cumdach

plural cumdachs

1. An elaborate ornamented metal reliquary box or case used to hold Early Medieval Irish manuscripts or relics.

   Three MSS. still in existence are known, from historical evidence, to have had cumdachs, although they have been lost.

   1904, J[ohn] Romilly Allen, Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times, page 208

   3 more examples

   The following is a list of the Irish cumdachs of which anything is known, from which it is evident that the custom of making these cumdachs prevailed in Ireland from the ninth to the sixteenth century.

   1878, Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language, volume II, Dublin: […] the University Press, […], page 159

   Other cumdachs are those in the Royal Irish Academy, for Molaise’s Gospels (c. 1001-25), for Columba’s Psalter (1084), and those in Trinity College, Dublin, for Dimma’s book (1150), and for the Book of St. Moling. There are also the cumdachs for Cairnech’s Calendar and of Caillen; the library of St. Gall possesses still one more silver cumdach, which is probably Irish.

   1909, The Library, page 369

   There were noteworthy exceptions to the Irish plain bindings, but there have been identified only a very few Celtic bookbinders who ornamented their bindings in something of the styles they used in decorating their cumdachs.

   1946, Edith Diehl, Bookbinding, Its Background and Technique, volume I, New York, N.Y.; Toronto: Rinehart & Company, Inc., page 130