Illuminated Manuscripts in Classical and Mediaeval Times/Chapter 6

One of the most extraordinary artistic developments that ever took place in the history of the world has been the Celtic Monastic School of Art which in the seventh century reached its highest aesthetic and technical climax, more especially in the production of exquisitely minute gold jewellery and no less minute and richly illuminated manuscripts.

The Christian Church in the east of Ireland dated from an earlier period than the establishment of Christianity in England. It was founded about the year 430 A.D., and the monks of Ireland, owing to their remote position, were able for a long period to develope peacefully their artistic skill, undisturbed by such successive foreign invasions as those which for so many years kept Britain in a constant tumult of war and massacre.

Thus it happened that by the middle or latter part of the seventh century the Celtic monks of Ireland had learned to produce goldsmiths' work and manuscript illuminations with such marvellous taste and skill as has never been surpassed by any age or country in the world. Not even the finest Greek or Etruscan jewellery, enriched with enamels and studded with gems, can be said to surpass the amazing perfection shown in such a masterpiece of the goldsmith's art as the so-called "Tara brooch" in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. As a rule the skill of these Irish goldsmiths was devoted to the service of the Church in the manufacture of such objects as croziers, morses (or cope-brooches), shrines, chalices, textus-covers, receptacles for Bishops' bells, and other pieces of ecclesiastical furniture.

These precious objects are decorated by a variety of technical processes, such as applied filagree, repoussé or beaten reliefs, enamels, both champlevé and cloisonné, and inlay of precious stones, especially the carbuncle in minute slices, set in delicate gold cloisons and backed with shining gold-leaf. All these and other decorative processes were employed with unrivalled skill by the monastic goldsmiths of eastern Ireland, a fact which it is important to notice, since nearly all the methods and styles of ornament which occur in the Irish illuminated manuscripts of the same period are clearly derived from prototypes in gold jewelled work. It is in fact often possible to trace in a fine Irish manuscript of the class we are now concerned with, ornamental patterns of several quite distinct classes, one being derived from the patterns of spiral or plaited form produced by soldering delicate gold wire on to plain surfaces of gold, another being copied from gold champlevé enamels, and a third no less clearly derived from the inlaid rectangular bits of carbuncle framed in delicate gold strips or cloisons.

This strongly marked influence of the technique of one art on the designs of another is due to the fact that the arts both of the goldsmith and the manuscript illuminator were carried on side by side in the same monastery or group of monastic dwellings, and in some cases we have written evidence that the scribe who wrote and illuminated an elaborate manuscript and the goldsmith who wrought and jewelled its gold cover were one and the same person.

It was in the second half of the seventh century that the Celtic art of Eastern Ireland reached its highest point of perfection. To this period belongs the famous Book of Kells, now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, which was probably written between 680 and 700, and for many years was, with its jewelled gold covers, the principal treasure of the cathedral church at Kells. This church had been founded by Saint Columba, and so in old times this marvellous manuscript was usually known as "the Great Gospels of Saint Columba."

No words can describe the intricate delicacy of the ornamentation of this book, lavishly decorated as it is with all the different varieties of pattern mentioned above, the most remarkable among them being the ingeniously intricate patterns formed by interlaced and knotted lines of colour, plaited in and out, with such amazingly complicated lines of interlacement that one cannot look at the page without astonishment at the combined taste, patience, unfaltering certainty of touch and imaginative ingenuity of the artist. The wonderful minuteness of the work, examined through a microscope, fills one with wonder at the apparently superhuman eyesight of the scribe.

With regard to the intricate interlaced ornaments in which (with the aid of a lens) each line can be followed out in its windings and never found to break off or lead to an impossible loop of knotting, it is evident that the artist must have enjoyed, not only an aesthetic pleasure in the invention of his pattern, but must also have had a distinct intellectual enjoyment in his work, such as a skilful mathematician feels in the working out of a complicated geometrical problem.

The combined skill of eye and hand shown in the minute plaits of the Book of Kells places it among the most wonderful examples of human workmanship that the world has ever produced. By the aid of a microscope Mr Westwood counted in the space of one inch no less than 158 interlacements of bands or ribands, each composed of a strip of white bordered on both sides with a black line.

