More remarkably, however, the patterns on the brooch come from Jerusalem, specifically from the jars of holy oil sold to wealthy pilgrims at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the reputed burial place of Jesus. Inscribed on some of these jars were the images that lie behind the patterns on the Ballinderry brooch. They show Christ’s tomb under the dome of the church. Rising from the tomb is the Tree of Life on which Jesus ascends into Heaven. In Irish art, the face of Christ at the top of the tree is represented by a marigold. This is the image of the resurrection shown in abstract and condensed form on the back of the brooch. In addition, the millefiori cross on the brooch front represents the most famous monument to the resurrection in Jerusalem, the Crux Gemmata (jewelled cross).
‘There is a remarkably sophisticated iconography at work here’, says Conor Newman of NUI Galway, ‘and it is the same message which ultimately can be sourced to the iconologists at work in Jerusalem in the sixth century. So you have a brooch that is pagan in its original form but that carries this complex symbolism of the resurrected Christ’. Very early in the history of Irish Christianity, there is a brilliant mixture of continuity with older traditions and up-to-date cosmopolitan thinking. ‘You have somebody’, says Newman, ‘living around ad 600 in the midlands, whose brooch is probably made by the same person who made the biggest hanging bowl found at Sutton Hoo, and its iconography speaks not just to his religious persuasion, but to deep intellectual traditions that are most current in Palestine at the moment'.
27. Donore handle, 700-720
This object, found on a riverbank at Donore, Co. Meath, in 1984, is almost certainly the handle for a church door. Its opulence and sophistication tell us how far Irish monasteries had come from the largely ascetic impulses behind their foundation. It reveals a period of obvious prosperity, in which the church is fully integrated in the structures of power. The handle is a spectacular and supremely confident expression of technological mastery. It is made up of three pieces: a beautifully engraved circular plate of tinned bronze, a splendid lion’s head that was probably made from a wax model and a frame that was probably cast from a two-piece mould. The lion’s eyes are inlaid with brown glass made to look like amber.
In addition to its technological sophistication, the handle’s artistry is evidence of a confident cosmopolitanism. The lion’s head obviously comes from Roman traditions (similar images were used in Roman temples) and from biblical iconography (the lion is often a symbol for the evangelist St Mark). More specifically, decoration on the head of this lion is comparable to some of the decoration in the Lindisfarne Gospels, the superb illuminated manuscript from Northumbria. Thus, Irish, Pictish, Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon influences are mingling to produce a vigorous stew of visual styles. The idea of the lion as doorkeeper is also a more broadly European image: it is found, for example, on the door of a chapel in the palace of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne at Aachen.
All of this is a far cry from the origins of monasticism in the deserts of North Africa and Asia Minor as a way of fleeing the entanglements of the ordinary world. This ascetic strain certainly survived in Ireland, most notably in the stark remoteness of the monastic settlement on Skellig Michael, off the Kerry coast, but there is nothing stark or remote about the Donore handle. It speaks instead of a worldly, cosmopolitan church with connections to both local politics and international currents. It is significant, indeed, that Irish monks seeking to attain the original monastic ideal of removal felt it necessary to go to the Skellig, or even, by the ninth century, to Iceland. The need to go to such literal extremes suggests an awareness that the mainstream monasteries were increasingly integral to the economic and political life of the country. They enjoyed the patronage of, and were intertwined with, the powerful local dynasties that were asserting control over an expanding and increasingly productive society. This was a period of great clearances of forests, of the expansion of arable land and of the building of perhaps as many as 50,000 ring-forts as enclosures for well-off farmers. The church was a key part of this expansive Ireland.
This was a church that had felt confident enough to engage in long disputes with Rome about the correct date for the most important Christian festival, Easter. It was now developing new ideas about pilgrimage and penance that had a profound influence on Christianity as a whole; and it was not embarrassed to display its wealth and sophistication on a church door.
28. Book of Kells, c. 600
It has been called the Irish equivalent of the Sistine Chapel, and the analogy is not ridiculous. The Book of Kells is not merely the greatest work of Irish visual art, it belongs among the great creations of Western art.
