The Earliest Irish and English Books: Time for a Reappraisal?

The Schaffhausen codex of Adomnán of Iona’s Vita Sancti Columbae, and the manuscript now known as St Cuthbert’s Gospel, are two of the most iconic manuscripts in the Insular tradition of book-production. The recent publication of a facsimile of the Schaffhausen MS., and of a collection of essays on the Cuthbert codex, offers an opportunity to reassess the opinions and views expressed by scholars on the subject in the last fifty years.