Early Irish art illustrates in a very remarkable manner those
distinctive qualities of Irish nature, which we know from the legendary
traditions have characterized our people from the earliest times. The
earnest religious faith, the love of gorgeous colouring, the tendency
to express ideas by symbol, and the vivid imagination that delights in
the strange and unusual, often fantastic and grotesque, in place of the
absolute and real, combined with the patient and minute elaboration
of details, so truly Oriental in its spirit, specially mark Irish
ornamentation. All these reverential, artistic, fanciful, and subtle
evidences of the peculiar Celtic spirit find a full and significant
expression in the wonderful splendours of early Irish art, as seen
chiefly in the ancient illuminated manuscripts.
The reputation of Irish artists for excellence in these costly
productions became so extended throughout Christian Europe in the early
ages, that at the request of many nations Ireland sent forth numbers of
her most cultured artists as teachers and scribes to the great foreign
schools and colleges; and numerous examples of skilled Irish work are
still existing in Continental Libraries, where they are held as amongst
the most sacred of the national treasures. For a full and comprehensive
illustration of this subject it would be impossible to over-estimate
the artistic and historic value of Mr. Westwood’s magnificent book on
Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts. The volume contains _facsimiles_
from all the principal illuminated Celtic manuscripts of Europe,
executed with the most scrupulous care, chiefly by Mr. Westwood
himself, the majority of them with the aid of a magnifying glass, so
minute and delicate are the lines of ornamentation to be represented.
In fact, for accuracy of information and richness of illustration,
the volume surpasses anything yet published on Celtic art in the
United Kingdom, and may claim equality with the grand, but enormously
expensive work of Count Bastard, on early French Manuscripts. Mr.
Westwood, in a learned preliminary dissertation, gives his views on
the origin and development of Hiberno-Saxon art during the first
thousand years of the Christian era, and finds in the ornamentation,
as observed by Kemble and others, a distinct _Opus Hibernicum_ and an
_Opus Anglicum_, but the Irish the more perfect of the two, and wholly
different from Continental art of the same era.
The earliest manuscripts of Greece and Rome show nothing like this
distinctive Celtic art; nor the Italian mosaics, nor the wall paintings
of Herculaneum or Pompeii—beautiful as are the representations of the
human figure found there; nor does Byzantine art afford any similar
types. From whence, then, did the Irish, the acknowledged founders of
Celtic art in Europe, derive their ideas of ornamentation? This is
one of the historical mysteries which, like the origin of the Round
Towers, still awaits solution. One must travel a long way, even to
the far East, before finding in the decorations of the ancient Hindoo
temples anything approaching to the typical idea that runs through
all Irish ornamentation. It is, however, an incontrovertible fact,
and one proved to demonstration by Mr. Westwood’s learning, labour,
and researches, that a time when the pictorial art was almost extinct
in Italy and Greece, and indeed scarcely existed in other parts of
Europe—namely, from the fifth to the end of the eighth century—a
style of art had been originated, cultivated, and brought into a most
marvellous state of perfection in Ireland absolutely distinct from
that of any other part of the civilized world; and which being carried
abroad by Irish and Saxon missionaries was adopted and imitated in
the schools of Charlemagne, and in all the other great schools and
monasteries founded by them upon the Continent.
In the middle of the ninth century the influence of the artists of
Germany reacted on the productions of England, and in consequence of
the more frequent communications of learned men with Rome, classical
models began to be adopted, floral decorations were introduced, and
figures in the Byzantine style. With these the Irish ornamentation was
combined, principally in the framework of the design. Then it gradually
disappeared from England, where it was replaced by Franco-Saxon and
Teutonic art; so that after the tenth century Mr. Westwood has not
found any Anglo-Saxon manuscript executed in the Lindisfarne or Irish
style. But it remained for several centuries longer in use in Ireland,
though the ornamental details exhibit little of the extreme delicacy
of the earlier productions. With reference to these, Mr. Digby Wyatt
observes that, in delicacy of handling and minute but faultless
execution, the whole range of palæography offers nothing comparable to
the early Irish manuscripts, especially “The Book of Kells,” the most
marvellous of them all. One cannot wonder, therefore, that Giraldus
Cambrensis, when over in Ireland in the reign of Henry II., on being
shown an illuminated Irish manuscript, exclaimed, “This is more like
the work of angels than of men!”
