An important chapter in the history of Irish scriptorium reached a happy conclusion when a facsimile of Macregol’s Gospel, the original of which is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, was unveiled in Birr, County Offaly. Margaret Hogan reports
Although the Book of Birr may not claim the finesse of the great Book of Kells it is distinguished by two unusual characteristics that make it exceptional. In the first place, the Book of Birr carries a colophon which identifies its author as Macregol the Abbot of the monastery in Birr who died in 822. Secondly, Macregol’s Latin script was glossed between his original lines into Old English by two English monks in or about 975 making it the second oldest surviving translation of the Four Gospels into any version of the English language. The original manuscript is now in the collection of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, but a magnificent facsimile of the original was completed a few years ago and can now be viewed in the public library in Birr, Co Offaly.
