Mid-Summer At The Museum For Words On The Wave.

It's that time of year again!

If you're a regular reader of Notes from Home - in which case, thank you! - you may recall that we took an Away Day last year to have some fun together. As a group of people who're very rarely all in the same place at the same time, it's lovely to have some space to catch up and do something we wouldn't normally do. Today, let's tell you a little about this year's expedition!

You went to a museum?

We sure did! We visited the Words on the Wave exhibition, a collaboration between the National Museum of Ireland's Archaeology department in Kildare Street, Dublin, and the fabulous Abbey Library of St Gallen in Switzerland. The Abbey's breathtaking library has a significant collection of early medieval Irish manuscripts, dating from the 8th to the 9th centuries AD. These s manuscripts have returned to Ireland on temporary loan for the first time in over a thousand years. They can be seen in the National Museum until late October 2025, alongside other artefacts, both decorative and ceremonial, attributed to this period.

But, Switzerland..? Why? How?!

Settle in because this is a long story! This is specifically about Ireland's connection to the city of St. Gallen in Switzerland, where the manuscripts have been kept in that fairy-tale library in the picture above. However, it also fits into the wider context of the Irish Christian diaspora during the early centuries of the Church.

As a small island on the edge of Europe, Ireland had an outsized influence on early Christianity, and this exhibition highlights the importance of the peregrini pro Christo or 'exiles for Christ' who set off from their Irish monasteries to preach the gospel overseas. I have mentioned previously the very active Christianity that existed in Ireland even before the 6th century AD, with sites like Skellig Michael in regular communication with abbeys and monasteries in the other Celtic lands. One of the best-known Christian communities that originated from Ireland is Iona, in Scotland, which the exiled St. Columba (also known as Columcille) founded in 563 AD, along with several churches and monasteries along the western coast. He left Ireland with twelve companions to spread Christianity among the Picts. Columba, though, was one of many.

Down, and then out.

Around 590 AD, Columbanus left the renowned Bangor Abbey in County Down, Northern Ireland, to travel to the Continent. He taught and preached, and founded several monasteries as he travelled through France, Switzerland, and Italy during his lifetime. The first was Luxeuil in France, and many years later, Bobbio in Italy. At his departure from Ireland, he took twelve companions. Among them, it is said, was St. Gall, or Gallus in Latin. (No known relation to the chicken, though. Just to be clear...)

Oh dear. We're getting off track here, aren't we? Where was I?

St. Gall.

We don't know much about Gall's formative years. In fact, there is some debate among modern historians about whether St. Gall was even Irish. It's possible he met Columbanus at Bangor Abbey, or he may have been one of the brethren who settled in Luxeuil. The early chronicle of his life states that he was from Leinster and trained in Bangor, but it's possible that this was intended to align him more closely with Columbanus. It has also been posited that he was from the Alsace region, but was of Irish descent. Whatever the reality, he followed the Irish monastic tradition, so we're claiming him! (Apparently, there was a tendency throughout the early medieval period to ascribe Irish ethnicity to saints whose antecedents were unknown. Clearly, Ireland had a reputation for being a pre-eminent source of holy men.)

A Parting Of The Ways.

Around 610 AD, the rulers of the Burgundian region in which Columbanus and Gall were living decided they no longer wanted Christian monks in their lands and expelled them. The banished pair travelled along the river Rhine to Bregenz and settled there for a while. They founded another monastery while they were there, just to keep in practice, and Gall, who knew the local languages, reportedly won many converts to the Christian faith.

When Columbanus planned to move on to Italy around 612 AD, Gall was unable to accompany him due to illness. In a fit of bad temper, Columbanus expelled Gall from his brotherhood, accused him of malingering, and forbade him from saying Mass as long as Columbanus lived. (Before Columbanus' death at Bobbio in 615, however, he asked that his pastoral staff be sent to Gall as a sign of forgiveness, so he must have realised he'd over-reacted. We all get stressed when we're packing for a trip, I suppose.) When suitably recovered, Gall decided to move to a remote wooded area north of Arbon on the Steinach River. There he lived as a hermit, spending his days in fasting and prayer.

Bear Necessities.

There's a fabulous story that, as Gall sat by his campfire one night, a bear passed close by. Drawn by the interesting smell of human, it came closer to the fire. Catching sight of Gall, deep in prayer, the bear was so awed that he lumbered back into the forest and brought the monk a gift of firewood. According to the tale, Gall was surprised but delighted, and he invited the bear to share his fire and bread with him. The two were inseparable thereafter, and images of St. Gall often include his ursine companion!

Life by the river.

