Eucharistic imagery

There are two key sacraments central to Christianity – Baptism and the Eucharist. Sacraments are understood as key moments where a person enters into closer union with God. They are events to be celebrated.

Baptism takes place once in a lifetime, when a person becomes a Christian, while the Eucharist is celebrated regularly throughout the life of a Christian. Some people call this celebration ‘the Mass’, some ‘Communion’, others the Lord’s Supper.

The Book of Kells was created in an environment where people had deep faith in the Eucharist. The people living in the Christian settlements at Iona and Kells would have celebrated the Eucharist regularly. The Eucharist, they believed, was the spiritual nourishment enabling them to live their daily lives, and at once the food which gifted them with eternal life.

The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving, Eucharistia. When Christians gather to celebrate the Eucharist they gather to give thanks to God for the life of Jesus Christ and the promise of everlasting life with God in heaven. The Eucharistic ritual itself is based around the last meal that Jesus shared with his followers, and on the words that he used. We find this last supper described in the gospels of Matthew (Chapter 26), Mark (Chapter 14), and Luke (Chapter 22). In these gospels we read that bread and wine were used.

Christians continue to use bread and wine in their Eucharistic celebrations. Bread, in form of a small communion host with a cross on it, and wine, represented by a chalice (cup) are two of the key Eucharistic symbols found in the Book of Kells.

Associated with wine is the image of vines. In the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ describes himself as the vine and his Father as the vine grower (John 15). Images of vines are found throughout the Book of Kells. These vines produce the grapes from which the wine is made. This is the wine which fills the chalices for the Eucharistic celebration. Christians will drink from these chalices.

Vines, grapes and chalices are frequently found together in the Book of Kells. Chalices are often shown with vines spilling out of them.

In the early Christian Church the bread used for the Eucharistic celebration was the same as the bread used every day for meals. Change began in the fourth century when the bread intended for the Eucharist was often stamped, or shaped in a particular way, to mark it as distinct from the bread for ordinary consumption. By the time of the creation of the Book of Kells the practice of using unleavened bread (flat bread, that hasn’t risen) for the Eucharist was becoming more common. This bread – altar bread – began to take a wafer like form, achieved with pressing irons. This is the type of bread still used in the West today for the Eucharistic celebration. On folio 34r at the bottom on the left, we see two mice playing with what many identify as a Eucharistic host.

^{Fig 1. Detail from the Book of Kells (fol. 34r). © The Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin. Two mice holding the host in their mouths.}