The Tenth Century

       The Irish school of writing, after its triumphs of the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, lost much of its home-life in the midst of the struggles with the Norsemen. In England and on the continent its influence was still felt for some time longer; even in the thirteenth century many of the Psalters produced by English illuminators have the initial letter B decorated in the style adopted from the Irish six centuries before. Irish MSS. of any age are excessively rare; even the comparatively worthless transcripts of the eighteenth century are in no inconsiderable request.

       The English school continued to blend its Irish style of writing with the illustrative pictures and borders which may have been entirely of native production in the eighth century, as was seemingly the fact, or may have originated from the artistic tendencies of Frankish Gaul, as has already been surmised. They were, in any case, influenced to some degree by examples of late Koman work, introduced by the Italian missionaries who came to convert the Saxons of South England after the Angles of the north had been converted by the Irish monks of Ion a. It was really this English phase of decorative art which blossomed into Anglo-Norman in the twelfth century.

       The French schools were still Carolingian and splendid, but their preeminence was not maintained after the breaking up of the empire of Charles the Great. The revolutions of the ninth century led to the making of nations. France ceased to be the Gallo-Koman province of a Frankish monarchy. A French language and a French nation emerged into existence in the tenth century, but the grand ornamental and calligraphic work of the Franco- Gallic time was no longer equaled. The Caroline writing, which attained its greatest beauty about the middle of the ninth century, gradually lost its elegant boldness, tending towards angularity and crampness when the eleventh century had begun.

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, You Are Reading Chapter 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