•
) (■
■ .
THE ARTS IN EARLY ENGLAND
Br THE SAME AUTHOR
THE ARTS IN EARLY ENGLAND
Vol. I — The Life of Saxon England in Its Relation to the Arts
Vol. II — Anglo-Saxon Architecture
Vols. Ill and IV — Saxon Art and Industry in the Pagan Period
Vol. V — The Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses, The Gospels of Lindisfarne, and other Early Christian Monuments of Northumbria. With Philological Chapters by A. Blyth Webster
Vol. VI, Part I — Completion of the Study of the Monuments of the Great Period of the Art of Anglian Northumbria
Vol. VI, Part II — Anglo-Saxon Sculpture
With numerous Illustrations, founded on the
writer s original photographs, some of them
being reproductions in colour
THE FINE ARTS
THE ORIGIN, AIMS AND CONDITIONS OF ARTISTIC
WORK AS APPLIED TO PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND
ARCHITECTURE
Fourth Edition With Illustrations
THE ART OF THE CAVE DWELLER
A Study of the Earliest Artistic Activities of Man
With many Illustrations and 4 Maps
All rights reserved
.«i*yK.VT-'»-l. •— N-* ■* <•
NUNNYKIRK
[frontispiece]
THE ARTS IN EARLY ENGLAND
G. BALDWIN BROWN, M.A., LL.D., F.B.A.
LATE HONORARY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
VOLUME VI
PART II
ANGLO-SAXON SCULPTURE
PREPARED FOR PRESS
By E. H. L. SEXTON, MA.
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1 937
Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Constable Ltd. at the University Press, Edinburgh
EDITOR'S PREFACE
The appearance of this second part of Volume vi at this time needs a word of explanation. The author passed away in the summer of 1932, before the book which is now pre- sented to the public had been finished. Chapters iv to ix, however, were in final proof form, and Chapter x in first proof. In addition, there remained a considerable amount of material in manuscript, some chapters apparently finished, others obviously incomplete. So much valuable material was at hand, however, that it was decided to proceed with the publication of the book but without in any way attempting to complete the treatment of the subject-matter in order that the work should remain entirely the author's own. For various reasons, entirely beyond the control of the publishers or the editor, the task of editing the material has been delayed. It so happens, however, that no work has appeared on this subject as a whole in the interval, so that this book may still be considered the most recent discussion of the material with which it treats. An editorial note has been added to those chapters which were obviously incomplete in manuscript, indicating that fact. From internal evidence, it would seem that Chapter x must also be incomplete on account of the summary treatment of the Nunnykirk cross shaft, a monument which the author greatly admired, an illustration of which he had selected for the frontispiece. Occasional mention is made of the further discussion of a monument which a reference to the index will show never came to be written. The editor wishes to express his thanks to Professor R. G. Collingwood who kindly supplied information concerning the publications
vi EDITOR'S PREFACE
of his father, the late Mr W. G. Collingwood, in various archaeological journals; to Mr A. W. Clapham and the Society of Antiquaries of London for a photograph of the Wroxeter cross shaft and permission to reproduce the illustra- tions of the Wolverhampton Pillar and the Colerne fragments; to Mrs Kaye for a photograph of the Viking axe-head taken by the late Mr Walter Kaye ; to the Dean of Peterborough for his kindness in allowing a photograph to be taken of the Heddar Stone in Peterborough Cathedral ; and to the authorities of the National Museum, Copenhagen, and the Riksantikvaren, Oslo, for their kindness in sending photo- graphs of the wooden object from Jellinge and the coped tombstone at Norderhov, respectively. To Messrs Constable of the Edinburgh University Press, who have printed the book, and to Messrs Hislop and Day the engravers, cordial thanks are due for the care they have taken with the proofs and typography, and with the illustrations. Especially does the editor desire to record his thanks to the publisher, Sir John Murray, and to Mr John Grey Murray, for most help- ful co-operation in the entire course of the preparation of the material for publication.
