08/11/2024

Today’s ramble is an unusual one- we are in the Swiss city of St. Gallen to visit the Cathedral of St. Gall ( Gaul) and to view the beautiful Irish manuscripts held in the Abbey Library. Gall was born in Ireland around 550, and travelled to Europe from the Bangor monastery in County Down, to Switzerland, where he build a church and established a religious community. He is often depicted with a friendly bear who helped him gather wood.
The cathedral is spectacularly beautiful ( we lit the candles for our dear departed) but the wonderful, nerdy part was seeing the St. Gall Priscian manuscript. The pages have over 3000 glosses written in old Irish, - there is even some Ogham scribbled in the margins. Rare texts like this allow scholars to study the oldest version of the Irish language, we are so lucky to have access to the notes and doodles ( one gloss just says ‘I’m cold!) in these texts, and we hit maximum nerd-level in the library. It is fascinating to see the impact of Irish scholarship on the early Christian church, and we can highly recommend a visit to this beautiful Swiss city if you’re ever in the neighborhood.
Tomorrow we’ll be back to the back roads of Donegal, but I hope you’ll enjoy seeing this beautiful book, and the images of Gall, his church and his city.
#rambles #irishlanguage #stgallen St.Gallen,Switzerland St. Gallen Cathedral