Giraldus Cambrensis, who visited Ireland in 1185 as secretary to Prince John, writes in the most enthusiastic language of the splendour of a similar manuscript of the Gospels which he saw in Kildare Cathedral. It shows, he says, superhuman skill, worthy of angels' hands, and he was lost in wondering admiration at the sight.

One class of ornament in the Book of Kells and in other manuscripts of this class consists of bands or diapers formed with step-like lines enclosing small spaces of brilliant colour. It is this class of pattern which is derived from the cloisonné inlay with bits of transparent carbuncle used in gold jewellery. Other ornaments consist of various spiral forms derived from the application of gold wire to flat surfaces of gold, a class of pattern which appears to have come, as it were, naturally to the gold-workers of many different periods and countries. Many of these spiral designs in the Irish manuscripts are almost identical with forms which occur so frequently among the gold ornaments of the Greek "Mycenean period," one among many examples in the art history of the world, which show the remarkable sameness of invention in the human mind at a certain stage of development whatever the time or the place may be.

It should moreover be noticed that this close imitation of metal-work is not limited to the separate details of the manuscripts. The main lines and divisions of the decoration on whole pages are accurately copied from the enamelled and jewelled gold or silver covers in which these precious Gospels were bound. Thus, the same design might appear in delicate goldsmiths' work on the covers of a Textus, and also might be seen represented by the illuminator in brilliant colours on a page within.

One form of ornament, which occurs very frequently in the Irish manuscripts, is what is often called "the trumpet pattern" from its supposed resemblance to a curved metal trumpet. This kind of spiral ornament is used not only in the Celtic manuscripts and goldsmiths' work, but also on bronze shields and other pieces of metal-work on a large scale. This special ornament is not peculiar to the Irish, but was commonly used by the Celtic tribes of Britain from a very early date.

United with these purely native types of ornament, we find in these Celtic manuscripts one curious class of foreign ornament derived from the patterns on imported pieces of textile stuffs woven in Arab looms. Among many strange forms of serpents, dragons and other monsters of northern origin, other animals, such as lions, eagles and swans, occur which resemble closely those represented with such perfect conventional skill on the rich silk stuffs and early Oriental carpets woven in Syria, in the Arab towns of Sicily and in other Moslem centres. These beautiful stuffs were imported largely into Northern Europe for ecclesiastical purposes, such as for the vestments of priests or to form wrappings round some sacred reliquary.

Though these Celtic manuscripts show such marvellous dexterity of touch and unerring firmness of line in every minute and complicated pattern, yet the monastic artist appears to have been absolutely incapable of representing the human form.

The figures of Christ and the Saints, which sometimes do occur in these manuscripts, are treated in a purely ornamental and (in its stricter sense) conventional way; the hair and beard, for example, are worked up into scrolls or spiral ornaments, and the draperies are merely masses of varied colour, with little or no resemblance to the folds of a dress.

The pigments used by the Celtic monks are very varied and of the most brilliant tints, prepared with such skill that after more than a thousand years they seem as fresh and bright as ever.

Among these pigments is included the fine murex purple which the Irish monks used occasionally to stain sheets of vellum like those in the Golden Gospels of the Byzantines. We are told by the Venerable Bede that the Irish monks had learnt how to extract this beautiful dye from a variety of the murex shell-fish which is not uncommon on both shores of the Irish Channel. Splendid as they are in colour, there is one curious feature in the early Irish manuscripts of the finest class, such as the Book of Kells; that is, that no gold or silver either in the form of leaf or as a fluid pigment is used. This seems specially strange when we remember the close connection there was between the arts of the goldsmith and of the illuminator of manuscripts among the Irish artists.

In later times, when the Celtic style of illumination was transplanted to England, gold was to some extent introduced, but in the finest Irish manuscripts of the best period, the latter half of the seventh century, gold is completely absent. Nevertheless, so great was the decorative genius of these Irish monks that, even without burnished gold and silver, their illuminated pages quite equal, not only in artistic beauty, but even in mere splendour of effect, any illuminations that have ever been produced.

In addition to the Book of Kells another manuscript of similar style and date and of almost equal splendour should be mentioned, the Book of Durrow, which, like the Book of Kells, was also known as the "Gospels of Saint Columba," who is said to have left behind him, at his death in 597, no less than three hundred manuscripts written with his own hand. It is not impossible that the Book of Durrow is one of these, as it bears some signs of being earlier in date than the Book of Kells.