It may be convenient for the reader if part of the Pre- fatory Notes to previous volumes be repeated here. Large Roman numerals are employed to indicate particular cen- turies, the appropriate prepositions being where needful understood. Thus ' VII ' means in or of the seventh cen- tury, ' V work ' fifth-century work, and so on. A further saving of space has been obtained by using N S E W in similar fashion for the points of the compass, as in Volume n2. A superscript 2 after a volume number refers to the second edition of that volume of this work. (Volumes i and n have both appeared in the form of a revised edition.) Cross references to the pages of this volume, and also to matter in previous volumes, are included within brackets, as (p. ioo), (Vol. v, p. 10), and this will save the confusion due to uncer- tainty whether in a particular case a citation refers to pages
EDITOR'S PREFACE vii
in the work itself, or to those of some other work to which reference may just have been made. There is continuous pagination throughout Part i of Volume vi, published previ- ously, and the present Part n, so that page references which are not preceded by a volume number may, therefore, refer to the earlier Part i. In place of the often ambiguous ' left ' and ' right,' the heraldic terms ' dexter ' and ' sinister ' are usually employed. They mean of course ' right ' and ' left ' as viewed from the object towards the spectator, not from the spectator towards the object. However, when the terms 1 right ' and ' left ' are used, they always mean the right and left of the spectator, save of course in phrases like ' the right hand of the figure.' In the footnotes the abbreviation Ass. stands for the Journal of the British Archaeological Associa- tion. In order to make the index as useful as possible, the names of all persons mentioned in the book have been in- cluded. In this respect, the index differs from those in the previous volumes in which the names of living persons were omitted.
The editor has worked for many years on a closely related subject to that of the present volume, namely the sculptured crosses of Ireland, and had the privilege on a number of occasions, not long before the author passed away, of discuss- ing with him problems common to both the subject with which this book treats and the Irish monuments with which the editor was more immediately familiar, and the author then outlined his plan for the completion of The Arts in Early England. Readers of these volumes will be interested to know that the work was to have been completed with a seventh volume. That is, one other volume, a seventh, was projected in addition to this present part volume, which as already stated appears in a somewhat incomplete form, though it has been the constant aim of the editor, with the publisher's support, to make the book as nearly as possible as the author wished to have it. In the seventh volume, the author planned to discuss the illuminated manuscripts of the
viii EDITOR'S PREFACE
period — fortunately the Lindisfarne Gospels received a full treatment in Volume v — to which he proposed to add a sum- mary of the subject-matter covered by the whole work.
The editor cannot conclude this preface without a more personal note concerning the author of these volumes. The books themselves are his memorial and testify to his deep sensibility of the early art of England and the place it occupied in the life of the people. As with much of the later mediaeval art, it was an illustrative, almost didactic, art combined with beautiful forms. It taught in carved stone and illuminated page 'not a reading but a remembering' people, as the author has so aptly described them. This tradition of teaching in the arts was faithfully and ably carried forward by the author during his fifty years' tenure of the Professorship of Fine Art in Edinburgh University. It was the editor's privilege to be the recipient of his very generous hospitality on a number of occasions, and he well understands and shares the affection and respect felt for the writer of these volumes and expressed without exception by all those former students of his whom the editor has met. Though these and other volumes be his more permanent memorial, his greatest must be his place in the hearts of those who knew him.
E. H. L. S. Bath, November 1936.
CONTENTS
PAGE
EDITOR'S PREFACE v
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
CHAPTER IV
SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING ON CROSSES AND OTHER
STONES 93
CHAPTER V
SOME POINTS OF CONTROVERSY 116
CHAPTER VI
SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING . . . .134
CHAPTER VII
THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION 150
CHAPTER VIII
EARLY MONUMENTS IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND.
