Royal Irish Academy Logo

The Cathach of Colum Cille
An Introduction

 

The Cathach is the oldest extant Irish illuminated manuscript, dated to c. AD 600. The surviving 58 folios contain Psalms 30:10 to 105:13 (Vulgate version).

Legend has it that Colum Cille copied the manuscript from a psalter lent to him by St Finnian. A dispute over the ownership of the copy was resolved by the King of Tara in a very early copyright ruling: 'To every cow her calf, so to every book its copy.'

A full-colour 84-page booklet introduces readers to the provenance, art history and biblical content of the manuscript.

The accompanying interactive CD-ROM presents the manuscript in digitised form, with a brief overview of its origins and art history. The manuscript folios can be read against a transcription by H.J. Lawlor or an English version of the relevant psalms.

A zoom facility up to 400% allows art historians, calligraphers, palaeographers and other researchers to examine the script and illuminated initials in detail.

The CD-ROM has a minimum recommended spec of 233Mhz with 32mb of RAM and is compatible with both Mac and PC.

EUR 40.00 / USD 40.00
ISBN 1-874045-92-5


Available from bookshops
and the Royal Irish Academy
Tel. +353-1-6762570
E-mail publications@ria.ie

North American distributor
International Specialized Book Services
Portland, Oregon
Tel. +1-503-2873093 or +1-800-9446190
E-mail sales@isbs.com

 

You can view a Shockwave demonstration of the Cathach CD-ROM.

The demonstration is 1 Mb in size, which should take about 3 minutes to download on a 56k modem.