CHRISTIAN REMAINS We may safely date the beginning of Christianity as a power in Ireland to somewhere about A.D. 350-400. There probably were individual Christians even before this date, but they cannot have made much impression on the life of the community. But after about three centuries we begin to find definite traces of a specific Christian art. The earliest church buildings, and for a long time the most important ones, were built of wood, not of stone; and these have all disappeared through fire and decay. Stone building was in a rudimentary stage of development throughout the coun try ; the extensive forests supplied the most obvious and the most easily worked building material. Probably also carved wooden plates did duty for sepulchral memorials : wooden tomb "stones" are still to be seen in some of the country graveyards. Early remains very likely lie hidden in some of the monastic sites ; but these are effectually sealed from the excavator by modern inter ments. The Viking raids of the 9th and loth centuries must be responsible for the disappearance of many of the earliest works of art.
The only remains of wooden constructions that we possess are the fragments of framed houses found in some of the lake dwellings (commonly called in the country crannogs)—artificial islands made by piling earth and stones on the bottoms of the shallower lakes, and after securing them with a revetment of stones or wattlework, erecting a dwelling-house in the middle. These structures began in the La Tene period, were much in use (to judge by the remains found within them) about the 7th cen tury, and were not wholly abandoned until about the end of the i6th century. The fragmentary structures which they bear are insufficient for us to gauge fairly the skill of the ancient builders in wood. Certain features of the earliest stone churches are evi dently translations, so tAa speak, of constructional details proper to wood into stone, where they are merely otiose. The arch is not used for the larger openings in the earliest structures, though its use for small windows shows that its principle was understood from the first. The stones are set without mortar, or at most in mud. There is much variety in the character of the masonry, but this depends on the skill of the local masons and on the materials at their disposal, and is of no chronological significance. After the Irish missions to the Continent began, the stone building in the country began to improve notably. The Romanesque style was introduced and successfully practised : some very remarkable buildings were produced especially in the izth century, such as King Cormac's chapel at Cashel, the Nunnery church at Clon macnois, and the cathedral of Clonfert.
The round towers possess neither the historical nor the archi tectural importance which controversialists once attributed to them. They are simply the detached campaniles of the churches with which they are invariably associated : they were erected dur ing the time of the Scandinavian raids, when watchtowers and keeps were as necessary as belfries to the churches which had treasures to guard.
The scriptorium was one of the busiest centres of industry in an ancient monastery. A sufficient number of manuscripts survive to prove the nature of the work there carried on. The oldest manuscript completely in the Irish language, the Book of the Dun Cow (so called from the animal from whose hide its vellum was said to have been manufactured) was written at Clonmacnois some time before A.D. I 106, but is founded on much earlier exem plars, now lost. These literary manuscripts however concern us less than the illuminated books, of which a considerable number was produced : those that survive date from the 8th century to the iith. The documents thus enriched are psalters, service-books, and, especially, gospels; the enrichments consist not so much in miniatures as in an artistic treatment of the letters of the text itself; these are worked with great ingenuity into fantastic knots and monograms, and decorated with applied ornament of great beauty. In the Gospels of Kells (probably of the middle of the 9th century) the art attains its high-water mark; some pages of this manuscript, especially the monogram of the name of Christ at the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew, rank among the finest illuminations in existence.
The art of these illuminations is one with the art of the metal worker and the sculptor, differing only in the medium employed. It is a provincial phase of the great decorative art practised by Celtic and Teutonic peoples alike, though with differences of idiom, in the 6th to the 12th centuries. It consists of devices founded on such geometrical devices as spirals and interlacements, and on figures of animals or parts thereof, of ten conventionalized almost out of recognition. Patterns derived from the vegetable world are found in certain of the Teutonic regions, but are almost com pletely absent from the Celtic works of art.
Like the art of illumination, that of the metal-worker was almost wholly devoted to the service of the Church—save for ornamental pins and brooches, of which a number of very fine specimens have survived. Of these the best-known is the (falsely so called) Tara brooch, a work probably of about A.D. 800. It was found on the sea-shore at Bettystown, south of Drogheda, and is now preserved in the collection of the Royal Irish academy. On the reverse side is elaborate chasing, founded mainly on animal forms; on the face are sunk panels filled with ornament in ex tremely delicate filigree.
The more specifically ecclesiastical works in metal may be classed under the headings of bells, shrines, chalices and pro cessional crosses. The bells used by the early Irish ecclesiastics were adaptations of cattle-bells, like those in Switzerland and elsewhere. They are rectangular, not round, in horizontal section. The earlier specimens, including the famous bell of St. Patrick, are of iron (sometimes brazed on the surface) ; the later are cast bronze. Bells are usually without ornament, save occasional decorative treatment of the handle ; a few specimens are engraved with simple decoration. One is inscribed, and can be dated A.D. 908.