CHURCH FITTINGS IN ANGLO-SAXON TIMES . 165
CHAPTER IX
SELECTED PIECES ANALYSED AND DESCRIBED . .184
CHAPTER X
ANIMALS AND FOLIAGE ANALYSED . . . .204
ix
x CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER XI
A DIGRESSION ON THE SOCIAL SETTING OF THE
MONUMENTS 212
CHAPTER XII
CHARACTER OF THE SCANDINAVIAN DECORATIVE
WORK. CROSSES IN MAN 227
CHAPTER XIII A STUDY ON CROFTON 248
CHAPTER XIV NUNBURNHOLME 258
CHAPTER XV ANALYSIS OF THE PARTS OF A CROSS . . . .269
CHAPTER XVI
TRANSFER OF INTEREST TO NON-ANGLIAN PIECES 280
CHAPTER XVII
OTHER TYPES OF MONUMENTS. COPED TOMBSTONES 287
INDEX TO PART II
297
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
NUNNYKIRK Frontispiece
PLATE AT PAGE
XXIV. DURHAM CATHEDRAL LIBRARY, COLLECTION
OF CROSS FRAGMENTS . . . -95
XXV. i. ROUGH PLAIT FROM TOMBSTONE AT
CRINGLEFORD, NORFOLK ... 97
2. FRAGMENT OF CROSS SHAFT WITH
ENTRELACS AT BARKING, ESSEX . . 97
Fig. 12. PORTION OF CROSS - HEAD WITH RUNIC INSCRIPTION, FROM WHITBY HILL. POSSIBLY VERY ANCIENT . 10 1
Fig. 13. THE ENGLISH COUNTIES WITH THEIR ORIGINAL TREASURE IN NEARLY 1500 ANGLO-SAXON MONU- MENTS
XXVI. 1. CATACOMB WREATH
2. NITH FORD CROSS, DUMFRIESSHIRE
XXVII. CROSS ON LAND NEAR PENMON PRIORY ANGLESEY
XXVIII. MARKET CROSS AT TRIER, OF a.d. 985
XXIX. THE GRISY CROSS (NORMAN) .
XXX. THE BISLEY OR LYPIATT CROSS
XXXI. 1, 3. STANGROUND DEICTIC CROSS .
2. LONGTHORPE DEICTIC CROSS
102 104 104
105 106 107 108 no no
xi
Ml
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE AT PACE
XXXII. FRENCH CROSSES, SOME EARLY, PUBLISHED
BY M. Ll'-ON COUTIL 113
XXXIII. TWO DARTMOOR CROSSES OF CORNISH TYPE 114
XXXIV. CORNISH WAYSIDE CROSS ON THE ROAD TO
ST JUST 115
Fig. 14. DETAILS OF MEDITERRANEAN AND
NEAR-EASTERN ORNAMENTATION . 118
XXXV. THE BOWSTONES, ABOVE LYME PARK,
CHESHIRE 118
XXXVI. COPTIC FUNEREAL CROSS IN THE BRITISH
MUSEUM 128
XXXVII. THE CREETON SHAFT 141
Fig. 15. THRYBERGH STONE IN CEMETERY . 142
1. ORIENTATION
2. ORNAMENT ON N.E. SIDE
XXXVIII. 1, 2, 3, 4. THE THRYBERGH GROUP . . 143
XXXIX. 1, 3. THE SHAFT AT BARNBURGH . . .146
2. THE RAWMARSH CROSS . . . .146
XL. r. CIMITILE PATTERN FROM COLLINGHAM . 148
2. THE CASTLE HEDINGHAM CROSS . .148
XLI. BAALBEC CEILING 150
XLII. SYRIAN DECORATIVE DETAILS . . .151
1. CARVING ON TEMPLE DOOR JAMB AT
BAALBEC
2. CARVING ON CHAIR OF MAXIMIAN AT
RAVENNA (DETAIL)
3. CARVED PILASTER AT PALMYRA
XLIII. CHAIR OF MAXIMIAN . . .' . .152
Fig. 16. PART OF THE COLLINGHAM SHAFT 155
XLIV. 1. WOOD DIAPERS 158
2. IRISH BRONZE . . . . . .158
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Xlll
PLATE
XIV.
t, 2. 3. RECULVER STOUTER PILLAR .