From Ireland the art of illuminating manuscripts was carried by monkish colonists to the Western coasts of Scotland, and especially to the Island of Iona, where a monastery had been founded by Saint Columba in the latter part of the sixth century. Great numbers of manuscripts resembling in style the Book of Kells were produced in Iona; and offshoots from the monastery of Iona, established at various places on the mainland, became similar centres for the writing of richly decorated manuscripts. No less than thirteen monasteries in Scotland and twelve in England were founded by Irish monks from the mother settlement in Iona. In fact the whole of Britain seems to have owed its Christianity, during the Anglo-Saxon period, to the Irish missionaries from Iona, with the important exception of the kingdom of Kent, which was occupied by the Roman mission of Saint Augustine.

In the year 635, at the request of Oswald King of Northumbria, the Scottish king sent an Irish monk from Iona, named Aidan, to preach Christianity to the Northumbrian worshippers of Thor and Odin. Aidan selected the little island of Lindisfarne as the head-quarters of his missionary church, which, at first consisting mainly of a few Irish monks from Iona, rapidly grew in size and importance. In a few years, Saint Aidan, Bishop and Abbot of Lindisfarne, was able to establish a number of monastic houses throughout the Northumbrian Kingdom, and his own Abbey of Lindisfarne became one of the chief centres of Northern Europe for the production of fine illuminated manuscripts of the Celtic type.

After the death of Saint Aidan other Irish monks succeeded him as Bishop of Lindisfarne, and the school of manuscript illumination continued to flourish.

One of the most beautiful existing examples of the Lindisfarne branch of the Irish school of miniature work is the famous "Book of the Gospels of Saint Cuthbert " as it is called, now in the British Museum (Cotton manuscripts, Nero, D. IV). The history of this manuscript is a very curious one; it was written some years after Saint Cuthbert's death in 688, not during his lifetime as was formerly believed. Eadfrith, a monk of Lindisfarne in Saint Cuthbert's time, and subsequently eighth Bishop of Lindisfarne (698 to 721), was the writer of these Gospels, "in honour of God and of Saint Cuthbert," as he records in a note. The illuminations were added by the monk Aethelwold, afterwards ninth Bishop of Lindisfarne, and the elaborate gold, gem-studded cover of this magnificent textus was the work of a third monk of the same Abbey named Bilfrith.

In the ninth century the Viking pirates were constantly harrying the shores of Northumbria; more than once the Abbey of Lindisfarne was plundered and many of the monks were slain, till at last, in the year 878, the small remnant who had escaped the cruelty of the Northmen decided to leave Lindisfarne and seek a new settlement in the original home of the founders of Lindisfarne, the eastern coast of Ireland. In 878 the survivors set off, carrying with them the body of Saint Cuthbert, and the magnificent manuscript of the Gospels, which was the chief treasure of their Abbey, and which had been successfully hidden in Saint Cuthbert's grave at the time of the invasion of the Northmen. The monks crossed to the western shore of Northumbria, and there took ship for Ireland. A great storm, however, arose; their boat shipped a heavy sea which washed overboard the precious Gospels of Saint Cuthbert, which had been carefully packed in a wooden box. Eventually the little ship was driven back, and finally was stranded on the Northumbrian shore. Soon after reaching the land the fugitive monks, wandering sadly along the beach, found, to their great joy, the lost box with its precious manuscript thrown up by the waves and lying on dry land. According to the chronicle of Symeon (chapter xxvii.), the brilliant illuminations were quite uninjured by the sea-water; this is not literally the case; some of the pages are a good deal stained, but wonderfully little injured considering what the book has gone through.

When after many wanderings the successors of the exiles from Lindisfarne found, in 995, a final resting-place for the body of Saint Cuthbert in the Minster which they founded at Durham, the manuscript of the Gospels was laid on the coffin of the Saint. There it remained till 1104, when Saint Cuthbert's body was exhumed, and soon after it was sent back to Lindisfarne, where a Benedictine monastery had been founded in 1093 by some monks from Durham on the site of Saint Cuthbert's ruined Abbey.