The peculiarities which characterize true Celtic art, whether in stone,
metal work, or manuscript illumination, consist in the excessive and
minute elaborations of intricate ornamental details, such as the
spirals, the interlaced ribands, and the entwined serpents and other
animal forms, so familiar to the students of our national art treasures
in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. These forms are invariably
found in all Irish decoration. The initial letters and ornamentations
of the ancient manuscripts are reproduced in the gigantic stone crosses
and the more delicate metal work of the shrines and reliquaries;
and from this identity of ornamentation the age can be determined
of all art monuments or remains, and objects readily classified as
cotemporaneous. The Irish adhered with wonderful fidelity to their
peculiar art ideas for at least eight hundred years; and while the
Saxons coquetted with Frankish art, and finally gave themselves up
wholly to Norman influence, the Irish continued their exclusive
devotion to the ancient and national Celtic type. Intensely national,
indeed, were those early artists; they gave ideas to the world, but
received none in exchange. In their pictures Goliath appears as an
Irish warrior, and David bears an Irish harp in his hands while
our Lord Himself, in one of the Irish sculptures, is represented
wearing the Irish dress. When the nation fell under Norman sway in
the twelfth century, Norman ideas naturally became triumphant; but
everything that is most beautiful and interesting in antique Irish
art belongs to the pre-Norman period—the gold ornaments, the gorgeous
manuscripts, such as the Gospels of Durrow and of Kells; the grandest
of the sculptured crosses, Cormac’s Chapel, that architectural gem
of Western Europe; the richly decorated shrines, such as that of
St. Monchan, “the most important ancient shrine now in existence in
these islands,” Mr. Westwood states; and specially interesting to us
Irish, from the recorded fact that it was covered with pure gold by
Roderick O’Connor, the last king of Ireland, and was, as the Annals
state, the most beautiful piece of art ever made in Erin. All these
evidences of high cultivation and artistic skill were in existence
long before the Norman adventurers set foot on our shores. Irish art,
however, died out with Irish Nationality; and in two centuries or so,
after the Norman Conquest, it ceased to exist, and was replaced by
the pseudo-Roman or Irish Romanesque style. Irish art can be easily
traced throughout the Continent by the peculiar ornamentation which
characterized it; and wherever, amongst the early manuscripts in
foreign libraries, one is found surpassing all the rest in the singular
beauty and firmness of the writing, and the exquisite delicacy of
the minute and elaborate illuminations, there at once an Irish hand
is recognized as worker, or an Irish intellect as teacher. The same
symbols and ideas run through all of them—there are the same strange,
elongated, contorted, intertwined figures; the same rich mosaics of
interlaced lines—so minute, so delicate, so rich in brilliant colours,
that the border of the page seems powdered with crushed jewels. There
is something almost melancholy in this devotion to a species of art
in which there was nothing to stimulate the feelings or to warm the
heart. No representation of nature’s glories in tree or flower, or the
splendour of human beauty; the artist’s aim being rather, it would
seem, to kill the human in him, by forcing his genius to work only on
the cold abstractions of spirals and curves, and endless geometrical
involutions, and the infinite monotony of those interlaced lines,
still coiling on, for ever and ever, through the centuries, like the
windings of the serpent of evil, which they were meant to symbolize,
through the successive generations of our fated humanity. Truly, these
artists offered up the sacrifice of love. Their lives and the labour
of their lives were given humbly, silently, reverently to God, and
the glory of God’s Word. They had no other aim in life, and when the
work was done, a work so beautiful that even now the world cannot equal
it, there was no vainglorious boast of himself came from the lips of
the artist worker, but the manuscript ends with some simple devotional
words, his name, and the desire to be remembered as the writer, like
the _orate pro me_ on the ancient tombstones; this was all he asked or
hoped for in return for the years of youth and life he had incarnated
in the illuminated pages of the Gospels. For in those early ages art
had no existence save in union with religion. Humanity brought together
all its most precious ointments to pour upon the feet of Jesus. In
Ireland especially—the Island of Saints—whatever genius could devise or
the hand of the artist could execute was lavished upon some work that
would recall the presence of God to the people, stimulate His worship,
or make known His word; upon the Psalters, the Gospels, the crosses,
the costly shrines, the jewelled cases for a saint’s relics, the
golden covers for the holy books. But nothing of that period has come
down to us that shows a luxury in domestic life. The Word of God was
shrined in gold, made rich with gems and enamels, but the people lived
their old simple life in their old rude huts; and even the kings gave
their wealth, not to erect palaces, but to build churches, to endow
abbeys, to help the cause of God, and speed the holy men who were His
ministers, in their crusade against evil, ignorance and darkness.