FRAGMENTS
AT PAGE
FROM
XLVI. RECULVER PIECE FROM LESSER SHAFT .
Fig. 17. PLAN OF BRADFORD REVETMENT
XLVIL REVETMENT AT BRADFORD-ON-AVON
Fig. 18. THE SPIRAL MOTIVE.
XLVIII. THE SOUTH KYME PIECES
XLIX. JEDBURGH SLAB
L. ENLARGEMENT OF PART OF JEDBURGH SLAB
LI. NATURALISTIC FIGURE WITHIN SCROLL AT OTLEY
LII. OTLEY SCROLL WITH INTERPENETRATIONS
LIII. DEWSBURY FRAGMENTS .
LIV. 1,2. DEWSBURY 'MARY' FIGURES
LV. HORNBY SHAFT WITH LOAVES .
LVL THE HOVINGHAM SLAB .
LVIL 1, 2, 3, 4. BREEDON FRAGMENTS.
LVIII. FLETTON FRAGMENTS
LIX. FIGURES AT BREEDON AND FLETTON
1. BREEDON
2. FLETTON
LX. TWO FIGURES FROM YORK .... LXI. THE BISHOP AUCKLAND CROSS LXII. EASBY CROSS DETAILS
1. FRAGMENT OF THE CROSS-HEAD. FIGURE
WITH HAND RAISED IN BENEDICTION
2. DETAIL OF APOSTLE FIGURE (ST PETER?)
ON THE MIDDLE PORTION OF THE SHAFT
LXIII. 1, 2, 3, 4. EASBY CROSS. THE FOUR SIDES OF THE SHAFT FRAGMENTS
174
175 178
179
181 182 182 183
184 185 186 187 188 189 191 192
193
195 196 198
199
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE AT PACE
LXIV. EASBY CROSS FRAGMENTS. MAJESTAS AND
APOSTLES ON THE FACE OF THE SHAFT 201
LXV. EASBY. THE ORIGINAL PIECE . . .203
LXVI. THE CARLOWRIE CASTLE SHAFT . . .204
LXVII. NUNNYKIRK 205
LXVIII. NUNNYKIRK 205
Fig. 19. PORTION OF SHAFT AT SIMONBURN
IN THE NORTH TYNE VALLEY . 206
LXIX. ALDBOROUGH 207
Fig. 20. CONVENTIONALIZED FOLIAGE AT
ABERCORN ON THE FORTH . . 206
LXX. 1. THE LAWSON MONUMENT AT ROECLIFFE 207
2. FRAGMENT OF THE CUNDAL CROSS . . 207
LXXL HEVERSHAM 208
LXXII. CROSS-HEAD FROM THE SAXON CEMETERY AT DURHAM, NOW IN THE CATHEDRAL LIBRARY 217
LXXIII. CROSS SHAFT BUILT INTO WROXETER
CHURCH, SALOP 220
LXXIV. MIDDLESMOOR CROSS (LOWER PART) . . 223
Fig. 21. INSCRIPTION ON THE MIDDLES- MOOR CROSS 225
LXXV. 1. SLAB AT HAUGHTON-LE-SKERNE . .229
2. TOMBSTONE AT LEVISHAM . . .229
LXXVI. MIDDLETON TOWER PIECE . . . .230
LXXVII. THE HALTON CROSS 232
LXXVIII. SIGURD PANELS AT HALTON . . . .232
LXXIX. LEEDS CROSS 233
LXXX. LEEDS CROSS 233
1. WIELAND THE SMITH
2. SIGURD AND THE BIRD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv
PLATE AT PAGE
LXXXI. THE STAVELEY CROSS SHAFT . . .234
Fig. 22. GAUT'S CROSS, MICHAEL . . 237
Fig. 23. STAVANGER CROSS . . .241
LXXXII. THE RING CHAIN MOTIVE . . . .243
1. CROSS AT DEARHAM, CUMBERLAND
2. CAST IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT
MUSEUM OF A SANDSTONE FONT FORMERLY IN GALLSTAD CHURCH, NOW IN THE STOCKHOLM MUSEUM
LXXXIII. 1. ANDREAS, 95, CROSS-SLAB . . . .244
2. ANDREAS, 102, CROSS-SLAB, OBVERSE . 244
3. ANDREAS, 102, CROSS-SLAB, REVERSE . 244 LXXXIV. MAUGHOLD, 66, CROSS-SLAB . . .245
LXXXV. MAUGHOLD, 72, CROSS-SLAB . . .246
LXXXVI. BRADDAN, 109, CROSS SHAFT . . . .247
LXXXVII. STANWICK AND CROFTON DETAILS . . 249
LXXXVIII. 1, 2, 3. THE LECHMERE STONE . . .254
LXXXIX. FUNEREAL MONUMENT AT WHITCHURCH,
HANTS 255
