“The conquest of Britain,” writes the Rev. J. R. Green (“History of the English People,” p. 16[53]), “had thrust a wedge of heathendom into the heart of the Western Church. On the one side lay Italy and Gaul, whose Churches owned obedience to the see of Rome, on the other the free Celtic Church of Ireland. But the condition of the two portions of Western Christendom was very different. While the vigour of Latin Christianity was exhausted in a bare struggle for life, Ireland as yet unscourged by invaders had drawn from its conversion an energy such as it has never known since. Christianity had been received there with a burst of popular enthusiasm. Letters and arts sprang up rapidly in its train; the science and Biblical knowledge which had fled from the continent took refuge in famous schools which made Durrow and Armagh the universities of the West. The new life soon beat too strongly to brook confinement within insular bounds. Patrick, the first missionary of Ireland, had not been half a century dead, when Celtic Christianity flung itself with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of heathenism which had rolled in upon the Christian world. Irish missionaries laboured among the Picts of the Highlands, among the Frisians of the northern seas; Columban founded monasteries in Burgundy and the Apennines; the canton of St. Gall still commemorates in its name the missionary before whom the spirits of flood and fell fled wailing over the waters of the Lake of Constance. For a time it seemed as if the course of the world’s history was to be changed, as if the older race that Roman and Teuton had swept before them had turned to the moral conquest of its conquerors, as if Celtic and not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the Churches of the West.”
It is impossible that Irish-Celtic art should not have made itself felt wherever the Irish missionaries penetrated, and especially in the gorgeous illuminated Gospels, which it was the pride of S. Columban and his school to have made, and which now excite our wonder and admiration. The early Christian art in Ireland grew out of the late Celtic, and was, to a great extent, free from the influence of Rome, which is stamped on the Brit-Welsh art of the same age in this country. The style, therefore, of these circular brooches, from its correspondence with that of the Irish illuminated gospels, affords reasonable grounds for the belief that the Victoria Cave was inhabited in the sixth century, or possibly later, but before the English invaders had swept the Brit-Welsh away from the district.
Two other brooches were also discovered in the black layer, which are even of greater interest than those which have just been described. The one represents a dragon ([colored Plate], fig. 3), with its eye made of red enamel; the other ([colored Plate], fig. 7) shaped, like the letter S, has its front composed of an elaborate cloissonnée pattern in red, blue, and yellow enamels, and is of the same design as two brooches in the British Museum, discovered, one near Whittington Hill, in Gloucestershire, and the other near Malton, in Yorkshire. All three were, undoubtedly, turned out of the same artistic school, and they may have been made by one workman. The enamel, in all these examples, seems to have been inserted into hollows in the bronze, and then to have been heated so as to form a close union with them, and in some cases where it has been broken, as in [colored Plate], fig. 7, small fragments still remain to attest the completeness of the fusion with the bronze. The style of workmanship is neither Roman nor Teutonic. An enamelled fibula with spirals in relief, found at Reichenbach[54] (Soleure) in a post-Roman sepulchre, and figured by Bonstettin, is of a similar design, and it may be traced also in two brooches obtained by the Abbé Cochet, from the Merovingian Cemetery of Envermeu,[55] although they are of more massive and square construction than those of Yorkshire.
One harp-shaped brooch ([colored Plate], fig. 1) is ornamented with diamonds of blue enamel, separated by small triangles of red, and shows in its Roman design and Celtic ornamentation the union between Celtic and Roman art. A similar specimen from Brough Castle, Westmoreland, is preserved in the British Museum, and may have been turned out of the same workshop. We also met with an enamelled disk ([colored Plate], fig. 6), and a finger-ring ([fig. 4]) of bronze-gilt, ornamented with blue enamel.
Several enamelled fibulæ in the British Museum, obtained by Sir James Musgrave, at Kirby Thore, Westmoreland, belong to the same style of art as those of the Victoria cave, and were associated with the same class of remains. Shields,[56] scabbards, horse trappings, and other articles have also been discovered in this county, decorated in the same fashion with coloured enamels, and especially a bronze vase from the late Roman tumuli, called the Bartlow Hills. They all belong to the class termed “late Celtic” by Mr. Franks, and are considered by him to be of British manufacture.
This view is supported by the only reference to the art of enamelling which is furnished by the classical writers. Philostratus, a Greek sophist, who left Athens in the beginning of the third century to join the Court of Julia Domna, the wife of the Emperor Severus, writes:—“It is said that the barbarians living in or by the ocean, pour these colors (those of the horse trappings) on heated bronze, that these adhere, grow as hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made in them.”[57] Mr. Franks’ opinion that this passage relates to Britain, seems to be more probable than that of the eminent French archæologist, M. de Laborde, who holds that it relates to Gaul and especially to “Belgica.”[58]
When we consider the variety of enamelled objects which have been discovered in the north of England, it seems to be by no means improbable that the principal centre of the art enamelling was here rather than in the south; and this conclusion is considerably strengthened by the fact that under the Romans political power centered in the district between the Humber and the Tyne, and that York, and not London, was the capital of Britain and the seat of the Roman Prefect. It is worthy of remark, that since the Emperor Severus built the wall which bears his name, marched in person against the Caledonians, and died at York, the account of the enamels may have been brought to the court of the Empress Julia from this very region, and thus come to be recorded by Philostratus.
Two harp-shaped fibulæ, obtained by Mr. Jackson from the Victoria cave, and ornamented with enamel, are coated with silver, and in one of them two small blocks of that metal still remain firmly imbedded in the bronze. It is very probable that most of the ornaments were plated either with silver or gold, traces of which, in some cases, still remain.
Among the miscellaneous objects in metal are a bronze wire brooch ([colored Plate], fig. 8), two bracelets, composed of twisted bronze-gilt wire; and one fragment in solid bronze, ornamented with right lines; one plain bronze finger-ring; two small buckles, respectively of bronze and of iron, and a small bronze flattened pin ([colored Plate], fig. 2), ending in two points to which, at first, we were unable to assign a use. When, however, the two points were compared with the circles on the ornaments of bone ([Fig. 22]), there was but little doubt that this curious object was employed as a pair of fixed compasses. There were also iron articles which were too much corroded to admit of a guess at their probable use, besides a Roman key, knife-blades, and a spear-head discovered by Mr. Jackson.
The number of ornaments found in the Victoria Cave from time to time by various explorers is very considerable. They are scattered in the private collections of Messrs. Jackson and Eckroyd Smith, and in the Museums of Giggleswick Grammar-school, and of Leeds, and the British Museum.