Over time, other monks heard of Gall and came to live alongside him, learning from his teachings and adhering to the Rule of Columbanus that he upheld. (Seems like someone was a little more magnanimous in that relationship, if you ask me...) Gall also preached throughout the region, but always returned to his hermit cell near the river.

At one point, he was asked to become the Bishop of Constance with the unanimous support of the local clergy, but he claimed that he was a stranger in their land and that it would be against their laws. When the abbot of Luxeuil died in 625 CE, members of the abbey came to ask Gall to succeed him as the next leader of their community, but he refused. He lived to a ripe old age of 95, unconcerned with politics or the strife of the world around him, absorbed in his reading, teaching, and prayer. He died around 645 AD.

His followers buried him, and his grave became a place of pilgrimage. A local bishop had a sarcophagus carved for him, but otherwise, nothing much happened for several decades. His cell remained in place, and his small group of brethren continued to work, teach, and read as they had done previously.

The birth of St. Gallen Abbey.

Around 719, the brotherhood appointed their first abbot, Otmar, who decided to expand Gall's cell into an abbey. The local clergy and population accepted that Gall was a saint, and, as there was no canonisation process at the time, that's what he became. Therefore, the abbey became known as the Abbey of St. Gallen. Around that abbey, over the centuries that followed, grew a settlement, then a town, and then the city we find today.

So this explains the beginning of the Irish connection in St. Gallen; however, there's more, of course. During the early medieval period, Irish monks travelled extensively throughout Europe. Sometimes they were messengers, sometimes they were sent by their abbots for training or teaching duties, and apparently, St Gallen was a popular rest point on pilgrimages to Rome or Jerusalem. Upon arrival, after a brief rest, the monks were put to work. However, unlike Columbanus' abbeys at Luxeuil and Bobbio, St. Gallen was not dominated by Irish monks. By and large, they came and went, although of course some stayed, which we can tell from the abbey's necrology, or book of the dead. The use of Latin names undoubtedly obscures origins, so we cannot be sure of precise numbers. While the abbey accepted an Irish element to its identity, it was not to the forefront.

The famous library.

St. Gallen Abbey entered a period of construction between 830 and 837 AD, during which it began building a new church. Upon completion, as one of the largest churches in Europe at the time, it ensured that the Abbey became prominent, particularly within the Carolingian Empire. This also coincided with what the current Director of St. Gallen Abbey Library, Dr Cornel Dora, calls "the beginning of an exceptionally dynamic phase for the scriptorium and the library."

"The growth of the book collection was closely tied to the development of the monastery as a whole. Until around 820, the library remained modest, likely containing fewer than one hundred books. During this period, the monks focused primarily on producing new copies rather than managing the collection... The famous Plan of St Gall, however - a monastic plan created for St Gallen at the abbey of Reichenau around 825 - includes, for the first time in Europe, a separate combined room for the scriptorium and biblioteca...

The collection continued to expand rapidly. Between 820 and 860, approximately 300 volumes were added."

~ Soul-healing books: learning and the library in St. Gallen from the 7th to the 11th century - Dr. Cornel Dora.

A flourishing scriptorium and library require a steady supply of finished books and scribes to write new ones, and the Irish connection to St. Gallen continued to thrive as a result. Around 850 AD, St Gallen's records show that an Irish bishop, Marcus, and his nephew, Móengal, settled in the abbey. They brought books with them, and this is one way in which Irish manuscripts were incorporated into the collection. Irish scribes, working in both Irish and Swiss scriptoria, left behind marginalia which give some insight into their wandering thoughts as they worked. These are some of the most fascinating aspects of this exhibition!

One example found in the St. Gallen collection is from a monk copying a 6th-century grammatical book by Priscian of Caesarea. (The St. Gallen Priscian, as it became known, is an absolute hive of complaints, aides memoires, and random asides written in Old Irish and even Ogham!) He wrote the following at the top of a page:

"bendacht.for anmmain ferguso. amen. - mar uar dom. -"

This translates as 'A blessing on the soul of Fergus. Amen. I am very cold.' You can't help but feel sorry for him, can you? Another note in Old Irish speaks of the fear of Viking raiders.

Is acher ingáith innocht. fufuasba faircggae findfolt ni ágor réimm mora minn. dondláechaid lainn oua lothlind.

This translates as 'Bitter is the wind tonight, it tosses the ocean's white hair; I fear not the coursing of a clear day by the fierce heroes from Lothlend.'

Viking raids from Scotland (or Lothlend) on Irish monasteries were well-known in Europe, and while the monks bore the threat with Christian fortitude, they must have been terrified. It's also noted that the manuscript contains three short Old Irish poems and some names of the scribes. It's likely that the St. Gallen Priscian left Ireland shortly after it was completed and made its way to the Abbey library by unknown means.

