Celtic Jewelery and Metalwork in Middle Ages
Celtic jewelry in the Middle Ages was characterized by intricate designs, often featuring spirals, geometric patterns, and knotwork, frequently made from gold, silver, and bronze. Common types of jewelry included torcs, fibulae (brooches), rings, bracelets, and pendants, with Celtic crosses and Claddagh designs gaining popularity during this period. Jewelry served not only as decoration but also as a symbol of status, wealth, and religious belief.
Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe. Art historians usually group Insular art as part of the Migration Period art movement as well as Early Medieval Western art, and it is the combination of these two traditions that gives the style its special character.
Most Insular art originates from the Irish monastic movement of Celtic Christianity, or metalwork for the secular elite, and the period begins around 600 with the combining of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon styles. One major distinctive feature is interlace decoration, in particular the interlace decoration as found at Sutton Hoo, in East Anglia. This is now applied to decorating new types of objects mostly copied from the Mediterranean world, above all the codex or book.
The finest period of the style was brought to an end by the disruption to monastic centres and aristocratic life caused by the Viking raids which began in the late 8th century. These are presumed to have interrupted work on the Book of Kells; no later Gospel books are as heavily or finely illuminated as the masterpieces of the 8th century. In England the style merged into Anglo-Saxon art around 900, whilst in Ireland the style continued until the 12th century, when it merged into Romanesque art. Ireland, Scotland and the kingdom of Northumbria in Northern England are the most important centres, but examples were found also in southern England, Wales and in Continental Europe, especially Gaul (modern France), in centres founded by the Hiberno-Scottish mission and Anglo-Saxon missions. The influence of Insular art affected all subsequent European medieval art, especially in the decorative elements of Romanesque and Gothic manuscripts.
Surviving examples of Insular art are mainly illuminated manuscripts, metalwork and carvings in stone, especially stone crosses. Surfaces are highly decorated with intricate patterning, with no attempt to give an impression of depth, volume or recession. The best examples include the Book of Kells, Lindisfarne Gospels, Book of Durrow, brooches such as the Tara Brooch and the Ruthwell Cross. Carpet pages are a characteristic feature of Insular manuscripts, although historiated initials (an Insular invention), canon tables and figurative miniatures, especially Evangelist portraits, are also common.
Insular decoration
The Insular style is most famous for its highly dense, intricate and imaginative decoration, which takes elements from several earlier styles. Late Iron Age Celtic art or "Ultimate La Tène", gave the love of spirals, triskeles, circles and other geometric motifs. These were combined with animal forms probably mainly deriving from the Germanic version of the general Eurasian animal style, though also from Celtic art, where heads terminating scrolls were common. Interlace was used by both these traditions, as well as Roman art (for example in floor mosaics) and other possible influences such as Coptic art, and its use was taken to new levels in Insular art, where it was combined with the other elements already mentioned.
There is no attempt to represent depth in manuscript painting, with all the emphasis on a brilliantly patterned surface. In early works the human figure was shown in the same geometric fashion as animal figures, but reflections of a classical figure style spread as the period went on, probably mostly from the southern Anglo-Saxon regions, though northern areas also had direct contacts with the Continent. The origins of the overall format of the carpet page have often been related to Roman floor mosaics, Coptic carpets and manuscript paintings, without general agreement being reached among scholars.
Celtic Jewelery
Celtic jewelry held significant meaning. For example, the Triquetra (Trinity Knot) represented the Holy Trinity, the earth, sea, and sky, or the mind, body, and spirit. Jewelry was a way to display social status and wealth. Torcs, fibulae, and rings adorned with precious stones were particularly associated with the elite.
Gold and silver were highly prized, but bronze, copper, and pewter were also used. Precious stones like rubies, sapphires, and emeralds were favored, but semi-precious stones, glass, bone, and even wood were also incorporated.
Torcs were stiff, neck-ring style necklaces, often made of twisted metal and worn as a symbol of high status. Fibulae or Brooches were used to fasten clothing and were a common form of jewelry. Some were quite elaborate, like the Tara Brooch. The Celtic cross, with its circle and cross design, became a popular pendant, often symbolizing Christianity and sometimes eternity or the four elements.
