The Ivory Workers of the Middle Ages

by Anna Maria Elizabeth Cust

The tracery which decorates the thrones of the chessmen is a small example of the elaborate interlaced scroll-work, which is a leading feature in Keltic and Anglo-Saxon work. In the manuscripts it is often reduced to a series of calligraphic flourishes, but it also develops into serpents and dragons inextricably woven together, and, later, more varied animal forms are introduced and even human figures are seen crushed in the serpentine rings. Forms from vegetation are rarely seen, and the introduction of the acanthus into these intricacies is due to the Carlovingian scribes of the ninth century and may be seen in the Bible written for Charles the Bald.

Several objects decorated with the earlier forms of this wild tracery are found in the great abbeys of Germany and Eastern France, and are thought to have been made in Great Britain or Ireland and brought over by the throng of missionaries who flocked on to the continent to convert the wild tribes of Frisia, Germany and Switzerland, bearing with them culture and learning.

Little Ireland in early days was a centre of artistic diffusion, almost more important for the Northern nations than that of Constantinople. Owing to freedom from invasion, Christianity and civilization had continued to flourish and the remnant of the old Latin literature was carefully preserved. Not long after the death of St. Patrick, the Irish Church, having increased in strength and learning, sent forth the famous St. Columba to minister to the hordes of barbarians who were over-running Britain. St. Columba met with great success and founded several large monasteries which became powerful centres of religion and learning in Scotland and England. For hundreds of years the schools of Ireland continued in great repute, numerous bands of missionaries were sent across the sea to convert the Germanic tribes on the continent. Most famous among these was St. Columbanus, who laboured in the East of France for many years, and afterwards in Switzerland and Italy, dying in 615 at the monastery he had founded at Bobbio. Everywhere these monks went they took with them the seeds of art and learning, beautiful illuminated manuscripts and other small works of art, which formed an inexhaustible store of motifs for the sculptors and goldsmiths of the following centuries. One of the disciples of Columbanus, St. Gall, who was called the “Apostle of Switzerland,” founded there the great monastery named after him, which became a most flourishing art centre in later years.

The Anglo-Saxons were not idle, and in the eighth century St. Boniface and many others pierced far into the wild forests of Germany, founding the great monastic establishments which exist to this day. This was not a fleeting movement, but a close relation was kept up between England and the continent till well into the eleventh century.

III. The Carlovingian Renaissance.

Charlemagne, crowned emperor in 800, if not perhaps the wondrous hero of tradition, was a very powerful factor in the history and civilization of his day, and exerted all his energy to introduce order and learning among the vast hordes of barbarians who more or less willingly acknowledged his rule. He stirred up all latent powers, introduced new ideas and stimulated an admiration for all Roman culture, being dazzled quite as much by the actual pomp and splendour of the Constantinopolitan court as by the memories of ancient Rome. He invited learned men from the East and the West, but the most famous were Alcuin, who was born at York, and his pupil, Eginhardt, who became Secretary and Chronicler to Charlemagne and his successor.

The Carlovingian renaissance was a most composite production. Byzantine Art had long been known to the Northern races, and at this time its influence was spread still further by the presence of artists exiled by the iconoclasts; but the Anglo-Saxon influence was even stronger, encouraged as it was by the bands of missionaries, and by Alcuin and his followers. To these intermingled strains must be added the independent Gallo-Roman reminiscence, the study of the monuments, and also a strange, but undeniable Oriental tendency, arising from communications with the East and the Moors in Spain. This renaissance, though to a certain extent artificial, lasted for nearly three centuries and affected the civilization of the whole of Western Europe.

Carlovingian art flourished for centuries in Germany, but the invasions of the Normans checked for a while the artistic progress of Northern France. What little art they had was in much the same Norse style, but freshly barbaric and not like that of the British Isles, which had undergone centuries of incubation and had the additional Latin element.

It was to this Anglo-Saxon Art, conventional as it had become, the human form often being reduced to a geometrical figure, that the Carlovingian craftsmen turned for inspiration. Two classes of ivory carving arose, one copied almost directly from the miniatures in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, which were themselves derived from late Roman types; and the second following more closely in the steps of the Byzantines.