From the Sermon on the Mount (folio 44r)The script used for the text of the Book of Kells has a wonderful balance and weight; taken together with the initial letters to verses, the effect is formal yet greatly varied from one page to the next. There are four main scribes, none of them identified. On many pages, they were careless. Here, at the end of line 15, the last two letters of the word 'quid' may have been added in correcting the text. Human and animal figures placed among the words often comment obliquely on the text. The figure outlined with red dots on line 2 turns his back, appropriately, to the word 'auertaris' (‘turn away’; Matthew 5. 42) and to the injunction not to turn away from him who wishes to borrowPhotograph: The Board of Trinity College Dublin