Abbey of Kells Abbey of Kells The Abbey of Kells ("Mainistir Cheanannais" in Irish) is a former monastery in Kells, County Meath, Ireland, north of Dublin. It was founded in the early 9th century, and the Book of Kells was kept there during the later medieval and early modern periods before finally leaving the abbey in the 1650s. Much of the Book of Kells may have been created there, but historians cannot be certain of the exact date and circumstances of its creation. The Abbey of Kells was reportedly founded by St. Columba ca. 554, after High King Diarmuid Mac Caroll of Tara
Book of Kells followed by their "Breves causae". This anomalous order mirrors that found in the Book of Durrow, although in the latter instance, the misplaced sections appear at the very end of the manuscript rather than as part of a continuous preliminary. In other insular manuscripts, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Book of Armagh, and the Echternach Gospels, each Gospel is treated as a separate work and has its preliminaries immediately preceding it. The slavish repetition in Kells of the order of the "Breves causae" and "Argumenta" found in Durrow led scholar T. K. Abbott to the conclusion that the scribe