Claddagh design, featuring hands, a heart, and a crown, symbolized friendship, love, and loyalty and was often used in rings and pendants. Celtic Knots Intertwined patterns, with no beginning or end, were a hallmark of Celtic design and often represented eternity or the continuity of life.
Metalwork
Christianity discouraged the burial of grave goods so that, at least from the Anglo-Saxons, we have a larger number of pre-Christian survivals than those from later periods. The majority of examples that survive from the Christian period have been found in archaeological contexts that suggest they were rapidly hidden, lost or abandoned. There are a few exceptions, notably arm-shaped reliquaries such as the Shrine of Saint Lachtin's Arm, and portable book-shaped ("cumdachs") and house-shaped shrines for books or relics, several of which have been continuously owned, mostly by churches on the Continent—though the Monymusk Reliquary has always been in Scotland.
In general it is clear that most survivals are only by chance, and that we have only fragments of some types of object—in particular the largest and least portable. The highest quality survivals are either secular jewellery, the largest and most elaborate pieces probably for male wearers, or tableware or altarware in what were apparently very similar styles—some pieces cannot be confidently assigned between altar and royal dining-table. It seems possible, even likely, that the finest church pieces were made by secular workshops, often attached to a royal household, though other pieces were made by monastic workshops. The evidence suggests that Irish metalworkers produced most of the best pieces, however the finds from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo, from the far east of England and at the beginning of the period, are as fine in design and workmanship as any Irish pieces. Even excepting the existence of workshops in the mid-to-late medieval period, the craftsman may not always have had been responsible for the full design of the works, for example the execution of portions of the Ardagh Chalice evidences a lack of skill compared to the rest of the piece.
There are a number of large penannular brooches, including several of comparable quality to the Tara brooch. Almost all of these are in the British Museum, the National Museum of Ireland, the National Museum of Scotland, or local museums in the islands. Each of their designs is wholly individual in detail, and the workmanship is varied in technique and superb in quality. Many elements of the designs can be directly related to elements used in manuscripts. Almost all of the many techniques known in metalwork can be found in Insular work. Surviving stones used in decoration are semi-precious ones, with amber and rock crystal among the commonest, and some garnets. Coloured glass, enamel and millefiori glass, probably imported, are also used, as seen in the late 6th century Ballinderry Brooch.
The gilt-bronze Rinnegan Crucifixion Plaque (NMI, late 7th or early 8th century) is the best known of a group of nine recorded Irish metal Crucifixion plaques and is comparable in style to figures on many high crosses; it may well have come from a book cover or formed part of a larger altar frontal or high cross.
The Ardagh Chalice and the Derrynaflan Hoard of chalice, paten with stand, strainer, and basin (only discovered in 1980) are the most outstanding pieces of church metalware to survive (only three other chalices, and no other paten, survive). These pieces are thought to come from the 8th or 9th century, but most dating of metalwork is uncertain, and comes largely from comparison with manuscripts. Only fragments remain from what were probably large pieces of church furniture, probably with metalwork on wooden frameworks, such as shrines, crosses and other items. The Insular crozier had a distinctive shape; the survivals, such as the Kells Crozier and Lismore Crozier all appear to be Irish or Scottish, and from rather late in the Insular period. These later works, which also including the 11th century River Laune and Clonmacnoise Croziers are heavily influenced by Viking art and have interlace patterns in the Ringerike or Urnes styles.
The Cross of Cong is a 12th-century Irish processional cross and reliquary that shows Insular decoration, possibly added in a deliberately revivalist spirit.
