EARLY CHRISTIAN ART
date of the manuscript are hotly contested which, if
nothing else, indicates the close community of culture
that existed between Ireland and the peoples of what
is now Scotland. Smaller manuscripts—the so-called
pocket gospel books—were produced in Ireland. The
Stowe Missal—a copy of the Gospel of St. John bound
together with a service of the mass and a commentary
on its spiritual meaning—was made about the year
800 A.D. Altogether simpler than the high style of
painting, it has fine script and workmanlike ornament.
It was considered a venerable relic and was later
enshrined. The Book of Armagh(early ninth century)
is remarkable for its elegant script and line drawings.
One characteristic Irish phenomenon is the book-
shrine—a box-shaped reliquary, sometimes of metal-
covered wood but also sometimes of entirely metal
construction—that seems to have derived from the
practice of the early Roman liturgy of keeping the
book of mass readings in a sealed box. The earliest
surviving example is the one found in dismantled
condition near a crannog in Lough Kinale that bore a
bronze cross on its front. Fine examples that were
preserved by hereditary keepers include the Shrine
of the Cathach made in the later eleventh century;
the Shrine of the Stowe Missal made in the later
eleventh century; and the Soiscél Molaise, restored
around 1000 A.D., which bears a fine motif of a cross
and evangelist symbols.
An intriguing reliquary is the belt-shrine found in a
bog at Moylough, County Sligo. Dating to the eighth
century, it contains the leather belt preserved in its hinged
segments. It carries a large imitation buckle and coun-
terplate in a style reminiscent of the large buckles of
seventh-century burials in Burgundy. Other applied orna-
ments of glass, enamel, and stamped silver mimic the
belt stiffeners of the prototypical continental belts. Could
this have been the belt of an Irish holy person who had
traveled abroad, or could it have been made to enshrine
the belt of someone from the continent who had come
to Ireland and who had been venerated as holy?
The appearance of freestanding high crosses is some-
what mysterious. Older theories proposed a very gradual
development of the form, largely in isolation over a
period of a couple of centuries. The evidence of inscrip-
tions and a newer approach to understanding regional
relationships all suggest that the phenomenon of the
high cross developed rather rapidly during the ninth
century and that massive external influences account for
much of the iconography and perhaps even for the form
of the wheeled cross itself. The native contribution is to
be seen in the ornamental detail where the familiar
themes of spiral and trumpet scroll, interlace, animal
interlace, and other patterns already well established in
metalwork make their appearance. The Irish sculptors
owed a great debt to contemporary Italian carvings and
to inspiration in other media. The figurative scenes that
dominate many ninth- and tenth-century crosses have
their roots in early Christian funerary sculpture, manu-
script, wall paintings, and ivory and even wooden
objects. Some crosses covered in ornament derived
from metalwork prototypes seem to be local transpo-
sitions to a native idiom of the idea of the crux gemmata
(the jeweled cross), the triumphant instrument of the
Redemption that was erected on Golgotha and remem-
bered in later Christian art such as the great apse mosaic
in St. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna. It is one of the
cherished myths of Irish Christian art that the develop-
ment of ambitious sculpture in immoveable stone rep-
resents a response by Irish churches tired of losing their
portable treasures to the Viking onslaught. On the con-
trary, the creation of these great works of art was a sign
of confidence on the part of patrons and artists, and the
sculpture is often associated with powerful and wealthy
religious foundations or their dependencies.
Carved stone grave markers gradually increase in
sophistication during the eighth and ninth centuries with
elaborate cross-forms and ornament. A particularly fine
series extending to the twelfth century is preserved at
Clonmacnoise, County Offaly. An elegant, probably
eighth century, slab at Tullylease, County Cork, with a
large cross similar to an example in the Lindisfarne
Gospels calls for a prayer for Berechtuin, probably the
founder of the monastery. These are all simple monu-
ments with essentially two-dimensional sculpture. At
Fahan, County Donegal, is a massive upright cross-slab
with a gabled top and a high-relief cross. It has a Greek
doxology inscribed on it. The cross-slab is broadly anal-
ogous to similar monuments in Pictland and an eighth
or ninth century date for it seems plausible.Later Developments
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Irish art under-
went a revival when important reliquaries were created
(the Shrines of the Cathach, Stowe Missal, St. Patrick’s
Bell, and St. Manchan’s Shrine) or repaired and other
new works of importance—crosiers and objects such
as the Cross of Cong—were created. These new pieces
hark back to earlier styles in what appears to have been
a conscious attempt at revival of old glories, but they
also incorporate the Scandinavian animal ornaments.
In sculpture, a new style of high cross appears with a
large relief figure of Christ on the front. Decoration in
the Romanesque style is carved on the new churches
of stone that appear on many sites. The revival asso-
ciated with the reform of the Irish church and the
emergence of a new and formidable type of kingship
was short-lived—it lingered only briefly after the
Anglo-Norman Invasion.
MICHAEL RYAN