There it was safely preserved till the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. The gold covers were then stripped off and melted, but the still more precious manuscript escaped destruction; it was subsequently acquired by Sir Robert Cotton, and is now one of the chief manuscript treasures of the British Museum.

In point of style the "Gospels of Saint Cuthbert" are a characteristic example of the Irish school of illumination, modified by transplantation to English soil. The intermediate stage in Iona and other monasteries of western Scotland seems to have introduced no change of style into the primitive Irish method of ornament. Whether produced in eastern Ireland or in western Scotland the manuscripts were the work of the same Celtic race, the Scots, who, at first inhabiting the north-east of Ireland, passed over to the not very distant shores of northern Britain to which these Irish settlers gave the name Scotland.

When however the Irish monks passed from Iona to Northumbria the case was different; they were surrounded with a new set of artistic influences mainly owing to the introduction into Northumbria of fine Byzantine and Italian manuscripts. The result of this was that though the Lindisfarne manuscripts continued to be decorated with exactly the same class of patterns that had been used in the Book of Kells and other Irish manuscripts for initials, borders and the like, yet in the treatment of the human figure a very distinct advance was made. Thus in Saint Cuthbert's Gospels the seated figures of the Evangelists are drawn with much dignity of form and with some attempt at truth in the pose, the proportions and in the disposition of the folds of the drapery. The monk Aethelwold who painted these miniatures must have had before him some fine manuscripts of the Gospels probably both of Byzantine and Italian style.

The whole result is a very splendid one, the Gospels of Saint Cuthbert in richness of invention and minute intricacy of pattern almost equal the Book of Kells; while the figure subjects, instead of being grotesque masses of ornament, are paintings with much beauty of line as well as extreme splendour of colour. Another modification is the introduction of gold and silver leaf, which are wholly wanting in the Book of Kells and the other finest purely Irish manuscripts.

Other typical examples of this combined Celtic and English style are the magnificent Gospels in the Imperial library in St Petersburg, and a manuscript of the Commentary on the Psalms by Cassiodorus now in the Chapter library at Durham. This latter manuscript, which dates from the eighth century, is traditionally said to have been written by Bede himself. The illuminations in this manuscript are specially rich with interlaced patterns, dragon monsters and diapers of the most minute scale, all purely Celtic in style, and all showing with special clearness their derivation from originals in goldsmiths' work. Not only the distinctly metallic motives of ornament are faithfully copied, but even the manner in which the gold-workers built up their elaborate manuscript covers by the insertion of separate little plates of gold filagree and enamel side by side on a large plate or matrix is exactly reproduced by the illuminator. As in the case of the Lindisfarne Gospels, the figures of the Psalmist which are introduced are very superior to any figures which occur in the purely Irish manuscripts, showing the distinct influence of Italian manuscripts of debased classical style.

Another very interesting example of the Anglo-Celtic school of illumination, with fine initials and a painting of an eagle of the characteristic Northern type, is in the possession of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; No. CXCVII. This is an imperfect manuscript of the Gospels containing only the Gospels of Saint Luke and Saint John. The decorative borders and initials have the interlaced Irish class of ornament. This interesting manuscript was (in the sixteenth century) in the library of Archbishop Parker, who inserted a note stating that it was one of the manuscripts which were sent by Pope Gregory to Saint Augustine. The actual date of the manuscript is probably not earlier than the eighth century, in spite of the ancient appearance of the figure painting. An earlier copy of the Gospels in the same library has full page miniatures of the two Evangelists of purely classical style, surrounded with architectural framework of debased Roman form, very little modified from similar Roman miniatures of the fifth century A.D.

Returning for the moment to the Irish school of Celtic art, it should be observed that richly illuminated manuscripts continued to be produced in Ireland till the ninth and tenth centuries, but these later manuscripts, fine as they are, do not equal in beauty the Book of Kells and other works of the seventh and eighth century. The Book of the Gospels of MacDurnan, who was Archbishop of Armagh from 885 to 927, is a good example of the later school of Irish art, in which the figures of the Evangelists are no less grotesque than those in the earlier manuscripts, while the interlaced and diapered patterns of the borders and initials are inferior in minute delicacy of execution to such masterpieces as the Book of Kells; see fig. 20.

