Illuminated Manuscripts: the Heir of the Ancient Celtic Artistic Tradition

        Although a lot of Roman influence can be seen in post-Roman Celtic art, the three dimensional sculpture, frescos and mosaics of the Romans quickly disappeared after their withdrawal. This was not due, in any part, to an “inability to master new techniques” as the Celtic artists were master adapters. Those roman techniques just did not lend themselves well to Celtic expression. Instead they adopted more compatible Germanic and Eastern Mediterranean artistic motifs into their post-Roman lexicon. The pattern of interlaced ribbon which would become “a striking feature of Christian Celtic art” came directly from Coptic Egypt. These foreign elements made their way into Celtic art through trade, Christian missions and “peaceful intercourse with the outside world”Celtic artists “responded eagerly to other cultures” and artists were able to pick and choose whatever elements of foreign art they thought would complement their Celtic style. The foreign elements adopted by Celtic artists, though still recognizable as of non-Celtic origin, were transformed into “forms which were particularly Celtic”. Celtic artists were not “slavish copiers of borrowed exemplars”. They were “imaginative adapters”; they adapted foreign elements to their ancient traditions and developed a new Celtic style of “great complexity and refinement”. Some have questioned whether or not this new style can even be considered Celtic due to the inclusion of such a large amount of foreign motifs.  Harding argues that this new style is indeed Celtic because the foreign material was “rapidly transformed, not through technical ineptitude, but through positive re-interpretation, into a novel, Celtic form”. It was the Celtic artist manipulating foreign motifs for a Celtic end, and it is because of this type of positive adaptation that we must view this new style as a continuation of early Celtic art. Bradly Smith echoes Harding’s belief he states that “Celtic artists were skilled enough to transform alien ideas into their own”.

        An example of the Celts’ ability to adopt foreign ideas and transform them into something entirely their own can be seen in the hanging bowls. Hanging bowls were adopted from Roman prototypes. By the 7th century CE they had been adopted by the Celtic Church for ecclesiastic use. The hanging bowls were made out of “very thin beaten or spun bronze; of roughly hemispherical shape and shouldered at the top”. They usually also had three of four escutcheons, often enameled, under the shoulder where the rings, by which they were suspended from, were attached. As the escutcheons illustrate, enamel work became very popular in the Christian period. The hanging-bowls also illustrate the “marriage of multi-colored enamels and miniature metalwork” which is a hallmark of early Christina Celtic art. According to Finlay, the fluidity of Celtic art would have been very difficult and would have required great skill to re-produce on the hanging bowls.  The exact purpose of the hanging bowls remains a mystery but everything from votive chalices to lamps, hand basins, cups and serving vessels have been proposed as possible uses.

        The skill of the Celtic metal worker was not limited to church treasures. A wide range of secular objects were also produced including buckles, horse furniture, penannular brooches and hand pins. Penannular brooches are open ring brooches of Roman origin. They illustrate the Celtic artists’ “talent for absorbing foreign elements and adapting them”; to the Roman proto-type Celtic artists added elements found in Anglo-Saxon jewelry and traditional Celtic motifs and ended up with an extraordinary work of uniquely Celtic art. Brooches began developing in the 5th century CE; they started out with zoomorphic ends, reminiscent of Anglo-Saxon jewelry, which eventually developed into a wedge shaped plate. The shape of the plate is of a completely Celtic origin. These wedge shape plates eventually became the dominant feature of the brooches. Over the next two centuries they grew larger and more elaborate, reaching their pinnacle in the 8th-9th centuries CE. The most famous of Celtic brooches is the Tara Brooch; it is an example of the heights reached by brooches in the 7th-8th centuries. The shape of the brooch reflects penannular brooches while the animals on its edges hint at a Germanic origin.

        Another group of clothing fasteners, known as hand pins, were also elaborated upon by the Celts. The hand pins, originally a short pin with a tiny head, were also of Roman origin and as with the penannular brooches they, too, became “much larger and more substantial”. The decorative motifs found on both penannular brooches and hand pins are reflective of those found upon the hanging bowls.

        According to Dr. Hendry, quoted in Finlay’s book, the Celtic artists “approach [to Christian] art was little changed” from their approach to pre-Christian art. But, since the “Church preached an imported idea with alien symbols” artists, therefore, had to find a way to make the Church’s ideas accessible to their communities in such a way which would not “add barriers or increase misunderstanding. Artists therefore relied upon a pre-Christian foundation of techniques and motifs to ensure the smooth transmission of ideas.

