from Western Asia.
Among Celtic artists, as among those of later times, the practice of working in various materials was common to the same individual, and Dagæus (d. 586) may compare with Dunstan, Eloy, Tuotilo, and others.
To apply these observations to the style of illumination which now comes under our notice it may be said that if we allow the cross and arch to be copied from the Byzantine MSS. introduced from abroad, the details are undoubtedly supplied by the wickerwork and textile netting familiar to the everyday life of the artist. Assisted by the fertile imagination of bardic lore in snakes, dragons, and other mythic monsters of heroic verse, the illuminator produces a pencilled tapestry of textile fabric or flexile metal-work as marvellous as it is unique. No amount of description can give a true idea of what Celtic work is like; it must be seen to be comprehended. One glance at a facsimile of such a MS. as the Book of Kells or the Lindisfarne Gospels, or those of St. Chad at Lichfield, or wherever, as at St. Gall, such work is to be met with, will supersede the most laboured attempt at description. We must therefore at once refer the reader to the facsimile. When that has been inspected, we may proceed. In the first place it may be noted that with these Occidental MSS. begins the importance and development of the initial, which, indeed, as regards the illumination of Western Europe, is the very root of the matter. It is the development of the initial letter first into the bracket, then into the border, which forms the great distinction of the “Art of Paris,” as Dante calls it, from that of Byzantium. The latter is almost always of a squared or tabular design, traced and painted on a ground of burnished gold. The former exhausts itself first in fantastic lacertine forms, twisted into the shapes of the commencing letters or words of the writing, to which the suggestion of some Byzantine MS, perhaps occasionally adds a frame. Next come birds, dogs, dragons, vine-stems, and spirals embedded in couches of colour; but, whatever its character, always it is the letter that governs and originates the ornament. Only at the very end of its life, when the border has completely eclipsed the initial, is the idea of origin forgotten. Then, indeed, we find the border treillages of flower-stem or leaf-work starting from meaningless points of the design, or scattered shapelessly at random.
When we meet with work of this sort, we need no further proof that the real art is dead. We have before us in such a performance—a trade production—a mere object of commerce, valuable so far as it is the result of labour, but not as a work of art.
According to the Abbé Geoghegan,[11] Christianity was known to the people of Ireland in the fourth century. The Greek Menology asserts that it was carried thither by Simon Zelotes, but this is contradicted by the Roman Breviary and the Martyrologists. Simeon Metaphrastes attributes it to St. Peter, Vincent of Beauvais to St. James. Unreliable as these traditions may be taken singly, they nevertheless agree in placing the conversion of Ireland at a very early date, probably, as Geoghegan says, in the fourth century. It is certain that about the middle of the sixth century an Irish prince of distinguished ancestry, and himself a saint, led a band of missionaries from Donegal to Iona. It is curious to observe that the event is almost contemporary with the renovations of Justinian at Byzantium, and only a short time before the founding of the famous Abbey of Monte Cassino by St. Benedict. Before the existence of the Benedictine Order there was a monastery at Durrow, in Ireland, and in this monastery the aforesaid prince was educated. His name was Columba. At least, so he is called, but whether it be merely in allusion to his mission—“the Dove”—or really a patronymic, it is hard to say. He was the messenger of peace to the natives of Iona, and even the name of the island seems to suggest an allusion to the Old Testament missionary to the Ninevites, Jonah. The Irish missionaries called the spot to which they went I. columcille, “the cell of the Dove's isle,” or Columba's cell. It is usually spoken of as the Monastery of Iona. Columba went on many other missions, but ultimately returned to his beloved Iona, where he died in 597, the year after the arrival of Augustine at Canterbury.
[11] Hist. de l'Irlande.
His companions busied themselves with the transcription of the Gospels for the use of new converts, after the model of those they had seen and used at Durrow. It is even traditionally asserted that Columba himself took part in the work, and transcribed both a Psalter and a Gospel-book, moreover, that one of the Iona Gospel-books written by him is still in existence. This MS., whether the work of St. Columba or not, and probably it is not, is the earliest known monument of Irish calligraphic art. It is known as the Book of Kells, and there is no doubt that it is the most amazing specimen of penmanship ever seen. It is at once the most ancient, the most perfect, and the most precious example of Celtic art in existence. It exhibits the striking peculiarities and features of the style—the band work knots and interlacings, such as may be seen on the stone crosses which mark the burial-places of British and Irish chieftains. Witness, for instance, the Carew, or the Nevern Cross, described in the Journal of the Archœlogical Institute, iii. 71, which might be taken to represent an initial “I” wrought in stone. There is no foliage, no plant form at all. It is not, therefore, derivable from Romanesque, Byzantine, or Oriental ornament. It is indigenous, if not to Ireland, at least to those prehistoric Aryan tribes of which the Irish were a branch. Its basis is the art of weaving, and in some respects resembles the matting of Polynesia much more closely that the vine-stems of Sicily or the arabesques of Byzantium. Spirals occur that bewilder the eye, yet are so faultlessly perfect that only the magnifying-glass brings out the incredible accuracy of the drawing. Among them are mythological and allegorical beasts, snakes, and lizards—thought to represent demons, like the gargoyles of Gothic architecture—in every conceivable attitude of contortion and agony. There are also doves and fishes, but the latter, being sacred emblems together with the lamb, are seldom made grotesque. It was a monkish legend that the devil could take the shape of any bird or beast, except those of the dove and the lamb.
CHAPTER VII
CELTIC ILLUMINATION—continued
The Iona Gospels—Contrast with Roman and Byzantine—Details—Treatment of animal forms—Colour schemes—The Gospel-book of St. Columbanus—That of Mael Brith Mac Durnan—The Lindisfarne Gospels—Cumdachs—Other book-shrines.
We have seen that in both Roman and Byzantine MSS. the titles and beginnings of books were merely distinguished by a lettering in red or gold, rather smaller, in fact, than the ordinary text, but rendered distinct by the means referred to. The handwriting, too, is clear and legible, whether capital, uncial, or minuscule.
In absolute contrast to all this the Iona Gospels have the first page completely covered with ornament. On the next the letters are of an enormous size, followed by a few words, not merely in uncials, but in characters varying from half an inch to two inches in height. The page opposite to each Gospel is similarly filled with decoration, separated into four compartments by an ornamented Greek cross. This may, of course, be simply a geometrical device in no way connected with Greece, but, taken in connection with other features, we see in it an indication of contact with Byzantine work and the side of illumination which deals rather with the tabular enrichment of the page than the development of the initial. Further, the writing, though large, is not easily legible, for it is involved, enclaved, and conjointed in a manner sufficiently puzzling to those who see it for the first time.
The plaiting and inlaying are certainly borrowed from local usages, and the survival of the same kind of interlaced plaiting in the Scottish tartans is some evidence of the long familiarity of the Celtic race with the art of weaving. When we remember that some of the early illuminators