Another still stronger proof of artistic decadence among the Celtic illuminators of this period is afforded by the Book of Deer in the Cambridge University library. This is a small octavo copy of the Latin Gospels after the Itala version. In style it is a mere shadow of the glories of early Irish art, with comparatively coarse and feebly coloured decorative patterns. It appears to have been written in Scotland by an Irish scribe during the ninth century.



One of the finest of the manuscripts of the later Irish type is the Book of the Gospels of MacRegol in the Bodleian library (D. 24. No. 3946) executed in the ninth century. The ornaments and the very conventional figures of the Evangelists are of the purely Irish type, unmodified by any imitation of the superior figure drawing in Byzantine and Italian miniatures.

The manuscript Gospels of Saint Chad in the Chapter library of Lichfield Cathedral is another example of the Irish school and of the same date as the last-mentioned book. It is named after Ceadda or Chad who, in the seventh century, was the first Bishop of Lichfield, nearly two hundred years before the date of this manuscript of the Gospels.

During the most flourishing period of Celtic art in Ireland its influence was by no means limited to the Northumbrian school of illuminators. The Irish types of ornament were adopted by the scribes of Canterbury and other places in the South of England; and on the Continent of Europe Celtic art was widely spread by Irish missionaries such as Saint Columbanus, and by the founding of Irish monasteries during the sixth century in various countries, as, for example, at Bobbio in Northern Italy, at St Gallen in Switzerland, at Wurtzburg in Germany, and at Luxeuil in France. In these and in other places Irish monastic illuminators worked hard at the production of manuscripts and spread the Celtic style of ornament over a large area of Western Europe. The library of St Gallen possesses a number of richly illuminated manuscripts of the later Irish type, exactly similar in style to those which during the eighth and ninth centuries were produced in the monasteries of Ireland and Scotland.

The result of this spread of Celtic influence was that borders, initial letters and similar ornaments of pure Irish style were used in many manuscripts in which the figures of Saints were designed after an equally pure Italian or debased classic style. A good example of this is the so-called Psalter of Saint Augustine (Brit. Mus. Cotton manuscripts Vesp. A. i) which for many centuries belonged to the Cathedral of Canterbury. This is a manuscript of the eighth century; one of its chief miniature paintings represents David enthroned, playing on a harp with a group of attendant musicians and two dancing figures round his throne. These figures are purely Italian in style, of the debased Roman School; but the arched frame which borders the picture is filled in with ornament of the Irish metal type, closely similar in style, except that gold and silver are largely used, to those in the Book of Kells, though inferior in minute delicacy of execution. It is of course very possible that the illuminations in this Psalter are the work of two hands, the figures being painted by an Italian illuminator and the borders by an English or Irish monk.

In later times, especially during the ninth century, the Celtic art of Ireland appears to have been largely introduced into Scandinavia by means of the Viking pirates who harried the whole circuit of the shores of Britain and Ireland, and finally in the ninth century established a Norse Kingdom in eastern Ireland with the newly founded Dublin as its capital. The Norsemen were far from being a literary race and it was not in the form of manuscript illuminations that Irish art was introduced into Norway and Denmark, but rather in the rich gold and silver jewellery with which the Viking chiefs adorned themselves, and also on a larger scale in the magnificently decorative reliefs which were carved on the wooden planks which formed the frames or architraves of the doors of the Scandinavian wooden churches in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, after the worship of the Thunderer had been replaced by the Faith of the White Christ.

Lindisfarne, Iona and the other chief Irish monasteries suffered again and again from the inroads of the Vikings, who found rich and easily won plunder in the form of gold and silver chalices, reliquaries and book-covers in the treasuries of the monastic churches undefended by any except unarmed and peaceful monks.

One curious record of Viking plunder is preserved in the Royal library of Stockholm. This is a very magnificent manuscript Book of the Gospels of the eighth century, commonly known as the Codex aureus of Stockholm. It is mostly written with alternate leaves of purple vellum, the text on which is in golden letters. In general style and in the splendour of its ornaments it closely resembles the Lindisfarne "Gospels of Saint Cuthbert," described above at page 88, and most probably, like the latter, was also written in the monastery of Lindisfarne. The interlaced ornaments of the Irish type are marvels of beauty, while the dignified drawing of the enthroned figures of the four Evangelists shows clearly the influence of Continental manuscript art. In this case the Celtic or English illuminator must have had before him a copy of the Gospels not of the Italian but of the Byzantine style, since the Evangelists and other figures in the book which are represented in the act of benediction do so in the Oriental not in the Latin fashion.