        One area of art which did change during the Christian period was realistic representation. Christianity demanded of the Celtic artist, for the first time, realistic, narrative art. Realistic representation was relatively alien to early Christian Celts, they preferred symbol over narrative. But, once “exposed to the full impact of Christian iconography” they could no longer avoid portraying realistic figures. Due to the fact that human figures were not a popular motif in Celtic art when they were attempted the artist did not “work with ant assurance”. An example of this lack of confidence can be seen in the Duvillaun Slab which is described by Finlay:

The body of Christ is accommodated almost precisely to the outline of the cross [… his] hands are little more than fins, the legs molded in profile, are much too short, and body and thighs are connected by whorls […] reminiscent of a pre-historic tradition

One also saw this type lack of assurance in the unrefined attempts at classical realism in the Roman period. Although, it is possible, that the artist was impeded by his sense of admiration of Christ for “he is more at ease with the smaller figures” in the background.

        While the crucifixion is depicted, Celtic artists tended to focus their attention upon the cross itself though they were fully aware that the crucifixion was the “significant event”. They chose to focus on the cross because, at least in part, “ancient instincts die hard”. To the Celts symbols held more power and meaning than any sort of realistic depiction ever could. Celtic communities were still very much linked with their pre-Christian past and, therefore, took much more comfort from the symbol of the cross than what could ever be gained from “any amount of representational art” .

        As mentioned above, Celtic art focused on the symbolic and due to that stone crosses became a central feature in the religious landscape of the Celts. The earliest Christian Celts had no churches; they worshiped in open enclosures. Dominating the space would often have been a wooden altar against a stone slab, often a stone cross, which marked the grave of a saint. Sacred stones featured prominently in the pagan religion of the Celts so it makes sense that sacred stones, in the form of stone crosses, would become a feature of Celtic Christianity. Stone crosses were so important to Celtic Christians that St. Patrick himself is recorded as carving crosses onto stones once associated with pagan worship. The stone crosses were either plain, incised crossed with a Latin and/or ogham inscription or, like the famous 8th century crosses, dominated by a great wheel. The 8th century crosses are, according to Finlay, one of the “supreme achievements of early Christian art”. The stylistic differences between the crosses and contemporary metalwork are easily explained; according to Harding, the “subtleties developed in metal-smith workshops are not always amenable to rendering in stone”.

        Not only did Christianity provide a new outlet for Celtic artists it, through monasteries, provided an unparalleled opportunity for the advancement of written learning. Written learning, as it became more prevalent, began replacing the oral laws and traditions of the Druids. Arguably the most important result of the combination of written learning, Christianity, Celtic art is the illuminated manuscript. Just “as metalwork was the appropriate medium for supreme art of the La Tene warrior society, so the vellum page of the gospel book [was the appropriate medium for] the artist whose patron had set himself to evangelize the world”

The Celtic artists who worked on the manuscripts naturally looked to traditional metal and stonework for guidance and inspiration.

        The Cathach of St. Columba is a copy of the psalms, believed to have been copied by St. Columba himself. It is described by Ruth and Vincent Megaw as using “Celtic designs to illustrate an artifact of a non-Celtic religion, in a non-Celtic language […] on vellum, alien to Celtic visual and oral tradition”. The motifs in the Cathach of St. Columba reflect the designs found in early Celtic metalwork. The Cathach of St. Columba shows the beginnings of the decorative tradition which would become fully developed in the Book of Durrow, the Lindisfarne and Linchfield Gospels and the Book of Kells. It is in manuscript illumination that one sees the emergence of a new era of Celtic art. Finlay describes this new style:

Christianity […] required the artist to render the gospels visually for an illiterate world […] the miraculous imagery with which he covered the pages of the great gospel books was culled from a dream lore which men of his race had told one another ever since they emerged from the bronze age.

The Book of Durrow, according to Megaw and Megaw, reflects a new era in the evolution of Celtic art. This new style is “totally at odds with classical art but [is] also contrasting with the space restraint of such late pagan Celtic creations such as the Petrie crown”. While it may be at odds with early, pagan Celtic art, it, in folio 3v reflects the Middleton Moor and Hitchin hanging bowl escutcheons “in its four corner elements and includes the trefoil motifs of Hitchin in the six similar elements of the ribbon interlace and in the top of each roundel” .