It is no idle boast to say that the Irish were the teachers of Europe
from the seventh to the tenth century in art and religion. Mr. Westwood
has visited all the great libraries of England and the Continent
and found abundant evidence that Irish art, or Hiberno-Saxon art,
was diffused over Europe during that period. The Greek and Latin
manuscripts are not illuminated, but are adorned with intercalated
pictures; Irish art differs from them in many respects—amongst others,
in having the figures and rich ornamentations printed on the leaves
and borders of the book itself. He has given _facsimiles_ from Irish
manuscripts now existing in the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham,
Lichfield, Salisbury, Lambeth, the British Museum, and other places;
and, passing to the Continent, has laid under contribution the great
libraries of Paris, Rouen, Boulogne, St. Gall, Milan, Rome, Munich,
Darmstadt, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and even St. Petersburg, and thus
proved the excellence to which Irish artists, or Saxon artists educated
in Irish schools, attained more than a thousand years ago. Nor is it
strange that Ireland should have been the teacher, considering its
early Christianity, which had made some progress amongst the people
even in St. Jerome’s time; a little later amongst the Britons; but
at the end of the sixth century Augustine and his monks found the
stolid Anglo-Saxons still in the bonds of their ancient paganism
and Wodenism. The Celtic race received the Christian faith gladly as
early as the fourth century, but it was a difficult matter to bring
light to the Saxon soul. It has at all times proved itself rather
opaque in nature. The Saxon tribes of Germany did not renounce their
idols till forced to it by the strong coercive power and keen sword of
Charlemagne, in the latter half of the eighth century.
With Christianity came to Ireland the knowledge of letters; at least
no older inscription has been found than that on the pillar stone
of Lugnadon, St. Patrick’s nephew, which may still be seen beside
the ruin of St. Patrick’s oratory in one of the beautiful islands of
Lough Corrib;[11] and the oldest manuscript existing in Ireland is the
Book of Armagh, a copy of St. Jerome’s Latin version of the Gospels
written in the old Roman letters, and very valuable for the beauty
of the writing and the various drawings it contains. Learning was at
once consecrated to the service of God in those early days, and to
multiply copies of the Gospels was the praiseworthy and devout task
of the first great teachers and missionaries. The Book of Durrow and
the Book of Kells, both of the early part of the sixth century, are
believed to be the work of St. Columba himself. The latter, the Book of
Kells, has filled all critics with wonder and admiration. It is more
decorated than any existing copy of the Gospels, and is pronounced by
learned authorities to be “the most beautiful manuscript in existence
of so early a date, and the most magnificent specimen of penmanship
and illumination in the Western World.” They are both written in the
Latin uncial character, common to Europe at the time; and here it may
be noticed, in passing, that the so-called Irish alphabet is simply the
Latin alphabet modified by the first missionaries to suit the Irish
sounds, as Ulphila, the apostle of the Goths, invented an alphabet of
mingled Greek and Latin characters, in order to enable him to make his
translation of the Gospels into Gothic; and as the Greek missionaries
invented the Russian alphabet, which is a modified form of the Greek,
for a like purpose. That the Irish should retain the old form of the
Latin letters, while most of the other nations of Europe have discarded
it, is to be regretted, as nothing would facilitate the study of Irish
so much at the present day, when one has so little leisure to spell out
with much painful endeavour the barbarous symbols of a bygone age, as
the adoption of the modern English alphabet. The first Irish book that
was ever printed appeared in 1571, and is now in the Bodleian Library.
