directly from the Continent—and largely in the ninth
century. The choice of biblical subjects, as well as their
arrangement and compositional details, on the High
Crosses when compared to those on fresco cycles in
Italy and Central Europe (e.g., Mustair in Switzerland)
suggest that fresco painters and stone carvers were
ultimately deriving their inspiration from common
sources (perhaps pattern books?), and trying to achieve
similar aims of enlivening the sacred scriptures with
pictorial cycles while at the same time trying to induce
thoughts of piety in the beholders. Byzantine manu-
scripts (e.g., Parisinus Graecus 510 in the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris) and other eastern examples may be
explained through a Roman “crucible.”
The Crucifixion
with many subsidiary figures is fea-
tured on lintels of twelfth-century churches, but with
few exceptions, it and other biblical material are absent
from twelfth-century crosses, which show instead a
more-triumphant Christ in high relief with outstretched
arms—and the figure of a bishop, at least in some cases
probably an embodiment of Hildebrandine church
reform, rather than national saints or local abbots, as
is sometimes thought.
The Crucifixion
is also repro-
duced on Romanesque plaques and later medieval metal
work, including shrines which also feature
The Virgin
,
Saints Peter and Paul
,
John the Baptist
,
Catherine of
Alexandria
, and possibly
Saints Patrick
,
Brigid
, and
Colum Cille
(
Columba
).
The greatest corpus of later medieval iconography
is to be found on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
tombs, particularly in Leinster. Here, we frequently
find
Apostles
as “Weepers,” but other subjects
include
The Crucifixion
,
The Trinity
,
Passion
scenes
(most notably at Ennis, where they copy English
alabasters),
Ecce Homo
,
Christ’s Pity
,
The Magi
, and
The Virgin
. In addition we find international saints
such as
Michael
,
Gabriel
,
John the Baptist
,
Margaret
of Antioch
,
Catherine of Alexandria
, and
Thomas of
Canterbury
, as well as the Irish saints
Brigid
and
Patrick
. More unusual are
St. Appolonia
, and Kilconnell’s
two French saints,
Denis
and
Louis of Toulouse
.
Saints Dominic and Francis
appear both on tombs
and on architectural sculpture (e.g., Clonmacnois),
where symbolic subjects such as the
Pelican Vulning
occur occasionally. Reformation zealots left few
wooden statues of the Gothic period, but sculptures
of
The Virgin
, with or without Child, are among the
most common survivors. There is a group of
God
the Father
,
Christ on Calvary
, and
John the Baptist
,
formerly in Fethard, County Tipperary, and now in
the National Museum in Dublin, where carvings of
local saints are also preserved. The inspiration for
these later medieval sculptures is generally foreign,
often English.
P
ETER
H
ARBISON
References and Further Reading
Alexander, J. J. G.
Insular Manuscripts, 6th to 9th Century
.
London: Harvey Miller, 1978.
Harbison, Peter. “Earlier Carolingian Narrative Iconography:
Ivories, Manuscripts, Frescoes and Irish High Crosses.”
Jahrbuch des romisch-germanischen Zentralmuseums,
Mainz
31 (1984): 455–471.
———.
The High Crosses of Ireland. 3 vols. Bonn: R. Habelt,
1992.
———.
Irish High Crosses with the Figure Sculpture Explained
.
Drogheda, Ireland: Boyne Valley Honey Company, 1994.
———. “The Biblical Iconography of Irish Romanesque Archi-
tectural Sculpture.” In
From the Isles of the North: Early
Medieval Art in Ireland and Britain
, edited by Cormac
Bourke, 271-80. Belfast: Stationary Office Books, 1995.
———.
The Crucifixion in Irish Art
. Harrisburg, Penn.: Thomas
More Press, and Dublin: Columba Press, 2000.
———
. From Genesis to Judgement:
Biblical Iconography on
Irish High Crosses
, Dublin:
2002.
Hunt, John.
Irish Medieval Figure Sculpture
. 2 vols, London
and Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1974.
MacLeod, Catriona. “Some Mediaeval Wooden Figure Sculp-
tures in Ireland.”
Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries
of Ireland
76 (1946): 155–170.
———. “Some Late Mediaeval Wood Sculptures in Ireland.”
Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
77
(1947): 53–62.
Ó Floinn, Raghnall.
Irish Shrines & Reliquaries of the Middle
Ages
. Dublin: Country House and the National Msuseum of
Ireland, 1994.
Stalley, Roger. “European Art and the Irish High Crosses.”
Pro-
ceedings of the Royal Irish Academy
90C (1990): 135–158.
See also
Armagh, Book of; Church Reform,
Twelfth Century; Durrow, Book of; Early
Christian Art; High Crosses; Illuminated
Manuscripts; Kells, Book of; Leabhar Breac;
Metalwork; Sculpture
IDLEMEN
See
Military ServiceIMMRAMA
The
immrama
(rowings about; voyages) make up a
genre which exemplifies the spirituality of early medi-
eval Irish self-exile and monastic pilgrimage. There
are four extant
immrama
, variously made up of prose
and poetry or a mixture thereof:
Immram Brain Maic
Fe buil
(Voyage of Bran son of Febal),
Immram curaig
Maíle Dúin
(Voyage of Máel-dúin’s curach),
Immram
Snédgusa ocus Maic Riagla
(Voyage of Snédgus and
Mac Riagla), and
Immram curaig Úa Corra
(Voyage
of the Uí Chorra’s curach). The surviving versions of
the tales range very widely in date.
Immram Brain
Maic Febuil
, on linguistic grounds datable to the eighth
century, stands very early in the development of narrativeICONOGRAPHY