XC. NUNBURNHOLME CROSS SHAFT, WEST SIDE 260
XCI. NUNBURNHOLME CROSS SHAFT, EAST SIDE 261
XCII. NUNBURNHOLME CROSS SHAFT, NORTH- EAST CORNER 262
XCIII. NUNBURNHOLME CROSS SHAFT, LOWER SUBJECT ON NORTH SIDE
XCIV. 1. BAUTA STONE, OBVERSE .
2. BAUTA STONE, REVERSE .
3. VIKING AXE-HEAD . XCV. IRTON CROSS, WEST SIDE
XCVI. ECCLESFIELD BASE AND SHAFT XCVII. WALTON CROSS
263 265 265 265 269 270 270
xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE AT PAGE
XCVIII. LEEK CROSS, SOUTH SIDE . . . .271
XCIX. THE BECKERMET SHAFTS . . . .271
C. CROSS AT ILAM WITH SHAFT CYLINDRICAL
IN LOWER PART 272
CI. CROSS AT ILAM WITH RECTANGULAR SHAFT 272
CII. THE ENRICHMENT ON THE WOLVER- HAMPTON PILLAR (REPRODUCED FROM AN ' EXTENDED ' DRAWING) . . .273
CIII. TWO LANCASHIRE CROSSES . . . .274
1. BOLTON-LE-MOORS
2. WHALLEY
CIV. CROSS IN MIDDLETON CHURCH . . .275
CV. THE SPROXTON CROSS ....
CVI. 1, 2. CROSS-HEAD AT CROPTHORNE, WORCS.
CVII. 1, 2. HODDAM CROSS FRAGMENTS .
CVIII. CROSS AT THE SPITAL, HEXHAM .
CIX. 1, 2. THE COLERNE FRAGMENTS
CX. WOODEN OBJECT FROM JELLINGE NOW IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, COPENHAGEN
CXI. STONE IN GLOUCESTER MUSEUM .
CXII. GREAT CROSS SHAFT AT RAMSBURY (LOWER PART)
CXIII. THE HEDDA STONE
CXIV. 1, 2, 3. COPED TOMBSTONES AT RAMSBURY
CXV. ' HOGBACK ' AT ABERCORN
CXVI. FUNEREAL STONE AT NORDERHOV, NORWAY 292
CXVII. THE HEYSHAM ' HOGBACK ' CXVIII. BEAR HEAD IN GLOUCESTER MUSEUM CXIX. STONE IN NORWICH MUSEUM .
276 277 278 279 281
284 285
286 289 290 291
293 294
295
CHAPTER IV
SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING ON CROSSES AND OTHER
STONES
The reader of these volumes is already familiar with some conspicuous examples of the Anglo-Saxon monuments with which the present pages are chiefly concerned. These are the Carved Crosses, or the fragments of these, which make their appearance in many parts of the British Isles, and repre- sent in art about four centuries of the national history.
As a rule the Carved Cross we have in view consists in a free-standing slightly tapering shaft of stone, very commonly a monolith, of a section that is mostly four-cornered but may exceptionally be round or oval, and of a height that may vary between about four feet and eight feet, ornamented often on all four sides or all round by decorative carvings or by inscrip- tions generally in Anglo-Frisian runes. This enrichment is either continuous or disposed in panels, and the whole is sur- mounted by a Cross-Head, that may take various forms and that commonly bears similar or finer adornment. The ex- pression ' Carved Crosses ' is used for the sake of brevity, but it must be taken to include sculptured stones of other shapes besides the cruciform, that are often allied to the crosses by the link of a common purpose, which is in many cases, funereal.
