Someone stabbed a medieval biblical manuscript 20 times in the same spot, stumping historians
The 1,200-year-old Book of Kells is a gorgeous—and mysterious—work of art.

Images from The Book of Kells Experience
As the story goes, some 1,200 years ago, a handful of teen Celtic Christian monks on the island of Iona near Scotland painstakingly created an intricate, illuminated manuscript of the four gospels of the Bible, now known as the Book of Kells. Created on sheets of vellum (thin sheets of calfskin), the book contains elaborate lettering and colorful depictions of scenes from scriptures that have inspired Celtic art for centuries. The book's 340 folios (680 pages) hold layers of symbolism, and some details in the artwork are so tiny they almost can't be seen with the naked eye.
The monks who created the manuscript used feather quills and natural pigments found in minerals and plants, which have held up beautifully for hundreds and hundreds of years. Exactly who the monks were is a mystery, as is one dramatic detail on one particular page of the manuscript—Folio 202v. On this page, the Temptation of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke is depicted, with a sinister black figure drawn to represent the devil. They say the devil's in the details, but in this case there's a detail in the devil that you can't see just looking at the artwork.
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Dr. Jane Maxwell, Manuscripts Curator at Trinity College Dublin, where the Book of Kells is kept and maintained, explained that the scene depicts Christ's 40 days in the desert and the interesting detail in the devil figure.
"The devil is supposed to have appeared to [Christ] to tempt him during this time," said Maxwell. "Now, one of the most recent discoveries about this page is that the figure of the devil within the book has been stabbed over 20 times. We can't say when this happened or who did it, but the one thing we do know is the damage did not take place in some kind of frenzied attack. It seems to have been quite calm, quite measured. Each stab could have occurred as a single event each time the person who did it saw the page."
Folio 202v of the Book of Kells, depicting the Temptation of Christ from the Gospel of LukePublic Domain
Maxwell explained that historians are quite sure that the stabbing happened sometime after the book was bound, as the stab marks went through several pages of vellum, which are fairly thick. She does have one possible explanation for the stabbings, though it's purely conjecture.
"I would suggest that a person looking at the Book of Kells a thousand years ago understood it to be a very sacred object, a very embodiment of the Word of God," she said, "and when they were reading it, they would believe themselves to be in the presence of God. And therefore, if they see a picture of the devil, they could easily have believed that they were in the presence of real evil, which might explain why such a reader was so moved to respond so vigorously to the figure on the page as to leave these indelible marks behind."
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Possibly. There are all kinds of stories we could make up to explain the stab marks, since there's no way to know at this point. But that's not the only mystery of the Book of Kells. The story of the monks creating it on the island of Iona around the year 800 is a best guess, not a known fact. The monastery there was raided by Vikings in the early 9th century, killing 68 monks, and the survivors fled to a sister monastery in Kells in Ireland. Miraculously, the Book of Kells survived the raid and has managed to make it through another 1,200 years of human history largely unscathed.
Natural pigments used to make the Book of Kells (left), The Chi Rho monogram of Christ spelled out in Greek (right)Photos by Annie Reneau
Bishop Henry Jones presented the Book of Kells to Trinity College in 1661 for safekeeping due to threats to its safety. It has remained under the care of the university ever since, and can be viewed today from behind a display case in Trinity College's The Book of Kells Experience. The tourist attraction brings people from all over the world who are interested in learning about the book's history and seeing its beauty for themselves. The book can also be viewed in its entirety in a digital format on the Trinity College website. It's well worth looking at a few pages and zooming in on the details, imagining them being drawn with a quill and ink.