EARLY CHRISTIAN ARTAt least two ambitious metal reliquaries may be
dated to the seventh century—both are made of
engraved tinned bronze plates with reserved designs
of Ultimate La Tène scrollwork. In addition to a
contemporary interest in hagiography, they clearly
signal the burgeoning cult of native saints. One is
preserved in the Irish monastery of Bobbio, Italy; the
other was found at Clonmore, County Armagh. Both
are so-called house-shaped shrines. Of the two, the
Clonmore shrine is the more highly decorated, with
a fine composition that recalls some of the spiral
scrollwork of the Book of Durrow. The lyre-shaped
patterns of the Bobbio shrine are simpler and may
have been executed abroad in an Irish idiom, con-
ceivably as early as the early seventh century when
St. Columbanus founded his monastery there.
It is with the Book of Durrow that we see clearly the
emergence of the insular Christian style. The place of
origin of the manuscript is disputed, but its broad his-
torical context is well understood. It was produced in
one of the monasteries of the Columban family of
churches in a milieu where Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and
Pictish influences were apparent. With its rich carpet
pages of spiral ornament, one page of animals of Ger-
manic inspiration, and its interlace patterns that ulti-
mately hark back to Mediterranean sources, Durrowis
an eclectic work that heralds the great flowering of the
arts in the following century. We cannot be sure of the
date of Durrow. Opinion has ranged from the early
seventh to the late eighth centuries A.D., with the bal-
ance favoring a date in the last quarter of that century,
but it is by no means a firmly established conjecture.
By the end of the seventh century, a rich polychrome
style had grown up in Ireland and parts of northern
Britain. Metalworkers probably led the way by adding
some of the colorful effects of Germanic jewelery and,
above all, the adoption of a radically modified version
of Germanic, especially Anglo-Saxon, animal orna-
ment. The summa of this style is to be found in a series
of metalwork objects and the Book of Lindisfarne, a
gospel book that was probably created around the year
700 A.D. at the monastery of that name. The metal
objects are primarily from eastern Ireland: the Tara
Brooch, the Donore door furniture, and the Hunterston
Brooch, which, although found in Ayrshire, is of an
Irish type. The style is typified by a brilliant and witty
use of animal patterns. The beasts are long bodied,
sinuously interlaced, and, while entirely fabulous, are
provided with convincing anatomical detail. The gos-
pels are self-evidently Christian and carry portrait
pages that clearly derive from Mediterranean proto-
types. The Tara and Hunterston Brooches are some-
thing new—hybrids of the native penannular form and
sumptuous Anglo-Saxon disk brooches. Their orna-
ment appears to have marked Christian overtones
recalling the three genera of beasts of Genesis and
showing symmetrically opposed beasts in a manner
reminiscent of the placement of animals in homage on
either side of a cross or chalice in Merovingian and
Ravennate sculpture. On the reverse of the Tara Brooch
there is a frieze of birds that echoes processions of
fowl on the Canon Table arcades of gospel manu-
scripts. The brooches are clear expressions of the per-
vasiveness of Christian ideas. The Donore door fittings
reflect the style of the Tara Brooch closely. Included
in the find is a lion-head door handle that clearly
belongs in an ecclesiastical context and is an Irish
interpretation of an antique form.The Eighth and Ninth Centuries
The emergence by about 700 A.D. of the polychrome
style set the tone for Irish metalwork and manuscript
painting for the next 150 years or so and also provided
the stone sculptor with much of his decorative reper-
toire. The great surviving achievements of that period
are the remarkable altar vessels from Ardagh, County
Limerick, and Derrynaflan, County Tipperary, a great
array of shrines and reliquaries, and some manuscripts
of undoubted Irish origin.
The silver chalice from Ardagh and the paten from
Derrynaflan have much in common; they both, like the
Tara Brooch, are examples of the high-polychrome met-
alwork style. The Ardagh Chalice largely conceals its
Christian symbolism, but it carries two medallions on
its bowl that contain prominent crosses of arcs. It also
bears the names of the Apostles in fine incised lines in
a sea of dot punctulations. The Derrynaflan Paten carries
scenes of Christian import in filigree, including one—a
stag and snakes—recalling a tale in the Physiologus.
The Derrynaflan Chalice is less colorfully ornamented,
but its filigree is of great interest because it shows ele-
ments of common Christian iconography—griffons,
birds, beasts, and quadrupeds, probably lions—that are
widespread in early medieval European sculpture and
metalwork as part of the Tree of Life and related motifs.
These patterns are not mindless “ornament” but are
carefully contrived symbols appropriate to the vessels
that carried the elements of the Eucharist.
The house-shaped shrine that made its appearance in
the seventh century is the most numerous of the surviving
pieces. Complete shrines from Ireland, Scotland, Italy,
and Norway survive, along with many fragments. It is
likely that all of these shrines contained corporeal relics.
The greatest manuscript of the period, The Book of
Kells,was, arguably, created on Iona and only brought
to Ireland in the tenth century. It nevertheless captures
in full the essence of the style in its sophisticated use
of animal symbolism, interlace, curvilinear ornament
and portraiture, and illustration. The provenance and