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Celtic Monasticism
and Book Production
In the year AD 400 most northern Europeans worshipped one or more non-Christian gods. Attacks on such pagan worship by clerics like St Martin, the Bishop of Tours, had only just begun and monasticism was almost unknown. Within 500 years most of Europe was Christian and monasticism was the most important spiritual and cultural force.
Beehive cells at Skellig Michael
The early Celtic saint was essentially a celibate and a hermit, choosing the wildest and most inaccessible places from which to devote himself to a life of seclusion and -denial. Such spots became the start of monastic schools that then, in turn, developed into great centers of learning. St Ninian, for example, after visiting St Martin of Tours, came to Scotland, landing at Whithorn, between 410 and 432, and built a stone church in a style unusual among the Britons, dedicating it to St Martin.
The relatively few `barbarian’ Christians were the subject of missions sent out from Rome by the Popes - for example, Pope Celestine sent Palladius to Ireland in 431 to help strengthen their faith. Palladius found that the existing monasticism was based on the example of Thebaid, who had sought spiritual perfection through solitude, penance and fasting, and on the model of the monastery at Lerins, near Cannes. To these monastery cells came people seeking temporal and spiritual guidance. One such Christian was Patrick, who was the first to see that his moral duty lay outside the empire in converting the pagans. He attempted to start in Ireland, partly by establishing monasteries, which became important institutions, acting as centers for missionary activity, for basic education in the common written language (Latin), for book production and for the training of clergy.
As the numbers and sizes of these monasteries increased through grants of land, they became economic and political centers as well. The power of the bishops’ sees was overshadowed by the monastic abbots’ influence. Land grants were becoming so contentious that both clerical and secular organizations recognized the need to reach a compromise to diffuse mounting tension. This was achieved through the kinship system, whereby relatives of lay donors had a stake in the monastery. By the end of the sixth century the Irish Church had become a church of monks.
The Irish monasteries of the sixth and seventh centuries were not very imposing buildings, comprising a circular enclosure within which stood a few rectangular wooden structures with thatched or shingled roofs and a cluster of round wattle huts with, perhaps, a tall, roughly hewn slab of stone near the door of the church.
One of the objectors to the kinship system from the clerical ranks was Columbanus, who, in 590, decided to go on a major pilgrimage. With twelve companions, he left Ireland for the Continent. He founded a number of monasteries in Gaul - for example, at Luxeuil - and eventually reached northern Italy, where he founded a monastery at Bobbio. His model of large, rural monasteries free from Episcopal interference appealed to the rulers of Gaul and within fifty years of his death large numbers of monasteries had been established.
In c. 565 Columba, who was from a similar background to Columbanus, went with his followers north from Ireland to the south-west of Scotland, where he founded the monastery at Iona. This was to be the base for the monks of Scotia, who were eclectic rather than missionary, although their monasteries were also the foundations for future missions. Iona became a major center for insular monasticism and, as a seat of learning, played host to a number of notables in the early seventh century. One of these was Oswald, who, on becoming king of Northumbria in 635, sent to Iona for clerics to convert his subjects. Aidan arrived in answer to the king’s call and he established the monastery at Lindisfarne. It seems to have been the general practice in England that a king or a lay dignitary funded the establishment of a monastery, whether as a thanksgiving for events in this life or in preparation for the hereafter. Such patronage was of major importance in the spread of monastic centers.
Meanwhile, Pope Gregory’s mission, starting with St Augustine in Canterbury c. 597, moved northwards and eventually founded an Episcopal see at York - in 627. However, it was not until after the Synod of Whitby in 664 that the new connections with Rome and the existing Irish links through Iona and Lindisfarne bore artistic fruit. The resulting explosion of home-produced illuminated manuscripts, augmented by additions from Rome and other continental centers, heralded a new Golden Age.
European intellectual life throughout the early Middle Ages was focused mostly in the monasteries. Copies of important texts, both Christian and classical, were made in their scriptoria and many had their own libraries. In respect of the magnificence of illumination and calligraphic expertise, book production had reached its peak by the end of the ninth century with The Book of Kells. Other notable codices are The Book of Durrow, The Lindisfarne Gospels, The Lichfield Gospels and The Echternach Gospels, and there were plenty of fine works being produced throughout Britain and Europe. This scale of production might have continued indefinitely had it not been for the disruption caused by the Viking raids throughout the eighth and ninth centuries in both Ireland and England. For example, the monastery at Iona, which had produced so many books, had to be abandoned in 806, and the Northumbrian monastic centers at Lindisfarne, which had produced The Lindisfarne Gospels, and neighboring Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, which had produced many books under the auspices of the Venerable Bede, had been abandoned by 876.
Now that, under the auspices of Theodore of Canterbury, the Church had become firmly established in England, the energies of more idealistic clergy began to turn outwards towards the Continent and their German cousins. Wihtberht went to Frisia, as did Willibrord (he became the first bishop of Utrecht), while Hewals went to Saxony and martyrdom, and Swithberht to Bructeri. However, the most successful at this time was Boniface, who in central Germany established the Bavarian see, presided over Frankish councils, unified the Church and firmly established the Pope of Rome’s control. By 785 missionaries under the protection of Charlemagne had converted the Saxons.
Clearly this missionary zeal, from Ireland in the first instance and then from England and Rome, carried with it the inspiration for the writing of Gospels, the focus of the services in the churches, along with the establishment of scriptoria for the production of these books.
The Frankish manuscripts draw entirely on late Roman motifs and contemporary eastern ornament. Slightly earlier than those of Northumbria are the manuscripts now in the Dombibliothek (Cathedral Library) at Cologne. It was not until the first half of the eighth century that the characteristic style appears - good examples are the Gothic missal in the Vatican Library, Rome (c. 700), The Chronicle of Fredegar in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (c. 715), and The Gundohinus Gospels in Autun, written at Fleury (754). This style was characterized by bright colours, lively drawings (almost part of the written word, not separate), depictions of animals, birds and fish, often forming the initial capital itself, and extensive use of compass and ruler. It may well have been derived from northern Italy (possibly Bobbio), via monks returning from the east, but it also contained neo-insular designs such as intricate interlace, and animals with interlaced legs and tails. There was movement between monasteries: Alcuin, for example, a British scholar, studied at a Celtic monastery in Tours at this time.
Extract from “Celtic Initials & Alphabet” Illustration and text by Courtney Davis
First published by Blandford Press (19988) PB ISBN 0-304-35962-9 |