We shall see as we proceed that what is here indicated implies a very considerable body of artistic work, diverse in its forms and in the degrees of aesthetic interest it may present, that has come down to us for the most part in fragments, but in fragments so numerous and varied and so widely dis- VI g 93
94 SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part n.
tributed, so interesting and often so intriguing in their sug- gestions, that we can re-create from them in thought a rural England whose country hamlets almost all over it might show their little churchyards dotted, their tracks of communication marked here and there, by a sculptured cross or slab. Each was a monument of rustic piety, and a work at the same time however simple of art. For though we may look slight- ingly upon any single fragment especially in its present condition, we must associate it in our thoughts with four or five similar pieces which with it would make up a taper- ing shaft, and such a shaft would go into line with hun- dreds of others, each the base of a cross-head often charged with religious symbolism. Within such a collection we should be struck by the fact that in neighbouring monu- ments we would not find repetition of motives, save in some quite exceptional cases, but on the contrary an almost limitless variation.
These fragments, as has just been said, are widely dis- tributed; in certain parts of the North one might say they out- numbered the churches, while on sundry sites collections have been formed where a number of interesting fragments have been brought together for comparison and study. The most important of these gatherings is that consisting in about seventy-five pieces in Durham Cathedral Library, a collection due to the initiative and long-continued efforts of the late Canon Greenwell. A general view of that part of the Library is given in PL xxiv, and even a casual glance will show how much there is here displayed that stimulates inquiry and study.
Next to Durham in interest we may place the site in the southern Midlands at Ramsbury near Marlborough, where the pieces shown exhibit styles of enrichment contrasting markedly with those current in Northumbria. Bakewell in Derbyshire is another such centre, while there are not a few places in which we may find a dozen or more of examples
chap. iv.J INTERSECTING PATTERNS 95
brought together fortuitously but available for study. Variety is everywhere the dominant impression.
To take one instance, that of intersecting patterns,1 how multiform are the fashions in which narrow bands or cords are twined and knotted upon themselves or on one another so as to present a pleasing device. Many hundreds of these patterns have been analysed and catalogued by that greatest of experts in this branch of archaeology, Mr Romilly Allen, who has drawn and described them all in the stately volume known as The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland? These panels of entrelacs (if it be permitted to use the convenient French term) are so abundant in most parts of the country that we are tempted to take them as a matter of course, but as a fact they need a considerable amount of doing. They have their own laws of construction, and if these be not observed the pattern will not come out right. As a rule the variety shown in the various patterns is their prevailing char- acteristic, but it does occur sometimes that in a certain district and perhaps at a particular time some patterns seem to recur rather frequently, and it is natural to conjecture the existence in that part of a sort of school centering round some important site, such as Hexham in very early days, and later on Ripon, and for a special reason Whiterne in Galloway.
Such recurrence of patterns was an indication to Mr Cyril Fox, now of the Cardiff Museum, of the existence of a school of funereal art with its metropolis at Cambridge and extensions into East Anglia, the activity of which covered the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. The existence of local schools of the kind, formal or informal, may by some be postulated as inevitable in view of the nature of the work and the con- ditions of its practice. If however this be granted, the student
1 ' Intersecting patterns ' is a clumsy phrase compared with the elegant and simple French expression entrelacs, which may be used here and there in the text. The final ' c ' is mute.
2 Printed for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, in 1903.
96 SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part u.
of the subject must be careful not to assume any considerable importance for such local schools, because, as we shall see, the variety that exists among works that necessarily possess a family likeness is a striking proof of independence, and we must understand from the first that it is individual design and not standardization that is a special feature of this Saxon decorative carving.