One big difference between the Book of Kells and the Sistine Chapel, however, is that the manuscript is also funny and playful and combines its grand religious vision with a homely humanity. Everywhere there are touches of comedy: a letter extended to form a monk’s tonsure, a word broken in two by the paw of a cat. This is not to say that the task of making the book was anything but serious. It required the skin of 185 calves to make the vellum pages. The range of pigments used for its colours—orpiment, vermilion, verdigris, woad and, perhaps, folium—is far greater than that of other contemporary books. There may have been one guiding visionary leading the team of monks, as it is clear that on many pages the script and the images were created by the same hand.
There have long been arguments about where the book was made, with suggestions ranging from Spain to (more plausibly) the great monastery at Lindisfarne, in Northumbria. The consensus is that it was probably made on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, whose heavily Irish monastery was founded by St Colmcille in 563. It may well have been intended to honour his memory: from early on it was known as ‘the great book of Columcille’. Iona was raided by Vikings in 802 and 806, and many of its monks retreated to a new base at Kells. The probability is that they brought at least the bulk of the book with them: some subsequent work on it may have been done in this new monastery in Co. Meath.
Whatever its precise history, the book can be securely placed within Irish culture. The contorted animals, highly stylised humans and fabulously ornate initial lettering are rooted in the La Tène tradition of ‘Celtic’ art that by the ninth century had been alive in Ireland for 1,000 years. Many of the animal and bird images are comparable to those created by the great Irish metalworkers, but, in a way that is also typically Irish, the book is fed by many cultural streams, from Pictish sculpture in Scotland to Visigothic and Carolingian design in Spain and France, and even to the Coptic art of the North African church.
It seems that the monks who created the book paid more attention to the sumptuous visual art that decorates it than to the sacred text: there are numerous spelling mistakes, and at one point a whole page is repeated. This suggests that the book was never intended for practical use in readings at Mass, but rather was regarded from the beginning as an extraordinary object. The book’s richness lies in what art historian Roger Stalley has called: the constant humour and vitality of the ornament, the freshness of the pigments, the unwavering beauty of the script and the haunting ambiguity of the religious imagery. Its genius is that it is sacred but never solemn. The vividness, vibrancy and constant, joyful invention make it seem almost a living thing.
29. 'Tara' brooch, eighth century
In the late-nineteenth century, copies of the ‘Tara’ brooch were a must-have item of Celtic chic. One important nationalist organisation, Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland), headed by Maud Gonne, adopted it as its membership badge. The brooch, made over a thousand years earlier, became a symbol of the Irish cultural revival because it presented a stunning answer to Victorian theories of Irish racial backwardness.
In this case, at least, the symbol is not let down by the reality: this brooch is an object that speaks of a culture functioning at the highest level of sophistication. It is not, in fact, associated with Tara: it was found in 1850 by a child playing on the seashore at Bettystown, Co. Meath, and
sold by a ‘poor woman’ to a watchmaker in Drogheda. The watchmaker subsequently sold it to George Waterhouse, a shrewd Dublin businessman already involved in producing Celtic Revival jewellery, who renamed it the ‘Tara’ Brooch and displayed it at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Now, it seems not so much a museum piece as a whole museum in itself, a bravura display of multiple mastery. Although it is less than 9cm in diameter, approximately 76 patterns have been identified on its surface.
Both faces of the brooch, and even the inner and outer edges of the ring, are covered with a teeming profusion of designs, each executed with dazzling skill. Even the cord that secured the brooch in position culminates in an elaborately designed link that incorporates serpent, animal and human heads. It is not the expression of a particular technique; it is a virtuoso performance of virtually every technique known to late-seventh and early-eighth-century metalworkers. Gossamer-thin, interlocking spirals of copper-alloy are set against gold and silver. The technique of so-called chip-carving, borrowed from Germanic jewellery, is applied to create elongated birds, beasts and spiral patterns. Beaded and twisted gold wires are melded to bases of sheet gold. Variegated studs of glass and amber punctuate the patterns. On the front, a tiny filigree animal sits in a panel just 2cm wide, its front paw raised and its body winding back on itself. The back bears other animal patterns.
