommend has only recently become available, courtesy of the Paris Musées, an incorporation of the fourteen city-operated museums of the French capital. Now available on their collections website are 150,000 high-resolution images depicting some of their holdings. Effective January 8, 2020, these digital reproductions are freely available, without charge and without restriction. This decision, according to the museums, “will contribute to enhancing and improving the way our collections are made available and will strengthen the measures taken to ensure better public access to art and culture as well as increasing visibility and understanding of the works in our municipal collections. . . . This policy of free access is part of a programme of development, cultural mediation and opening up of the collections to Internet users.”

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

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Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 26, 2020

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Fr. David Friel

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel served as Parochial Vicar at St. Anselm Parish in Northeast Philly. He is currently a doctoral candidate in liturgical theology at The Catholic University of America.—(Read full biography).

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Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“I have, on the other hand, retained several more or less traditional tunes, absolutely valueless and without merit from a musical point of view, but which seem to have become a necessity if a book is to appeal—as I hope this one will—to the varied needs of various churches.”

— A. Edmonds Tozer (1905)

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