The Book of Kells is an illuminated Bible manuscript, made up of versions of the gospels taken from a few early renderings of the religion’s holy book. The manuscript, named for the abbey in County Meath, Ireland, where it lay for centuries, is a stunningly preserved masterwork of western calligraphy, rich with interlinear miniature illustrations, intricate drop capitals, and full-color illustrations of key liturgical scenes from the life of Christ, replete with gold leaf and the deep symbolism of the early Christian church in Ireland.
Perfect source material for a children’s movie, right?
Publicity still of Aisling from The Secret of Kells (2009) [Cartoon Saloon]
The Secret of Kells came out in 2009 as a joint production involving several European states and ultimately released by Cartoon Saloon. Directed by Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey, the animated film tells the story of a bright-eyed boy named Brendan (Evan McGuire) who lives in the monastery at the abbey of Kells, and is apprenticed in the business of making illuminated manuscripts like the aforementioned Book of Kells.
The abbot there is obsessed with Viking invasion and wants to focus solely on fortifying the monastery. But a mysterious monk, Brother Aiden (Mick Lally), wants only to turn darkness into light the best way he knows how: by making their Bible into objects of beauty and wonder through the alchemy of art.
Art requires tools, and Aiden sends Brendan out into the woods to gather gall nuts to make ink from. Accompanying Brendan on this task is Pangur Bán, one of the earliest feline literary stars. Pangur Bán is the name of a monk’s cat to whom a cute and whimsical poem is dedicated. Written in the 9th century in Old Irish by an unnamed author living in what is now Germany, the poem prefigures the internet’s obsession with cats’ capricious and lovable nature. The author compares his cat’s nightly hunt for mice with his own for thoughts. The cat is drawn in the film as a white ferrety creature, long of limb and limber of spine. In a visually arresting film that makes beautiful use of 2D animation, the cat is still a notable sight.
These companions meet another such a sight: a fey-folk shapeshifter named Aisling (Christen Mooney). A creature of the woods, Aisling is able to show them what they need while also warning them of danger: an malevolent forest spirit named Crom Cruach. Crom Cruach is a local deity to that part of Ireland, part of the pre-Christian pantheon of the ancient Celts. He’s variously described as a fertility figure and as a fearsome god requiring sacrifice by the Lebar na Núachongbála, also known as The Book of Leinster.
This text was compiled during the 12th century, and contained literary, genealogical, and mythological information about the people of Ireland before the conversion of the country. Like many texts of its type, it is both incomplete and hampered by the bias of the monks who wrote it. The fate of much Brythonic and Celtic myth was to be lost or recorded only by its enemies, having been largely preserved through oral tradition until these monks at Kells and Leinster and Oughaval sought to write them down – even as they wiped the practices themselves out.
A behind the scenes still of The Secret of Kells (2009) [Cartoon Saloon]
With this less-than-friendly Pagan deity on the prowl and the disapproval of the war-obsessed abbot bearing down on him for going forth, Brendan finds his own adventures curtailed. Conspiring together, Aisling and Pangur Bán help Brendan not only to escape, but to fight Crom Cruach for the prize of his eye: a polished precious stone that acts as a magnifying glass and without which the iris-straining work of an artist like Brother Aiden cannot proceed.
The descent into the cave and treasure-hoard of Crom Cruach is the most intense part of the film. A little frightening for young viewers, it takes Brendan deep into the literal underworld. The descent is also figurative, if we imagine the terror of a 9th-century Christian boy encountering a Pagan god who is not only very real, but also an actual threat to his well-being. Despite the primacy and implied rectitude of Christianity in this film, it never pretends that there were no gods before the Christian god, or that those gods had no power. Instead, it positions them as wild, unknowable, like nature itself. The Secret of Kells does not concern itself with mortality, and it doesn’t place Brendan’s power to survive in any particularly Christian trait. Brendan makes it through his adventure because he is, himself, clever and brave.
The triumph of the film is not the destruction of a god, or even of his sacred site. It’s the arrival of a semi-mystical seeing stone that allows a monk to worship his true god: art. It’s not the light of faith these monks seek to protect from Viking invaders, but only the beauty of the books they’ve sunk their time and expertise into.
That art makes it through the centuries to become this art, this film, which carries in it not a single phrase from the Bible. What is memorable in it is what is Pagan, just as what is preserved in these manuscripts is often art focused on the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars, woven into the margins of their bleeding god-meat on a tree.
That it all survives is magic. That we have any of these stories written down, even by enemies, is treasure. The Secret of Kells is one such treasure, and a good choice for a Pagan family movie night, despite how strange the initial pitch might seem.
A publicity still of Brendan and Aisling from The Secret of Kells (2009) [Cartoon Saloon]
For the adults in the circle, The Book of Kells was recently fully digitized and made available online. Let the movie entrance you, but the truth of this object is even better than fiction. And when the kids are older, it will (gods willing) still be there for them, too.
Blessed be the monks who wrote it down and kept it safe.
The Secret of Kells can be streamed for free on Kanopy.
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