Within the Book of Durrow there are several artistic features, common to most of the illuminated manuscripts, which can be identified. Fist, is what Harding identifies as “Ultimate La Tene”. Ultimate La Tene’s ancestors include hanging bowls, brooches and hand pins and can be “principally [seen in] trumpet-link spirals”. Folio 3v of the Book of Durrow is possibly the best example of the Ultimate La Tene style. Animal interlace, found throughout the different manuscripts, derived from the Germanic tradition, by the 7th century had “transcended it Germanic origins […] so that [it had…] become an integral” aspect of Celtic art. Other features include ribbon interlace, aspects of geometric and rectilinear style.

The combination of Germanic, Mediterranean and Celtic motifs, the beginnings of which can be seen in the Cathach of St. Columba and the Book of Durrow,  reached “almost perfect flowering” in the Lindisfarne and Linchfield Gospels and the Book of Kells. The Chi-Rho pages of both the Linchfield Gospel and the Book of Kells have purely Celtic elements, including traditional swirls and eddies, which reflect back to pre-Christian times, mixed in perfect harmony with foreign elements like the interlaced birds which are along the outline of the letters. The indisputably most foreign element of these books is the portraits of the evangels which precede each gospel. They are an “awkward compromise between representational and symbol”  reminiscent of the Duvillaun Slab. The pages of the manuscripts, reminiscent of their pre-Christian past, contemporary metalwork and foreign motifs, link Christian Celtic art seamlessly with its pagan past. The manuscripts are the obvious heir to the ancient artistic tradition of the Celts.  

        But, the question of whether or not the illuminated manuscripts can be considered Celtic art due to the preponderance of foreign elements has been raised; is the “Golden Age” of manuscript illumination the heir to the artistic traditions of the early Celts? Dr. Hendry believes that they are. To him it is clear that manuscripts were created by an artist who was “building on a firm pre-Christian basis” and used ancient motifs and techniques in order to ensure the books were able to be understood by the broader, illiterate Celtic community. Finlay also believes that the manuscripts are the heir of the ancient Celtic artistic traditions and that one must recognize “The underlying taste and the sophisticated handling of all decoration [in the manuscripts] for [its] La Tene ancestry”. To Finlay, not only are the manuscripts undoubtedly Celtic, but, that they, more than any other type of art, “open the door upon the elusive fancies of the Celtic mind”. Mederos also feels that the manuscripts ate Celtic; to her they represent the pinnacle of Celtic abstractionalism.

Celtic art changed from a symbolic, abstract, pagan style to a partially realistic, narrative Christian style and yet remained identifiable as something uniquely Celtic. Each new element that entered Celtic art was masterfully adapted by Celtic artists and changed into a recognizable Celtic form. As this essay has illustrated each evolution in Celtic art, from La Tene, to the Roman period, to the post-Roman period, to the Christian era, is linked back to its predecessors through common stylistic elements. Within the illuminated manuscripts you find elements reflecting back upon the La Tene style, what Harding refers to as Ultimate La Tene, upon Roman inspired hanging bowls, brooches and hand pins. The continuity between the illuminated manuscripts and the preceding periods of Celtic art make then the undeniable heirs of the ancient Celtic artistic tradition.

Works Cited:

Harding, D. W. The Archaeology of Celtic Art. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007.

Haseloff, G. From “Celtic Enamel.” In The Celts, Edited by Sabatino Moscati, Otto H. Frey, Vanceslas Kruta, Barry Raftery, and Miklos Szabo, 638-642. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications Inc, 1991.

Finlay, Ian. Celtic Art: an Introduction. Farber and Farber Limited, 1973.

Graham-Campbell, James. “Celtic Metalwork. London, British Museum.” The Burlington Magazine 1232, no. 1044 (1990): 223-225.

MacMullen, Ramsey. “Celtic Renaissance.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 14, no. 1 (1965): 93-105.

Mederos, Judith E. “Influence of Barbarian Art on Romaesque Art.” International Center of Medieval Art 1, no. pre-serial issue (1963): 4-7.

Megaw, Ruth and Vincent Megaw. Celtic Art: From its Inrtoduction to the Book of Kells. New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 2001.

Ryan, M. From “The Early Medieval Celts.” In The Celts, Edited by Sabatino Moscati, Otto H. Frey, Vanceslas Kruta, Barry Raftery, and Miklos Szabo, 621-639. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications Inc, 1991.

Smith, Bradly. France: A History in Art. London: George Weidenfield and Nicolson Limited, 1984.

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