- The Social Implications of Celtic Art -
leaving unromanized only Ireland and parts of Wales, northern Britain, Brittany, and
probably small pockets almost anywhere in old Celtic lands, though it is clear that
by later Roman times Britain had developed its own high level of higher culture
(Henig 1989: 14-19).
Christianization largely robs us of a main source of evidence, for deposition of
grave goods receded to almost nothing among Christian communities. Harden (1955:
134, 157) notes what a disadvantage this is for glass studies, and east-west oriented
inhumation graves, with no grave goods, can be found (e.g. at Cologne) by the mid-
second century (Kramer 1958: 329-39). But Christianity changed social outlook in
subtler ways: poverty became a virtue, and much private wealth was channelled into
the hands of the church, creating a dichotomy of aristocracy, the ecclesiastic proba-
bly stronger than that achieved by priestly classes among pagan Celtic communities.
Without our documentary records it would be difficult to give a true account of this
new sociological situation; here artwork can, however, still help considerably
(Alcock 1963, 1982; Bruce-Mitford 1989: 189).
The Celtic peoples who had been suppressed or thrust out of Europe by Roman
power were by the sixth century creeping back in a different guise, as evangelists
of Christianity and of the ancient traditions of scholarship. For both, artwork was
a potent agent. Art can mark the change with great eloquence; by the late sixth
century Clovis's grandson Chilperic appeared as Apollo (with lyre) on a portal of
Notre Dame; the model was perhaps a Gaulish coin or medallion (Brogan, 1953:
188-9). About 590, Columbanus, a monk of Bangor on Belfast Lough on the north-
east coast of Ireland, travelled into Europe and set up a monastery first at Luxeuil (in
the remains of a Roman spa), to thrive and become a spiritual centre in eastern Gaul.
He moved on over the Alps to Bobbio (south of Milan), where he founded a
monastery and died in 6 15. Bobbio was one of the great early centres of manuscript
art and this connection with Ireland was bound to be fruitful.
In Britain in later Roman times social information can still be extracted from art-
works left on habitation sites. The continuing elaboration of dress-pins suggests the
persistence of the cloak rather than brooch-held dress: indeed, the elaborate brooches
were worn more as marks of rank and social position, as set out in the Irish Laws
(Henry 1965: 102). Evidence accumulates to show the attire of those who lived in the
residences and strongholds in the middle part of the first millennium AD; Figure 21.9
shows a fine one-piece shoe of thin leather that once walked the neatly split oak
boards lying on hazel wattle-work in the fifth to seventh centuries AD at Dundarn
at the head of Strathearn in Perthshire, the capital of the Pictish province of Fortrenn
(Alcock et al. 1989: 189ff. esp 200, 217-19; for the high ~tatus of shoes in earlier
Celtic contexts see Hochdorf, Moscati et al. 1991: 108).
Above all, Ireland, never romanized, must show the continuity through from
the pagan to the Celtic Christian world. In pagan context the horse and vehicle
gear show us a chieftaincy with its processionals (note the uniquely Irish leading
pieces: Jope, 1955: 38; Raftery 1982: figs 47-80, 95-8) passing imperceptibly into
the Christian tradition as seen on the art of crosses from the seventh century
onwards (Chapter 37). One cross (Henry 1965: pI. 79) shows such processions more
in a Christian context.
With the rise of pen and brushwork on vellum, art among Celtic communities of