In delicacy of handling, and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palæography offers nothing comparable to these early Irish manuscripts, and those produced in the same style in England. When in Dublin, some years ago, I had the opportunity of studying very carefully the most marvellous of all—"The Book of Kells;" some of the ornaments of which I attempted to copy, but broke down in despair. Of this very book, Mr. Westwood examined the pages, as I did, for hours together, without ever detecting a false line, or an irregular interlacement. In one space of about a quarter of an inch superficial, he counted, with a magnifying-glass, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements, of a slender ribbon pattern, formed of white lines, edged by black ones, upon a black ground. No wonder that tradition should allege that these unerring lines should have been traced by angels.[[31]] However "angelic" the ornaments may be, but little can be said in favour of the figure subjects occasionally introduced. In some manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells, in pose and motive it is generally obvious that some ancient model has been held in view; but nothing can be more barbaric than the imitation; while in the other specimens, such as the so-called autograph Gospels of St. Columba, or Columbkill, who died A.D. 594, two years before the advent of St. Augustine—the Book of St. Chads, or the Gospels of MacRegol—no such evidence of imitation is to be met with, and the figures are altogether abortive.
I was enabled some years ago, by the kindness of the Rev. J. H. Todd, the learned librarian of Trinity College, Dublin, to compare the so-called autograph Gospels of St. Columba, with the Book of Kells, which is traditionally supposed to have belonged to that saint, and remained strongly impressed with the superior antiquity of the former to the latter. The one may have been his property, and the other illuminated in his honour after his death, as was the case with the Gospels of St. Cuthbert. In none of them, at any period, were shadows represented otherwise than by apparent inlayings under the eyes and beside the nose; and yet, at the same time, the ornaments were most intricate, and often very beautiful, both in form and colour. The purple stain is frequently introduced, and is of excellent quality; but gold appears, so far as I have been able to observe, only in the Durham Book, and in that even most sparingly.[[32]] It is the most celebrated production of the Anglo-Hibernian monastery of Lindisfarne, founded by St. Aidan and the Irish monks of Iona, or Icolumkille, in the year 634.
St. Cuthbert, who was made bishop of Lindisfarne in 685, was renowned as well for his piety as for his learning; he died in 698, and, as a monument to his memory, his successor, Bishop Eadfrith, caused to be written this noble volume, generally called the Durham Book, and known also as St. Cuthbert's Gospels, now in the British Museum. This manuscript, surpassed in grandeur only by the Book of Kells, in the same style, was greatly enriched by Æthelwald, bishop of Lindisfarne, who succeeded Eadfrith in 721, and caused St. Cuthbert's book to be richly illuminated by the hermit Bilfrith, who prefixed an elaborate painting of an Evangelist to each of the four Gospels, and also illuminated the capital letters at the commencement of each book. The bishop caused the whole to be encased in a splendid binding of gold, set with precious stones; and in 950, a priest named Aldred rendered the book still more valuable by interlining it with a Saxon version of the original manuscript, which is the Latin text of St. Jerome.
Want of space alone prevents our following Simeon of Durham in his touching narrative of the circumstances which attended the translation of this volume, together with the body of the much-loved saint, to Durham Cathedral, in which both were long and profoundly venerated. The peculiar importance of this volume in the history of Illumination, consists in its clearly establishing, by its coincidence with earlier examples, the class of caligraphy practised by that primitive Church[[33]] and people, to whom Gregory the Great despatched St. Augustine, at the end of the 6th century. With the mission, which reached its destination, and effected the conversion of Ethelbert and of many of his subjects, in the year 597, Gregory forwarded certain sacred volumes, of which the following were long preserved with the greatest veneration:—A Bible in two volumes; two Psalters; two books of the Gospels; a book of Martyrology; apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and expositions of certain Epistles and Gospels.
The first—the Bible—which was beautifully written on purple and rose-coloured leaves, with rubricated capitals, was certainly in existence in the reign of James I. Mr. Westwood ("Palæographia Sacra," 1843-45) looks upon the magnificent purple Latin Gospels of the British Museum (Royal Library, 1 E 6) as "no other than the remains of the Gregorian Bible." In this, with the utmost respect for his opinion, I cannot concur, since the fragment exhibits far too many genuine Saxon features to have been possibly executed in the Eastern or Western empires previous to the date of the mission of St. Augustine. That it may have been produced in this country, in imitation of the more classical original, by the immediate followers of the saint, is, I consider, highly probable.
