Inspired by the opening page of St Mark’s Gospel, The Book of Durrow, which derives its name from the Irish Columban monastery of Durrow, County Offaly. It is an early medieval Gospel book decorated with carpet pages (characterized by intricate, non-figurative, patterned designs) and framed symbols of the Evangelists. It was long considered the earliest surviving fully decorated insular Gospel book, and thought to date from the mid-7th century, yet it was executed with such a degree of sophistication that recent scholars argue for a date more contemporaraneous with the 9th-century Book of Kells.

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