It is a catechism of Irish grammar, and the Irish alphabet has suffered
no modification or improvement since. It was about the end of the
sixth century that the fame of Irish learning and the skill of Irish
artists began to extend to England, and from thence to the Continent;
and Irish scribes were employed to make copies of the Gospels and teach
the splendid art of illumination in the English monasteries. From
that period till the end of the ninth century the Irish were a power
in Europe from their learning and piety—eminent in Greek as well as
Latin, and the great teachers of scholastic theology to the Christian
world. The Gospels of Lindisfarne, executed by monks of Iona in the
seventh century, and now “the glory of the British Museum,” form a most
important element in the early history of Celtic art, as this book
seems to have been the principal model for succeeding artists.
[11] See Sir William Wilde’s work, “Lough Corrib: its Shores and
Islands,” where a drawing of this inscription is given.
In the splendid folio copy of the Gospels at Copenhagen of the tenth
century, supposed to have been brought to Denmark by King Canute, the
figure of St. Matthew seated, while another saint draws back a curtain,
is copied from the Gospels of Lindisfarne, while the border is in
the tenth century style. The Gospels of St. Chad, now in Lichfield
Library, are in the Irish style of the eighth century, and are very
noticeable as having marginal notes in Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and ancient
British, the latter being the oldest specimen of the ancient British
language now in existence. The illuminations also are copied from the
Lindisfarne book. St. Chad, it is known, was educated in Ireland,
in the school of St. Finian. There are Irish Gospels at Durham of
the eighth century. The Gospels of Mac-Regal are at Oxford, and the
Gospels of Mac-Duran, the smallest and most beautiful known, are in
the Archbishop’s palace at Lambeth. As Saxon art progressed and became
influenced by Roman models, the Irish scribes were chiefly employed
wherever elegance, harmony of colour, and extreme delicacy of touch
were particularly requisite, as in the borders and initial letters.
Thus, the Psalter of St. Augustine, said to be from Rome, and which
resembles in style the manuscript Virgil of the fifth century, in the
Vatican, is framed in pure Celtic art. On the Continent, also, the
borders of the great manuscripts were generally confined to Irish
hands. A Latin copy of the Gospels at Treves, evidently produced by
one of the establishments founded by the Irish upon the Rhine, is
remarkable for a combination of Celtic, Teutonic, and Franco-Byzantine
art. The borders are Irish while the figures are Byzantine. These
illuminated borders have the glitter and radiance of a setting of
jewels, and are thus admirably suited to fulfil the true object of all
ornamentation, which Mr. Ruskin defines as being “beautiful in its
place, and perfect in its adaptation to the purpose for which it was
employed.”
In the sixth century St. Gall, born in Ireland, accompanied St.
Columbanus to the Continent, and founded the monastery in Switzerland
that bears his name. Here many interesting manuscripts and fragments
are still preserved, remarkable for the old Irish marginal notes to the
Latin text. Those are considered by philologists of such importance
that thirteen quarto plates and _facsimiles_ from them are given
by Dr. Ferdinand Keller in the Zurich Society’s Transactions. An
interesting relic of an Irish saint is also preserved in the Cathedral
of Wurtzburg—a copy of the Gospels of St. Kilian, martyred in 689, and
which was found stained with his blood on opening his tomb about fifty
years after.