This brooch was made for a member of an elite that saw itself as the equal of any other in post-Roman Europe. The brooch was used to fasten a cloak, which was worn over a tunic; a form of power-dressing that ultimately derives from the Mediterranean and the fashions of high-ranking officials in Byzantium. In Ireland, brooches were used in this way by high-status women, as well as by men, clerics and secular rulers alike. In slightly later high crosses, even Jesus and the Virgin Mary are wearing ‘Tara’-type brooches.
The brooch also resonates with pre-Christian Irish beliefs. In one tale from around the time the ‘Tara’ brooch was made, a Munster king who sleeps with the goddess of sovereignty tells his wife to clothe the goddess in a purple cloak and ‘the queen’s brooch’. What we see in the ‘Tara’ brooch is a native Irish elite at the height of its self-confidence, easily integrating Christian with pre-Christian traditions, and its local power with a sense of being European. It is arguably the last time that such ease would be possible.
30. Ardagh chalice, eighth century
It was found in 1868, under a stone slab in a ringfort in Reerasta, near Ardagh, Co. Limerick, with a second, plainer bronze chalice and four gilt silver brooches. Along with the Derrynaflan chalice, this is one of the finest liturgical vessels of the Early Christian world. Its beauty lies in the contrast between the plain sheen of the polished silver and the finesse and complexity of the ornamentation: gold filigree of stylised birds and beasts; interlace in filigree and other techniques; intricate studs of red, blue and yellow glass (sometimes multi-coloured or topped by filigree); and beautifully engraved lettering that spells out the names of the Apostles, with Paul being substituted for Judas. Like so much else from this extraordinary period, the chalice suggests a culture that is at once international and insular.
‘The model’, says Raghnall Ó Floinn of the National Museum, ‘is Late Roman tableware, from the early centuries ad. It has parallels not in Western Europe but with Byzantine vessels now in St Mark’s in Venice—not because there is direct Eastern influence but because they both draw on a common Roman ancestor’. The squat shape of the two-handled bowl of the chalice, however, is indigenously Irish, and the animal art, with its typical abstraction, is very different from the more realistic Roman style of representation.
This Irish love of complexity is everywhere on the Ardagh chalice. Numbers play a large part in the design: the Apostles are echoed in the twelve studs and twelve panels of the band at the top. What is extraordinary, though, is the number of pieces that make up the chalice: more than 350. The skill and complexity lavished on objects such as this highlight something conspicuous only by its absence. From this golden age of Irish Christianity, there are few surviving churches.
The simple stone oratories that do survive are not at all typical of the general run of contemporary Irish churches. Stone endures, wood perishes—and most churches in Ireland were wooden. A poem in the exuberant monkish collection Hisperica Famina describes a ‘wooden oratory…fashioned out of candle-shaped beams’ and talks of how monks would ‘hew the sacred oaks with axes, in order to fashion square chapels’. The usual word for a church in early mediaeval Irish is dairthech, literally, ‘oak house’.
These buildings were rectangular and probably plain. So, even while the Irish were making religious objects of astonishing opulence, they were using them in relatively humble spaces. The explanation for the tendency to use wood in church building is certainly not to be found in a lack of skill in masonry—as Ireland’s elaborate stone high crosses attest. One possibility, hinted at in the mention of the ‘sacred oaks’, is that Ireland retained a pre-Christian attachment to the holiness of trees.
The effect of this traditionalism could well have been to make the objects contained in these churches all the more striking. The author of the Hisperica Famina concluded his description by remarking ‘the chapel contains innumerable objects, which I shall not struggle to unroll from my wheel of words’. It is hard to imagine that however innumerable these objects, any was more magnificent than the Ardagh chalice.
