For example, in an early Cashel Kalendar the monk Dagaeus, who died in 586, is recorded to have been both a goldsmith (aurifex) and an illuminator of manuscripts. Westwood, Miniatures in Irish Manuscripts, gives a number of excellent coloured reproductions of illuminations of this school and also of the Anglo-Celtic school of Northumbria.
It was formerly believed that this manuscript had once belonged to Saint Columba, who lived from 521 to 597, but it is shown by the internal evidence of its style to be a century later than Saint Columba's time.
See Westwood, Irish Manuscripts, Plate 9.
When the grave of Saint Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral was opened in 1827, it was found that the Saint's body had been wrapped in rich Siculo-Arab silk of the eleventh century at the time when his body was moved, in 1104 A.D. See Raine, St Cuthbert, Durham, 1828, p. 183 seq.