Thus, the Irish can be tracked, as it were, across Europe by their
illuminated footsteps. They were emphatically the witnesses of God,
the light-bearers through the dark ages, and above all, the faithful
guardians and preservers of God’s sacred Word. A hundred years before
Alfred came to Ireland to be educated, and went back to civilize his
native country by the knowledge he had acquired there, the Christian
schools of Germany, under the direction of Irishmen, had been founded
by Charlemagne. Through France, along the Rhine, through Switzerland,
Italy, and Spain, the Irish missionaries taught and worked, founding
schools and monasteries, and illuminating by their learning the darkest
pages of European history. One of the great treasures of the Imperial
Library of Paris is a beautiful Irish copy of the Latin Gospels. The
College of St. Isidore, at Rome, possesses many Irish manuscripts—one
of them is a Psalter, folio size, written throughout in letters a
quarter of an inch long, and which is considered to be the finest of
the later works of the Irish school. The celebrated Golden Gospels of
Stockholm are of Hiberno-Saxon art of the ninth century. This book has
a singular history. It was stolen from England, and disappeared for
ages, but finally was discovered at Mantua in the seventeenth century,
and purchased for the Royal Library at Stockholm. St. Petersburg
also possesses a highly illuminated copy of the Gospels, which was
taken from France at the time of the great Revolution, and found its
way to the far North. It is a perfect and beautiful specimen of the
Irish style of the eight century, and the initial letters can only be
compared to those of the Book of Kells. All these Irish manuscript
Gospels are, without exception, copies of St. Jerome’s Latin version.
No Irish translation of the Gospels has ever been found. Learning was
evidently considered a sacred thing, indispensable for the priesthood,
but not necessary for the masses; yet it seems strange that while the
learned and pious Irish saints and missionaries were devoting their
lives to multiplying copies of the Gospels for other nations, and
disseminating them over Europe, they never thought of giving the people
of their own land the Word of God to read in their own native tongue.
The leading Teutonic races, on the contrary, with their free spirit,
were not satisfied with accepting the doctrines of the faith, simply
as an act of obedience to their teachers. They demanded the right of
private judgment, the exercise of individual reason, and the Gospels
were translated into Gothic as early as the fourth century by Bishop
Ulphila for the use of the Gothic nation.
This remarkable book, called the “Codex Argenteus,” is now in the Royal
Library of Upsala, having, after many dangers and vicissitudes, at last
found its way to the people who hold themselves the true descendants of
the Goths, and whose king still bears the proud title of “King of the
Swedes, Goths, and Vandals;” and an edition of it, with annotations,
has been published by the learned Professor Andreas Uppstrom, of Upsala.
Towards the close of the tenth century the Frankish style of
ornamentation, a blending of the classical and the Byzantine, had
almost entirely superseded the beautiful and delicate Celtic art both
in England and on the Continent, and about the fifteenth century it
disappeared even from our own Ireland, the country of its origin.
The gorgeous missals and illuminated Gospels, instinct with life,
genius, holy reverence, and patient love, were destined to be replaced
soon after by the dull mechanism of print; while Protestantism used
all its new-found strength to destroy that innate tendency of our
nature which seeks to manifest religious fervour, faith, and zeal by
costly offerings and sacrifices. The golden-bordered holy books, the
sculptured crosses, the jewelled shrines were crushed under the heel of
Cromwell’s troopers; the majestic and beautiful abbeys were desecrated
and cast down to ruin, while beside them rose the mean and ugly
structures of the Reformed faith, as if the annihilation of all beauty
were then considered to be the most acceptable homage which man could
offer to the God who created all beauty, and fitted the human soul to
enjoy and manifest the spiritual, mystic, and eternal loveliness of
form, and colour, and symmetry.
Since that mournful period when the conquering iconoclasts cast down
the temples and crushed the spirit of our people, there has been no
revival of art in Ireland. It is not wonderful, therefore, that we
cling with so much of fond, though sad, admiration to the beautiful
memorials of the past, and welcome with warm appreciation the efforts
of able, learned and distinguished men to illustrate and preserve them,
as in this splendid and costly book which Mr. Westwood has contributed
to Celtic art.