The shrines are of several different varieties, depending upon the nature of the object to be enshrined. Caskets for bones were made in the form of the ordinary church building of the time (under stood to be the form in which the Temple of Solomon had been designed) ; or else in the shape of the part of the body from which the bone came. The best-known example of the latter type is the shrine of St. Laichtin's forearm, in the Royal Irish academy's collection, a work of the 12th century. Those meant for books were flat square boxes, of the size and shape of the volume which they were intended to contain. The books were not preserved in these shrines for perusal; they were holy relics, and were not meant to be taken out of their receptacle. Had they not been thus
preserved, they would have perished : for the book which had be longed to a notable saint was accredited with miraculous powers; strips were cut from it to make amulets, water was poured over it to acquire healing virtues, and, according to Bede, books from Ireland were in especial request in England, for scrapings from their pages were a remedy against snake venom. Shrines for bells and crosiers, again, took the form of the object enclosed within them.
The solitary chalice which has survived from the days of Celtic Christianity far surpasses the best of these objects in artistry. It was found near Ardagh, Co. Limerick, and is now in the Royal Irish academy's collection. It is richly decorated with bands of chased and filigree panels, and its beauty is enhanced by the use of enamel, crystal, mica, glass and amber. It is a worthy com panion to the Gospels of Kells, with which it is probably con temporary.
The one processional cross that has survived is the so-called Cross of Cong, made at Roscommon in or about 1125 to enshrine a fragment of the true cross. Its late date is reflected in the character of its ornament ; the pure interlacements and other geo metrical decoration of the Ardagh chalice give place to patterns founded on contorted animal figures. The cross-head, which alone remains, is about 2ft. high. It rises from the jaws of a monstrous animal head. The surface is covered with bronze plates, enriched with silver and enamel, and with applied panels of open work or what we may call false filigree representing animal figures in fan tastic knots. In the centre of the face is a large crystal, behind which we may presume that the relic, or what is left of it, is still lying. On the sides are inscriptions in Latin and in Irish, explaining the purpose of the cross, and asking for prayers for all those concerned in its manufacture. The back had an inlaid saltire, presumably of gold, which some sacrilegious thief has picked out.
Numerous remains of sculptured art in stone exist in Ireland, beginning about the middle of the 8th century. They take the form of sepulchral slabs, carved crosses, or the sculptured decoration of church buildings. At Clonmacnois there is a valuable series of slabs, commemorating inmates of the monastery. These sometimes bear the names of persons known from other sources, and are therefore datable : it has been found possible to determine a sequence of styles from these, extending over four centuries. Of much greater importance are the standing crosses, erected in various important ecclesiastical centres. These are in some cases memorials of individuals, such as the fine cross erected at Clon macnois by Abbot Colman in memory of his friend and patron, Flann, king of Ireland, who died in A.D. 914. Others seem to mark the limits of the monastic enclosure. Others are dedicatory, erected, perhaps, in fulfilment of a vow ; such is the "Cross of Patrick and Columba" at Kells, Co. Meath. The earliest standing crosses are perfectly simple, being merely stones carved into a cross form. But about the beginning of the 1 oth century a much greater elaboration began. The so-called Celtic cross had by now been evolved—a Latin cross with a circular wheel surrounding the centre, probably an attempt to suggest a halo of glory. The surface of the shaft and head of the cross is usually divided into panels, each containing either ornamental devices or else figure subjects. The great majority of the latter which have been iden tified represent biblical scenes, chosen for their homiletic value— the Fall of Man, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and so forth. A few scenes which cannot be identified may possibly represent local events familiar at the time of the erection of the monument, but now forgotten.
More prominent and characteristic remains of mediaeval Ire land are the numberless castles. At first wooden towers (bretesche) erected on earth mounds (motto), these developed along lines parallel to those followed by castles in England. They are thus hardly monuments of Irish archaeology pure and simple, but of the archaeology of an extension of England. Naturally none of the temporary wooden towers survive, though the place-name Brittas, which is not infrequent, preserves a reminiscence of them, "Brittas" being a corruption of bretesche; and there are numerous mottes still in existence, such as the splendid example at Castle town Geoghegan, .Co. Westmeath. The castles of Ireland are of all sizes and dates, from the great structure at Trim, founded in 1173, down to the humble "peel-towers"—small square structures of two or three storeys—some not earlier than the 17th century. The history of Ireland after the Norman invasion is a history of decay and degeneration, and it is vividly reflected in all the remains of antiquity that have come down out of those troubled centuries.