The second—the two Psalters—have disappeared. Several learned men have indeed looked upon the British Museum Cottonian MSS. Vesp. A 1, as one of these celebrated books, but, as I venture to think, erroneously; for it is difficult to believe that ornaments, so entirely of the Anglo-Irish school of Lindisfarne, as those which decorate this volume, could have been executed at Rome during either the 6th or even the 7th century. Nothing is more probable than that, out of the forty persons who are believed to have constituted Augustine's mission, several should have been skilled, as most ecclesiastics then were, in writing and in the embellishment of books; and in any school, established by St. Augustine for the multiplication of those precious volumes, without which ministrations and teachings in consonance with Roman dogmas could not be carried on in the new churches and monastic institutions founded among the converts, it is most likely that the native scribes, on their conversion, should be employed to write and decorate the holy texts, with every ornament excepting those of a pictorial nature. In the execution of these, they could scarcely prove themselves as skilful as the followers of St. Augustine would, from their retention of some classical traditions, be likely to be. Thus, and thus only, as I believe, can we account for the singular combination of semi-antique with Saxon writing, and of Latin body-colour pictures, executed almost entirely with the brush, and regularly shadowed (such as David with his Attendants, in the frontispiece to the Vespasian A 1 Psalter), with ornaments of an absolutely different character, such as the arch and pilaster which form the framework for this very picture of King David. Another argument, which weighs greatly in my mind against the probability of such a Psalter as Vespasian A 1 being a prototype, is the fact, that the Utrecht and Harleian Psalters, to both of which I shall have occasion again to allude, in their pictorial illustrations, present us with evident copies, in outline, of some classic coloured original; just, in fact, of such a manuscript of the Psalms as the celebrated Vatican Roll[[34]] is of the book of Joshua. What more likely than that one of the venerated Psalters brought from Rome should have been such a manuscript, and should have been the very one copied in the case of the Utrecht Psalter, in the "rustic capitals" of the original, and in the later Harleian replica in the current Saxon uncial?
As respects the third class of Augustinian books—the Gospels—the case is far different; for the accredited and traditional originals are, in every respect, such as would be likely to have been produced at Rome or at Constantinople, but most probably the former, during the pontificate of Gregory the Great. Fragments of the most important of these Gospels are preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. They are written in black ink generally, with occasional lines in red, in the ancient manner. Two pages only of illuminations are left, though it is evident that the volume once contained a large and complete series. The most important of these represents St. Luke, clad in tunic and toga, seated under just such a triumphal arch as is frequently to be met with in the Roman Mosaics of the 5th and 6th centuries.[[35]] The second illuminated page comprises a series of small square pictures, framed round with the simple red line of the oldest Latin manuscripts.
The other Augustinian fragmentary Gospel is to be found among the Hatton manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: it is without any other illumination than the contrast of red and black ink, and a few ornaments about some of the initial letters. The evidence, upon which it may be assumed that these volumes were either brought to this country by St. Augustine, or formed some of the "codices multos,"[[36]] sent by Gregory the Great to the mission on its establishment, rests not only upon the antiquity and purely Latin character of the fragments, but on the fact that both Gospels contain entries in Saxon of upwards of one thousand years old, connecting them with the library of the Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury; and, furthermore, they correspond with the description given by a monk of that monastery, who, writing in the reign of Henry V., dwells upon the "primitie librorum totius Ecclesie Anglicane" preserved in that library, as the very Gospels in the version of St. Jerome, brought to England by St. Augustine himself.
The Martyrology, the apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and the Expositions which completed the series, cannot be now identified.
To rapidly multiply copies of these text-books of the Church of Rome, was, no doubt, one of the first and most important duties of the monks of Canterbury; and from the traces we may detect in various manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon mode of writing and ornamenting writing, combined with paintings such as the Anglo-Saxons were incompetent to execute for some time after the close of the 6th century, we may safely infer that the monks both worked themselves and largely employed the native scribes. Thus, as Mr. Westwood observes in a recent article in the "Archæological Journal," "We have sufficient evidence that, soon after the settlement of the followers of St. Augustine, there must have been established a scriptorium, where some of the most beautiful manuscripts were written in the purest uncial or rustic capitals, but decorated with initials in the Anglo-Saxon or Irish style. Of such MSS. we can now record—