On the margin of the first page of Saint Matthew's Gospel an interesting note has been written about the year 850 by the owner of the Gospels, an English Ealdorman named Aelfred; this note records that the manuscript had been stolen by Norse robbers and that Aelfred had purchased it from them for a sum in pure gold in order that the sacred book might be rescued from heathen hands. Aelfred then presented it to the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, and new gold covers appear then to have been made for this Textus, as there is another note in a ninth century hand requesting the prayers of the Church for three goldsmiths, probably those who replaced the original gold covers which the Viking pirates had torn off.

Returning now to the manuscripts of the Celtic Church in Northumbria, in order to understand the gradual introduction into Northern England of the Italian or classical style of painting it is necessary to remember the struggle which took place during the seventh century between the adherents of the older Celtic Church and those who supported the Papal claims for supremacy throughout Britain.

On the one hand the See of Canterbury, founded by the Roman Saint Augustine, claimed jurisdiction in the north as well as in the south of Britain, in opposition to the Celtic Abbot of Iona, who was then the real Metropolitan of the Church in the north of England.

Wilfrid of York and Benedict Biscop of Jarrow spent many years in a series of embassies, between 670 and 690, backward and forward between Northumbria and Rome striving to introduce the Papal authority, by the aid of imported books, relics and craftsmen skilled in building stone churches in place of the simple wooden structures which at that time were the only ecclesiastical buildings in Northumbria. Very large numbers of illuminated manuscripts were brought to England during the many journeys of Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop; and important libraries were created at York and at Jarrow which led to these places becoming literary and artistic centres of great and European importance.

In the end, after many failures, Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, was successful in bringing Northumbria under the supremacy of Canterbury and Rome. In 664 a great Council was held at Whitby in the presence of the Northumbrian King Oswiu. Bishop Colman, the successor of Saint Aidan at Lindisfarne, represented the Celtic Church and the authority of Saint Columba, while Wilfrid appeared to support the authority of Saint Peter and the Bishop of Rome. After hearing that Saint Peter possessed the keys of Heaven and Hell, while Saint Columba could claim no such marvellous power, King Oswiu decided in favour of the Roman Supremacy. This decision, though based on such fanciful grounds, was a fortunate one for the English Church, since, in the main, learning, culture and established order generally were on the side of the Italian Church.

The practical result of this Roman victory at the Synod of Whitby in 664 was that a classical influence gradually extended itself in all the English centres for the production of illuminated manuscripts. It has already been noted that the splendid manuscripts of Lindisfarne and other Northumbrian monasteries, though of Celtic origin, show a distinct Roman influence in the improvement of the drawing of their figures of Saints. By degrees the Irish element in the illuminations grew less and less; though the interlaced patterns and fantastic dragon and serpent forms lasted for many centuries in all the chief countries of western Europe and form an important decorative element till the thirteenth century.

One of the chief schools of English manuscript illumination, that of the Benedictine Abbey at Durham, was raised to a position of European importance by the Northumbrian monk Baeda, afterwards called the Venerable Bede, who was born in 673, a few years after the Synod of Whitby.

As the author of a great Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Baeda ranks as the Father of English History; he did much to foster the study of ancient classical authors, was himself a skilful writer of manuscripts, and made the Abbey of Jarrow, where he lived till his death in 735, an active centre for the production of richly illuminated manuscripts of many different literary classes.

In the eighth century the schools of illumination in the Abbeys of Jarrow, Wearmouth and York in Northumbria, and of Canterbury and Winchester in the south were among the most active and artistically important in the world. In these schools of miniature painting was gradually created a special English style of illumination, partly formed out of a combination of two very different styles, that of the Irish Celtic illuminators and that of the Italian classical scribes.

This English School of illumination, which had been partially developed before the close of the tenth century, became, for real artistic merit, the first and most important in the whole of Europe, and for a considerable period continued to occupy this foremost position.