From: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Subject: Re: Celtic Cross
Date: 06 Sep 92 19:54:45 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Windows/DOS Users Ed Group

Our old friend Nora Chadwick, about whom we in this newsgroup are of
course in total agreement ("Yes, she did write "The Celts".) has
several interesting pages devoted to the subject of crosses in Ireland
and in Britain. In Chapter 8, "Celtic Art," she writes first of the
antiquity of the art of stone carving amongst the Celts. 

Then, in the section "Celtic Art in Ireland," Chadwick says that
"single stone crosses, from engraved boulders to elaborate slabs, are
found in practically all early Irish monsteries and are unusual in
European Christendom." The inspiration may have come from Gaul, Italy,
and the Near East. But she notes that Irish art owes many of its most
characteristic elements, perhaps, to native meglithic art (the boulder
of the Turoe, Galway, and the Castle Strange, Roscommon, stones),
"which were decorated with over their entire surface with La Tene
whorls."

She first describes early upright slabs carved with crosses. Examples
are found at Fahan Mura and at Carndonagh in Donegal, as well as other
examples in the Inishowen Peninsula, which together make one school of
these slab crosses. These, she says, appear to belong to the sphere of
the Columban monasteries at the close of the seventh century.  The
Donegal crosses "may owe something to prehistoric technique. . . ." But
she also finds possible artistic influences from the Christian Near
East:  Copts and Armenians in particular.

She tells us that most of the extant eighth-century crosses are "near
the middle of the Shannon and Clonmacnoise is an obvious centre, for
here evidence of a sculptor's workshop can be traced from the numerous
monumental stone slabs on a small scale which still survive. . . ." She
is inclined to believe that the valleys of the Blackwater and Suir in
the eighth century were "the centre and perhaps the origin of the high
crosses of Ahenny, Kilerian, Killamory, Kilrea." She also notes a small
school of figured crosses at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains,
including "the strange Cross of Moone." She dates the Clonmacnoise
group to the last decade of the eighth century and the group north of
Lismore to about 750 "at the latest."

She divides the crosses into groups. The first -- Ahenny (Tipperary)
and Kilkina (Kilkenny) -- are similar in their figured ornament of
spirals and interlacings and figured scenes carved in low relief on the
bases. The group associated with Clonmacnoise, including Bealin Cross,
are covered with animal decoration -- fanciful hunting scenes with
horsemen riding amongst dragons or stag-hunting -- but no "scenes of
current Christian iconographical type appear."

Of the group west of the Wicklows, she notes they are carved in granite
and therefore simply and shallowly. The Moone Cross (Kildare) is
seventeen feet high, narrow, with a high pyramidal base and a slender
stem and small head. It carved with little figures, each in its frame,
mostly without arms but with very large heads. The crucifixion is
placed low and features twelve armless figures. "The cross is unique,
but strangely impressive."

She groups fours crosses at Kells, one of which is beautifully carved
and another unfinished, with the Cross of Muiredach and the west Cross
at Monasterboice, the Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnoise and the
Cross of Darrow. The Cross of Muiredach bears an inscription asking for
a prayer for him (usually considered to be the second Muiredach, who
died in 923). It is massive, with two main panels of figured scenes and
panels of ornament. On the crossing and arms are the crucifixion and
Last Judgment, with smaller panels below the one showing scenes from
the New Testament and below the other panels from the Old Testament.
Dress and weapons are clearly depicted. "A particularly engaging detail
is carved at the foot of the cross on the west face belowing the
apprehending of Christ, where two cats are depicted licking their
kittens, reminding us of the two cats in the manuscript of the Book of
Kells." She dates these crosses to early ninth century and notes they
"show the same preoccupation with narrative and figure sculpture and
the same bold outline carving."

Later in this chapter is "Celtic Art in Britain". In it she discusses
crosses found from Cornwall through Wales to Galloway. She notes that
in Roman period Wales was a relatively poor and mountainous country,
subject to the artistic influences of southeastern Britain and of
Ireland.  In the art of grave monuments western Britain developed a
special art form, meriting special attention. It differed markedly from
that of Ireland and display a certain homogeneity within its regions,
especially in the type of ornamentation.

She notes that the "wealth and variety of design on Irish high crosses
belong to a different world, a naturalistic world, unlike the Gaulish
or the British ornament." The Irish lack the foliate motiffs of the
Gaulish and the humans and animals are generally not merely "masks
interlaced with foliage, as in Gaul." In western Britain, was another
school, unique and uniform. Animal, floral, and human designs are
replaced by geometrical ones. For example, the entire surface of the
Cardinham cross in Cornwall is ornamented with a pattern "consisting of
conventionalized vine scroll, inverted T-patterns, a chain of rings,
and on the head of the cross an interlace of two strands, intertwined,
and moving in opposite directions." She also cites the conventionalized
Cross of Sancreed (Cornwall), the head of which consists of a little
crucifixion, coarsely carved.

She says the type "runs right through Wales up to Galloway, though in
Galloway the ornament is frquently reduced to circle containing an
early form of cross within a circle." The slab is mostly devoted to an
inscription in Latin letters. She notes many Welsh crosses similar to
the Cardinham Cross, but more elaborate. One example is the Carew
Cross, sixteen feet high by the roadside near Carew Castle,
Pembrokeshire, "and decorated on the shaft with six panels of differing
conventional design." That the sculptor could unerring repeat a design
"argues an astonishing control over the tools." This kind of mechanical
perfection she contrasts to the freer ornamentation of the Irish
crosses.

-- 
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
	"Well, I'm a little muddled." -- Glinda