We must now see what continental Celtic art can tell us about the changing social life and structure during the first six centuries of the Christian era. Celtic lands and life, once autonomous, were much eroded by Roman domination, first in Gaul (from early first century BC) and the rest of Europe, then in Britain from AD 43 onwards.
Leaving unromanized only Ireland and parts of Wales, northern Britain, Brittany, and probably small pockets almost anywhere in old Celtic lands, though it is clear that by later Roman times Britain had developed its own high level of higher culture (Henig 1989: 14-19).
Christianization largely robs us of a main source of evidence, for deposition of grave goods receded to almost nothing among Christian communities. Harden (1955: 134, 157) notes what a disadvantage this is for glass studies, and east-west oriented inhumation graves, with no grave goods, can be found (e. g. at Cologne) by the midsecond century (Kramer 1958: 329-39). But Christianity changed social outlook in subtler ways: poverty became a virtue, and much private wealth was channelled into the hands of the church, creating a dichotomy of aristocracy, the ecclesiastic probably stronger than that achieved by priestly classes among pagan Celtic communities. Without our documentary records it would be difficult to give a true account of this new sociological situation; here artwork can, however, still help considerably (Alcock 1963, 1982; Bruce-Mitford 1989: 189).
The Celtic peoples who had been suppressed or thrust out of Europe by Roman power were by the sixth century creeping back in a different guise, as evangelists of Christianity and of the ancient traditions of scholarship. For both, artwork was a potent agent. Art can mark the change with great eloquence; by the late sixth century Clovis’s grandson Chilperic appeared as Apollo (with lyre) on a portal of Notre Dame; the model was perhaps a Gaulish coin or medallion (Brogan, 1953: 188-9). About 590, Columbanus, a monk of Bangor on Belfast Lough on the northeast coast of Ireland, travelled into Europe and set up a monastery first at Luxeuil (in the remains of a Roman spa), to thrive and become a spiritual centre m eastern Gaul. He moved on over the Alps to Bobbio (south of Milan), where he founded a monastery and died in 615. Bobbio was one of the great early centres of manuscript art and this connection with Ireland was bound to be fruitful.
In Britain in later Roman times social information can still be extracted from artworks left on habitation sites. The continuing elaboration of dress-pins suggests the persistence of the cloak rather than brooch-held dress: indeed, the elaborate brooches were worn more as marks of rank and social position, as set out in the Irish Laws (Henry 1965: 102). Evidence accumulates to show the attire of those who lived in the residences and strongholds in the middle part of the first millennium AD; Figure 21.9 shows a fine one-piece shoe of thin leather that once walked the neatly split oak boards lying on hazel wattle-work in the fifth to seventh centuries AD at Dundarn at the head of Strathearn in Perthshire, the capital of the Pictish province of Fortrenn (Alcock et al. 1989: 189(1. esp 200, 217-19; for the high status of shoes in earlier Celtic contexts see Hochdorf, Moscati et al. 1991: 108).
Above all, Ireland, never romanized, must show the continuity through from the pagan to the Celtic Christian world. In pagan context the horse and vehicle gear show us a chieftaincy with its processionals (note the uniquely Irish leading pieces: Jope, 1955: 38; Raftery 1982: figs 47-80, 95-8) passing imperceptibly into the Christian tradition as seen on the art of crosses from the seventh century onwards (Chapter 37). One cross (Henry 1965: pi. 79) shows such processions more m a Christian context.
With the rise of pen and brushwork on vellum, art among Celtic communities of
The fifth-seventh centuries AD was brought more within the orbit of early Christian scholarly life, and we can see the Lindisfarne scriptorium as a working unit, where the master Eadfrith produced the Lindisfarne Gospels in the early eighth century (Bruce-Mitford 1989: 184-6). Eadfrith by his name was no Celt; yet the Celtic and Saxon traditions can be seen cheek by jowl in symbols and craft traditions already on the Sutton Hoo hanging-bowls (Bruce-Mitford 1972: 85-6). Nearby, at Burgh, was Irish missionary influence and surely there must have been also an eclectic atelier that could use both garnet and millefiori settings and produce the jewelry and hanging-bowls and their escutcheon settings, so deeply eloquent of old Celtic tradition.
The material evidence seems only rarely to reveal the occupation of a Celt (but note Sopron, Hungary; Plggott 1965: 197-9), though we may learn the profession of the bearer of the Obermenzing sword (Figure 30:3, from a grave in a small family cemetery of the third century BC near Munich), who was a medical man with many specialized implements implying up-to-the-minute contact with Alexandrian practice (de Navarro 1955; Moscati et al. 1991: 269, 372-3). Celtic artists sometimes had an intellectual bent, as shown for instance by the sense of space into which the water-birds rise obliquely, created by the workers of the Wandsworth shield roundel in the second century BC (Jope 1978; 54, pi. 7; Jope and Jacobsthal in press: pi. 68-70), or the wit of the Aylesford pantomime horses (Jope 1983), or the esoteric designs on British mirror-backs (Jope 1987: 106-10). Celtic intellectual Independence is well shown by the Coligny calendar, of the second century BC (Moscati et al. 1991:
And what of the standing of art workers themselves in Celtic society? Many would be no more than artisans, but a few had held a more special place. Moneyers could name themselves on their coins, for fiscal purposes. For a time a swordsmith (or his workshop) was marking KORISIOS (in Greek letters) at the head of the blade (Megaw 1971: 191-2, nos. 190-3). Rarely, a brooch-maker might give his name, and a skillet-maker gives a very Celtic name BODVOGENUS in the early first century AD (Toynbee 1964: 320, pi. lxxv). A bronzeworker might in the second century AD even take part alongside the patrons m presentation of a work (Toynbee 1962: 131, pi. 19, no. 16). And with some of the finer, wittier pieces (e. g. Figure 21.2; Megaw 1971: 16, 15; Jacobsthal 1944: pis. 70, loi, iii) it is difficult not to see artist and patron relaxing in mutual enjoyment over the result.
The craft thus took its place in developing design for use at all social levels, and had thus a socially moulding role. We now devote a few pages to exploring this theme at practical levels.
World History
