When the heathen Norsemen went a-Viking, they fell most hungrily upon the monasteries of Christian England and Ireland. For that was where the wealth of the land was gathered: gold and silver Hgures of saints, bishops’ jewel-encrusted crosiers, exquisitely wrought reliquaries to hold the bones of saints—enough to make a Viking’s avaricious heart sing, and all of it easily stripped from the virtually undefended monastic communities.
The booty was espiecially rich in Ireland. Christianized about 400 A. D., the Irish had 300 years of relative peace in which to nurture the arts. And since the Irish had no cities and only petty chieftains for an aristocracy, most of their precious objects were made in.
And for, their many monasteries—the closest thing they had to towns.
The Vikings learned this immediately, on their first raid at Lambay in 795, and soon, as a chronicler of the day wailed, “the ocean poured such torrents of foreigners over Erin that there was no harbor or landing place, fortress or stronghold without fleets of Vikings and pirates.’’
Sacking and burning one monastery after another in Ireland and England, the Vikings loaded their loot in their swift ships and took it back to Scandinavia. It is a staggering measure of Viking depredations that about one half of all the Eighth Century Irish art to survive to the present has been found in Scandinavia, mostly in Norway.
St. Mattheiv ond the opening passage in Latin of his Gospel (below) belong to a magnificent manuscript illuminated by English monks about the year 750. This book ivos seized by Vikings during o Ninth Century raid but ivos ransomed from the raiders by one Eorl Alfred. The Old English script obove ond beloiv the Latin text soys thot Alfred and his wife “ocquired this book from a heothen army" with “pure gold for the love of God."
World History