The fittings of a major abbey church in the Insular period remain hard to imagine; one thing that does seem clear is that the most fully decorated manuscripts were treated as decorative objects for display rather than as books for study. The most fully decorated of all, the Book of Kells, has several mistakes left uncorrected, the text headings necessary to make the Canon tables usable have not been added, and when it was stolen in 1006 for its cover in precious metals, it was taken from the sacristy, not the library. The book was recovered, but not the cover, as also happened with the Book of Lindisfarne. None of the major Insular manuscripts have preserved their elaborate jewelled metal covers, but we know from documentary evidence that these were as spectacular as the few remaining continental examples. The re-used metal back cover of the Lindau Gospels (now in the Morgan Library, New York) was made in southern Germany in the late 8th or early 9th century, under heavy Insular influence, and is perhaps the best indication as to the appearance of the original covers of the great Insular manuscripts, although one gold and garnet piece from the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, found in 2009, may be the corner of a book-cover. The Lindau design is dominated by a cross, but the whole surface of the cover is decorated, with interlace panels between the arms of the cross. The cloisonné enamel shows Italian influence, and is not found in work from the Insular homelands, but the overall effect is very like a carpet page.
Post-Roman Ireland and Britain
Celtic art in the Middle Ages was practiced by the peoples of Ireland and parts of Britain in the 700-year period from the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, to the establishment of Romanesque art in the 12th century. Through the Hiberno-Scottish mission the style was influential in the development of art throughout Northern Europe.
In Ireland an unbroken Celtic heritage existed from before and throughout the Roman era of Britain, which had never reached the island, though in fact Irish objects in La Tène style are very rare from the Late Roman period. The 5th to 7th centuries were a continuation of late Iron Age La Tène art, with also many signs of the Roman and Romano-British influences that had gradually penetrated there. With the arrival of Christianity, Irish art was influenced by both Mediterranean and Germanic traditions, the latter through Irish contacts with the Anglo-Saxons, creating what is called the Insular or Hiberno-Saxon style, which had its golden age in the 8th and early 9th centuries before Viking raids severely disrupted monastic life. Late in the period Scandinavian influences were added through the Vikings and mixed Norse-Gael populations, then original Celtic work came to end with the Norman invasion in 1169–1170 and the subsequent introduction of the general European Romanesque style.
In the 7th and 9th centuries Irish Celtic missionaries travelled to Northumbria in Britain and brought with them the Irish tradition of manuscript illumination, which came into contact with Anglo-Saxon metalworking knowledge and motifs. In the monasteries of Northumbria these skills fused and were probably transmitted back to Scotland and Ireland from there, also influencing the Anglo-Saxon art of the rest of England. Some of the metalwork masterpieces created include the Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Chalice and the Derrynaflan Chalice. New techniques employed were filigree and chip carving, while new motifs included interlace patterns and animal ornamentation. The Book of Durrow is the earliest complete insular script illuminated Gospel Book and by about 700, with the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Hiberno-Saxon style was fully developed with detailed carpet pages that seem to glow with a wide palette of colours. The art form reached its peak in the late 8th century with the Book of Kells, the most elaborate Insular manuscript. Anti-classical Insular artistic styles were carried to mission centres on the Continent and had a continuing impact on Carolingian, Romanesque and Gothic art for the rest of the Middle Ages.
In the 9th and 11th century plain silver became a popular medium in Anglo-Saxon England, probably because of the increased amount in circulation due to Viking trading and raiding, and it was during this time a number of magnificent silver penannular brooches were created in Ireland. Around the same time manuscript production began to decline, and although it has often been blamed on the Vikings, this is debatable given the decline began before the Vikings arrived. Sculpture began to flourish in the form of the "high cross", large stone crosses that held biblical scenes in carved relief. This art form reached its apex in the early 10th century and has left many fine examples such as Muiredach's Cross at Monasterboice and the Ahenny High Cross.
The impact of the Vikings on Irish art is not seen until the late 11th century when Irish metal work begins to imitate the Scandinavian Ringerike and Urnes styles, for example the Cross of Cong and Shrine of Manchan. These influences were found not just in the Norse centre of Dublin, but throughout the countryside in stone monuments such as the Dorty Cross at Kilfenora and crosses at the Rock of Cashel.
Some Insular manuscripts may have been produced in Wales, including the 8th century Lichfield Gospels and Hereford Gospels. The late Insular Ricemarch Psalter from the 11th century was certainly written in Wales, and also shows strong Viking influence.