Other small traces of the Irish moving through St. Gallen appear in the most unexpected ways. A small piece of vellum inscribed with the name of St. Brigid, her successor Der Lugdach, and her bishop Conláed has survived from circa 700 AD. It's a relic label and was found in a small wooden box that would likely have contained tiny relics of the saint and her fellows, brought from Ireland.

Provenance?

Aside from the documents that are notated in Old Irish, how can you tell that the manuscripts in the exhibition are Irish? After all, as we've seen above, monks made copies of copies of books, and they were often sent elsewhere. As part of the work done by the National Museum of Ireland's team, DNA testing was conducted on vellum bearing Irish-style script to determine the origins of the material. Vellum is made of cow skin, and it was a costly resource at the time these books were written. By taking samples, scientists were able to compare data derived from bones retrieved from similarly-aged archaeological finds with that from the vellum, confirming that the cattle used in the production of the parchment were of Irish origin. It is an independent, scientific verification of the fact that these historical items really are coming home to Ireland for the first time in over a millennium.

The Fadden More Psalter.

What else did we see? Well, let's think. We saw what's known as The Fadden More Psalter. It was discovered in a peat bog in County Tipperary in 2006 and dates to approximately 800 AD! It's an incredible find because some of the manuscript is still legible; the outer leather wrap-around cover took the brunt of the wear. It will take decades more work to discover all its secrets, and to see if any of the pages can be safely separated, with the hope that we may learn more about the people who commissioned and wrote it. However, it's an important piece of Irish early-Christian history. It doesn't look like much in the image below, but the fact that it has lasted over 1,200 years in a bog is quite exceptional.

The Lough Kinale Book Shrine.

The Lough Kinale Book Shrine is also part of the Words on the Wave exhibition, and it's another very special find. It was discovered in 1986 near the site of a crannóg in County Longford, and was waterlogged. It's essentially a vessel made to hold a copy of a gospel. Constructed of oak with bronze sections and decorative plates attached with nails, it dates back to the 9th century. Its decorative panels are perfect examples of the La Tène style, featuring spirals and bird head designs, and are also set with amber beads in the circular sections. As a shrine, it was designed to be sealed after the book had been placed within it, but it was empty when found. I honestly think it's one of the most beautiful pieces of art I've ever seen.

The Corleck Head.

Ciarán found something of a doppelganger while visiting The Corleck Head! This is an Iron Age limestone carving that was found around 1855 near Shercock, in my own County Cavan. It's one of the earliest known figurative sculptures in Ireland, and it likely had a ceremonial purpose during harvest festivals. It actually has three heads, and it's thought to be part of a larger shrine to a pre-Christian god.

The Ardagh Chalice.

And, of course, we dropped in on The Ardagh Chalice, because you'd have to... It's never anything less than incredible to see the amazing workmanship that went into this 8th-century vessel!

Beautiful jewellery.

And then there were the shiny things! Because it's Irish history, there were beautiful brooches. This silver penannular brooch was found in County Kilkenny and dates to the late 9th or early 10th century. The panels are Celtic interlaced zoomorphic designs, and there are some Ogham inscriptions on the reverse that are likely the names of its previous owners!

For those who enjoy statement necklaces, imagine wearing this golden torc with its beautiful, flowing designs along its length. It's part of the very exciting permanent exhibition on Irish gold in the main hall of the museum, and - obviously! - always my first port of call when visiting. If you're not planning a trip to Dublin anytime soon, you can visit the exhibition on the museum's website. It's definitely worth a look!

But all good things must come to an end...

Did you make it this far? Good work and bless your patience - you've done incredibly well to read all my ramblings this long!

Honestly, I'd never heard of St. Gall before we visited this exhibition, which prompted me to start reading about him. Whether he was Irish, of Irish origin, or only Irish-influenced, the world is indebted to him for his conviction that reading was the most effective way to learn more, so that he could teach others. And to the abbey that bears his name, and the custodians of the library that have taken such care of these precious books over the last millennium.

In 1983 the Abbey Library, along with the entire abbey complex in St Gall, was listed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO. In 2017 the written heritage of the Abbey of St Gall preserved in the Abbey Library and Abbey Archives was granted Memory of the World status. These collections date back practically without interruption more than 1300 years to the time when the abbey was originally founded by Gall and Otmar. The Abbey Library has thus obtained two of the most prestigious distinctions awarded by UNESCO.

~ Stiftsbezirk St. Gallen web site.

Can you imagine what someone might find in your annotated books a thousand years from now? What would they find that you had scribbled on the edge of a page? Shopping lists, To Do lists, quotes to remember?

And next time you go camping, keep an eye out for a bear to help you find your firewood...!