Page:Cambridge Medieval History Volume 3.pdf/597

554 types and story. These paintings were brought from Rome, and the fortunate discovery of the painted walls of Sta Maria Antiqua in that city, which were decorated by Greek artists just at the time that Benedict Biscop was making his collection, suggests very clearly what these pictures must have been like. It cannot be doubted that they were of eastern origin. Many works of art, which we still fortunately possess, have been attributed to the same age, but some of them are so remarkable as compared with other works of that time on the Continent that Commendatore Rivoira and Professor Cook of Yale have argued with great detail that they could not have been produced at that time. At Ruthwell and Bewcastle, on either side of the Scottish border, are the shafts of two tall standing crosses elaborately sculptured with figures and pattern-work, with long inscriptions in runes, and, in the case of Ruthwell, with Latin inscriptions as well. Rivoira, approaching the question from the Italian point of view, and with a wide knowledge of European art, would assign them to the twelfth century, and Professor Cook argues that they were probably erected by King David of Scotland about 1140.

These noble cross shafts, however, are only the most famous of a large class of monuments of more or less the same type, which must belong to about the same period. If they have to be dated in the twelfth century, the Irish crosses also, as is recognised by the critics just named, cannot be earlier. Such a scheme in all its implications would make a tremendous alteration in British archaeology. On the other hand, the early dates of some of the Saxon works are so firmly established that they cannot even be attacked. Such are large numbers of early Saxon coins, some of which bear devices analogous to the decorations of the crosses, while others, like the coins of Offa, have fine heads. Others, again, like a coin of Peada, have runes of similar form to those on the crosses. If a selection of such coins was published in comparison with the crosses, much that has been said as to the improbability of the early date of these would have to be ruled out. We also possess the splendid illuminated text written and decorated at Lindisfarne very early in the eighth century, with its braided ornamentation, symbols of the four evangelists, and other designs which closely resemble the ornament and symbols on the crosses. There is also the noble Codex Amiatinus, once owned by Abbot Ceolfrid, and taken with him as a present for the Pope when he left England for Rome in 716, which has some points of resemblance. It has further been shown that the Latin inscriptions, which describe the sculptures on the Ruthwell Cross, are in an alphabet of a semi-Irish character resembling the letters of the Lindisfarne book, while the runic inscription of this cross contains a version of the old English poem on the Dream of the Holy Rood, which Dr Bradley attributes to the authorship of Caedmon. Another monument, the date of which has not been