Origin of Medieval Illumination

       Books in the classical period had of course been ornamented with illustrations, but the illumination of books (in the medieval sense) did not originate with the Greco-Roman calligraphers of the Empire. We cannot suppose that it sprang into life in Ireland, but certainly its first European manifestation was in Irish MSS., and the art had not been received by the Irish from any of the European nations. The only alternative is, however, far fetched, that Christian missionaries from the East (or with Eastern training) had preceded St. Patrick and brought with them those characteristics of Syro-Egyptian art which are traceable alike in Irish and in Byzantine work. The documentary period of writing in Ireland is of course later than the actual practice of the art in that country, but it is earlier than amongst any other of the unromanized barbarians. Adamnan, writing about A.D. 670, relates the life of St. Columba (dead in 598) and describes the writing materials which that saint had used in his scriptorium in the island of Hy. As he had learned to write in Ireland and had begun his priestly career there before 540, we may place the historically ascertainable use of writing in Ireland as beginning with the early years of the sixth century. Irish monks carried the art to Britain, to Gaul, to Germany; and those elaborate and intricate patterns to which the French give the names of "lettres perlees, lettres brodees, spirales, noeuds, et entrelacs, initiales ophiomorphiques, ichthyomorphiques," &c., and which they claim as indigenous productions of Carolingian France in the early part of the ninth century were fruits of the teaching of Irish missionaries, in the houses which they founded in Britain and all over the continent in the seventh century.

Plates 14 and 15. "In the text he says that Sir Frederick Madden had declared the MS. to be "unquestionably of the eighth century," but he prefers to call it of the seventh, in agreement with Casley and Astle (who thought so in the last century !). He ought to have accepted the opinion of a recognized master in palaeography like Sir Frederick, so far as the writing is concerned, in preference to that of two men living at a time before the science had attained anything like exactness in England."

        Some of the remarks in the preceding section will be found in strong disagreement with the authority of Professor Westwood, whose work on the Anglo-Saxon and Irish miniatures is such a splendid testimony to his zeal and ability. His conjectural dates are, however, frequently misleading. An instance is that of the so-called Bible of St. Gregory, figured on his plates 14, 15. In the text he says that Sir Frederick Madden had declared the MS. to be "unquestionably of the eighth century," but he prefers to call it of the seventh, in agreement with Casley and Astle (who thought so in the last century!). He ought to have accepted the opinion of a recognized master in palaeography like Sir Frederick, so far as the writing is concerned, in preference to that of two men living at a time before the science had attained anything like exactness in England. He ought also to have seen or felt, while making his elaborate facsimile, that the nearest parallel to the style of illumination of his "first page of Luke" is to be found in Carolingian work executed about 800; and that no great space of time could separate the two examples. The English work was probably the earlier, but it can hardly have been accomplished before 770. The purely Irish patterns in the columns supporting the arch, with the excellent picture of St. Luke that surmounts it, prove by their combination that the work is Anglo-Saxon of its second and finer period, that is after the phase in which it was merely and wholly imitative of the Irish. With these considerations in view, and a remembrance of Bede's words quoted above in relation to Anglican education in Ireland about A.D. 650, the assignment of the Bible of St. Gregory to the seventh century is a pure absurdity. Again, Westwood's facsimile from the Golden Gospels of Stockholm, bears the attribution " Sixth Century? Ninth Century? " while its position in the book, as the first plate, tends to show that Professor Westwood leaned to the earlier date. Yet the book is unquestionably not Irish; its artistic illustration is a singularly fine development of Anglo-Saxon art think of Anglo-Saxon art and chrysography in the sixth century! The writing cannot be mistaken for Roman uncials of the sixth century; it is plainly in Carolingian uncials of the latter half of the eighth. The book seems to have been illustrated by an Anglican hand, and written by a Frankish one, probably on the continent rather than in England.

       Books in Irish or Saxon-Irish writing are found all over the continent. As they were written in monasteries founded by Irish missionaries during the seventh and eighth centuries, they only indicate that a succession of Irish or of Saxon monks continued to make their way for a considerable period to France, Germany, and Italy. The writing can hardly be said to have left any traces in the various national hands of those countries, but the Irish house at Bobbio probably transmitted the use of the interlaced ornamentation which revived in Italy several centuries later.

       Most of the motifs of decoration in the illuminated Carolingian, Visigothic, and Lombardic MS. were derived from the Irish methods of ornamentation introduced through monastic houses and schools established by Irish monks on the continent. French writers deny their indebtedness to foreigners for it, since, as they say, the pattern was always at hand in the tessellated and mosaic pavements of Gallo-Roman architecture. But there is something of unnecessary vanity in the denial. The Irish MSS. of the seventh century are the first in Europe which contain decorative initials of the kind. This fact is indisputable, and is not affected by the question of original derivation, which in my opinion is to be sought for in the east among those Hellenised Syrians and Egyptians who were the

propagators of Christian art as well as Christian religion in the west.

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, You Are Reading Chapter 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 chapters

Plates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22