31. Derrynaflan paten, late-eighth century/early-ninth century
This is the most spectacular item from the hoard of eucharistic vessels found in a shallow hole at an ancient church site, Derrynaflan, in Co. Tipperary, in 1980. Although the chalice and strainer found with it are fine objects, the paten is of an altogether higher order. It tells us a great deal about the Irish elite of its time. The paten is a large, silver dish, with a diameter of approximately 37cm, probably intended to hold the sacred host during Mass. (It is unlikely to have been used regularly, and may have been intended purely as a votive offering.) As with the Ardagh chalice, the sheen of the silver sets off an extravagant, polychromatic display of ornament, set in twelve sections around the circumference and on the rim. Gold filigree and finely knitted wires of silver form dizzying patterns on panels studded with imitation gemstones made of cast glass and held in copper-alloy frames.
Exquisitely traced golden men squat back to back in a tiny panel. Snakes, stags and eagles twist and rear in minute spaces. As with so much else from this zenith of early Irish art, the paten is a local response to a European model—in this case, Late Roman silver platters that were decorated with animals around the rim. This desire for a connection to the old Roman world is essentially aristocratic. The paten is also elitist in a theological sense: the images contain symbolic references to redemption, the Eucharist, baptism and beasts from the Book of Genesis and the psalms, but these symbols would be apparent only to the educated few.
Which raises the question: for whom was this elite object made? Derrynaflan was patronised by Feldmid Mac Crimthainn. ‘The betting’, says Raghnall Ó Floinn of the National Museum, ‘is that he was the man who actually had the paten commissioned’. Feldmid, more than anyone else at this time, embodies the intertwining of religious and secular power. He was both king of Munster and a senior ecclesiastic. He claimed the high kingship of Ireland between 820 and 847 (although he never actually held it), while retaining his church offices, which came to include the abbotships of Cork and Clonfert. This was not unusual in contemporary Europe, but in Feidlimid’s case its contradictions were especially stark.
Feldmid appears in the annals in different guises. His forces assaulted and burned the monasteries of Gallen and Fore in 822 and 830, respectively, and attacked Kildare in 836—all, presumably, to further his claim to the high kingship. Yet, he is also recorded as an ascetic anchorite, as a scribe and even, posthumously, as a saint. He was a terror, but, it seems, a holy terror. Feldmid’s aggression was evidence that a long peace between the major regional factions that dominated
Irish politics—the Uí Néill overlords of Tara, the Éoganachta (Feldmid’s dynasty in Munster) and the Connachta in the west—was coming to an end even before external shocks began to have a profound effect. His possible role in commissioning the Derrynaflan paten is a reminder that these heavenly objects were not free from earthly connections.
32. Moylough belt shrine, eighth/ninth century
Objects such as the Ardagh chalice or the Derrynaflan paten are obviously very special. They belonged to a social and ecclesiastical elite and were used rarely, if at all. What was ordinary religion like? How did most people interact with the world of the saints? This unique shrine gives us some sense of popular faith and ritual in eighth-century Ireland.
The shrine, discovered by turfcutters in a bog in Co. Sligo, is made up of four hinged, copper-alloy plates, each enclosing a fragment of a simple leather belt. The belt clearly belonged to a popular early saint. The bog at Moylough where it was found is not far from the site of an early monastery at Carrowntemple, so there may well be a connection to this holy place. The shrine is itself in the form of a belt: the two front plates form a false ‘buckle’ whose frames are decorated with bird and animal heads and end in elaborate glass pieces. The overall impression is somewhat dulled now: originally, the belt would have been a riot of colour, with shiny silver panels, blue and white glass studs, and red and yellow enamel borders.
What is particularly interesting about the shrine, however, is that it was not kept in some monastic treasury, away from the ordinary believers. The patterns of wear on its surfaces show that it was much used. What was it used for? Miracles and blessings. There is something very intimate in the way this relic was deployed. The hinges and the wear and tear show that it was actually placed around the bodies of devotees. Monks themselves regarded the belts of their holy predecessors as a form of spiritual protection. One Irish monk in Austria wrote that ‘the girdle of Finnan’ protected him ‘against disease, against anxiety, against the charms of foolish women’. Presumably, the devotee hoped to gain this same protection, at least against the first of these evils.
A History of Ireland in 100 Objects Page 6
