[Footnote 67: "That these buildings (St. Columb's House at Kells and St. Kevin's at Glendalough), which are so similar in most respects to each other, are of a very early antiquity, can scarcely admit of doubt; indeed, I see no reason to question their being of the times of the celebrated ecclesiastics whose names they bear."--(Dr. Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p. 430.) In his late edition of Adamnan's _Life of St. Columba_, Dr. Reeves, when describing the Columbite monasteries and churches founded in Ireland, speaks (p. 278) of Kells as "having become the chief seat of the Columbian monks" shortly after the commencement of the ninth century. Among the indications of the ancient importance of the place which still remain, he enumerates the fine old Round Tower of Kells, its three ancient large sculptured crosses, the "curious oratory called St. Columbkille's House," and its great literary monument now preserved in Trinity College, Dublin--namely, the _Book of Kells_. He quotes the old Irish _Life of St. Columba_, followed by O'Donnell, to show that it is there stated that the saint himself "marked out the city of Kells in extent as it now is, and blessed it;" but he doubts if any considerable church here was founded by Columba himself, or indeed before 804. He grounds his doubts chiefly on the negative circumstance that there is "no mention of the place in the _Annals_ as a religious seat" till the year 804. But the _Annals of the Four Masters_ record two years previously, or in 802, that "the church of Columcille at Ceanannus (or Kells) was destroyed" (vol. i. p. 413), referring of course to an _old_ or former church of St. Columba's there; whilst the _Annals of Clonmacnoise_ mention that two years afterwards, or in 804, "there was a new church founded in Kells in honour of St. Colume."--(See _Ibid._, footnote.)[68] The learned editor of the _Annals of the Four Masters_, Professor O'Donovan, has translated and published, in the first volume of the _Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society_, an ancient poem attributed to St. Columba, and which, at all events, was certainly composed at a period when some remains of Paganism existed in Ireland. In this production the poet makes St. Columba say, "My order is at Cennanus (Kells)," etc.; and in his note to this allusion Dr. O'Donovan states that at Kells "St. Columbkille erected a monastery in the sixth century."--(_Miscellany of Archaeological Society_, vol. i. p. 13.) Some minds would trust such a question regarding the antiquity of a place more to the evidence of parchment than to the evidence of stone and lime. The beautiful _Evangeliarium_, known as the _Book of Kells_, is mentioned by the _Four Masters_ under the year 1006 as being then the "principal relic of the western world," on account of its golden case or cover, and as having been temporarily stolen in that year from the erdomh or sacristy of the great church of Kells.