Art from historic Dumnonia, modern Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Brittany on the Atlantic seaboard is now fairly sparsely attested and hence less well known as these areas later became incorporated into England (and France) in the medieval and Early Modern period. However archaeological studies at sites such as Cadbury Castle, Somerset, Tintagel, and more recently at Ipplepen indicate a highly sophisticated largely literate society with strong influence and connections with both the Byzantine Mediterranean as well as the Atlantic Irish, and British in Wales and the 'Old North'. Many crosses, memorials and tombstones such as King Doniert's Stone, the Drustanus stone and the notorious Artognou stone show evidence for a surprisingly cosmopolitan sub-Roman population speaking and writing in both Brittonic and Latin and with at least some knowledge of Ogham indicated by several extant stones in the region. Breton and especially Cornish manuscripts are exceedingly rare survivals but include the Bodmin manumissions demonstrating a regional form of the Insular style.
Picts (Scotland)
From the 5th to the mid-9th centuries, the art of the Picts is primarily known through stone sculpture, and a smaller number of pieces of metalwork, often of very high quality; there are no known illuminated manuscripts. The Picts shared modern Scotland with a zone of Irish cultural influence on the west coast, including Iona, and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria to the south. After Christianization, Insular styles heavily influenced Pictish art, with interlace prominent in both metalwork and stones.
The heavy silver Whitecleuch Chain has Pictish symbols on its terminals, and appears to be an equivalent to a torc. The symbols are also found on plaques from the Norrie's Law hoard. These are thought to be relatively early pieces. The St Ninian's Isle Treasure of silver penannular brooches, bowls and other items comes from off the coast of Pictland and is often regarded as mostly of Pictish manufacture, representing the best survival of Late Pictish metalwork, from about 800 AD.
Pictish stones are assigned by scholars to 3 classes. Class I Pictish stones are unshaped standing stones incised with a series of about 35 symbols which include abstract designs (given descriptive names such as crescent and V-rod, double disc and Z-rod, 'flower' and so on by researchers); carvings of recognisable animals (bull, eagle, salmon, adder and others), as well as the Pictish Beast, and objects from daily life (a comb, a mirror). The symbols almost always occur in pairs, with in about one-third of cases the addition of the mirror, or mirror and comb, symbol, below the others. This is often taken to symbolise a woman. Apart from one or two outliers, these stones are found exclusively in north-east Scotland from the Firth of Forth to Shetland. Good examples include the Dunnichen and Aberlemno stones (Angus), and the Brandsbutt and Tillytarmont stones (Aberdeenshire).
Class II stones are shaped cross-slabs carved in relief, or in a combination of incision and relief, with a prominent cross on one, or in rare cases two, faces. The crosses are elaborately decorated with interlace, key-pattern or scrollwork, in the Insular style. On the secondary face of the stone, Pictish symbols appear, often themselves elaborately decorated, accompanied by figures of people (notably horsemen), animals both realistic and fantastic, and other scenes. Hunting scenes are common, Biblical motifs less so. The symbols often appear to 'label' one of the human figures. Scenes of battle or combat between men and fantastic beasts may be scenes from Pictish mythology. Good examples include slabs from Dunfallandy and Meigle (Perthshire), Aberlemno (Angus), Nigg, Shandwick and Hilton of Cadboll (Easter Ross).
Class III stones are in the Pictish style, but lack the characteristic symbols. Most are cross-slabs, though there are also recumbent stones with sockets for an inserted cross or small cross-slab (e.g. at Meigle, Perthshire). These stones may date largely to after the Scottish takeover of the Pictish kingdom in the mid 9th century. Examples include the sarcophagus and the large collection of cross-slabs at St Andrews (Fife).
The following museums have important collections of Pictish stones: Meigle (Perthshire), St Vigeans (Angus) and St Andrew's Cathedral (Fife) (all Historic Scotland), the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (which also exhibits almost all the major pieces of surviving Pictish metalwork), the Meffan Institute, Forfar (Angus), Inverness Museum, Groam House Museum, Rosemarkie and Tarbat Discovery Centre, Portmahomack (both Easter Ross) and The Orkney Museum in Kirkwall.
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