Art and Calligraphy as Economic Development

I am sure it never crossed the minds of the patient monks on the Island of Iona off the coast of Scotland whothe year 800 A.D. penned what we now call the Book of Kells that their work would be viewed by over 500,000 visitors a year. But that is what has happened to this Latin copy of the gospels.

After Viking raids and much pillaging by the same, the Irish monks and pious calligraphers decided to move inland on Ireland to the town of Kells. There the text rested until the Cromwellian days. Cromwell wanted to destroy it because it was a papist text and contained pagan symbols and even the renderings of animals.

In the 11th century Gerald of Cambridge saw it and declared it the work of angels and not of men.

We don't even know the names of the several monks who wrote these magnificent words of the four gospels because it would have been showing pride to put their names on a page.

I guess what I am saying here is that Denver and Colorado can do more to promote the arts as a means of getting us out of this recession which is taking longer to get out of than we thought.