Indeed, when we speak of ' the school of Hexham,' we are not thinking of a number of artistic products all resembling each other, and all issuing from a single large stonemason's yard, but of a varied collection that is stamped throughout by the one characteristic — artistic excellence. The Cam- bridge-East Anglia school belongs to quite a late period when repetition rather than originality might be looked for. The case of Whiterne is interesting. It continued as a seat of Anglian Christianity almost as long as the Saxon period lasted, but as a sort of island in the midst of people of differing religious ways. In the excellent Official Guide to Whiterne and its Monuments issued in connection with the Scottish Office of Works, it is suggested that the great similarity among a large number of carved crosses, all of Anglian type, is to be explained by the activity at the place of one man who may be called ' the Master of Whiterne,' and who made a number of crosses and taught this art to other carvers who came to the place for work. In the isolated little community the art may in this way have been kept alive.
An idea of the character of this interlacing may be gained from what we see on PI. xxv, where a crudely simple plait from a tombstone at Cringleford, Norfolk, no. I, is shown in contrast with a remarkably elaborate piece, no. 2, that is placed above it. This fragment is in Barking Church, Essex, and was found in 1910 built into the wall of the churchyard. Barking is a site of high renown in early religious history, and there was a restoration under Edgar and Dunstan about 970, in connection with which the cross may most probably have
PLATE XXV
i, ROUGH PLAIT FROM TOMBSTONE AT CRINGLEFORD, NORFOLK 2, FRAGMENT OF CROSS SHAFT WITH ENTRELACS AT BARKING,
ESSEX
[P- 97j
chap. iv.J THE BARKING FRAGMENT 97
originated. Of good hard sandstone, that most would pro- nounce ' brought from a distance,' * it is about 1 ft. high, with a breadth below of c. 9! in., tapering above to c. 8^ in. The narrow side measures below c. 7^ in. This gives us a fairly sub- stantial cross shaft with interlacing work on all four sides that probably was carried up to the top of the shaft and constituted all its enrichment. It may have been five to seven feet high, and have carried a handsome cross-head. The fragment is too short to show the full development of the elaborate pattern on the principal face, and this is not very easy to understand or follow, but the amount of work of a somewhat monotonous kind must have been really prodigious before all the intersections can have been indicated by the up-and-down undulations of the cords, all represented in the chiselling. The stone is noticed in the Essex Report on Ancient Monuments^ Vol. 11, and more fully in Vol. iv, pages xxx, xxxi, where there are four views of it, and a quotation of laudatory remarks on the style and finish of the entrelacs by W. G. Collingwood.
We need not concern ourselves here with the necessary variations in artistic merit among these numerous and diverse sculptured stones. Sculpture was of course upon the down grade, and the earlier work is naturally the best, but as a fact the art does keep up notably to the end of the period, and at a probable date within a century of the Norman Con- quest, we are well-nigh startled by the surprising excellence of the cross at Gosforth in Cumberland, where we find a complete monolith of red sandstone more than 14 feet in height with the cross-head carved in the same piece, most carefully and skilfully executed in a style of which it is the leading representative in the country. In view of this it would be difficult to speak of ' decline.'
1 This oft-repeated statement must be received with caution, for it is often misleading. Local tradition favours the idea of ' brought from a distance,' as it seems to give more value to a monument. We shall meet other cases.
98 SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part n.
Viewing this carved cross art as a whole, and taking the good pieces and the inferior ones together in the mass, we may surely regard the whole as an element in the life of Saxon England which among the more intelligent of the country-folk counted for something on the side of culture, an element that now deserves a place in any display of local pro- ducts illustrating the life of our olden times, and that can no longer be excluded from notice in any literary treatment of the Anglo-Saxon period.
There is a general welcome throughout our islands for the efforts that are being made through many agencies to protect rural England, Wales, and Scotland from irreparable injury that threatened them owing to the immense post-war develop- ment of internal traffic along the roads and through the country villages. The saving of these last from alterations which would have destroyed their special and indeed unique charm, is an immense national asset. There are country villages in France, Germany, Holland, Norway, and other continental lands, that are in configuration and buildings as picturesque as ours and jewelled with as lovely gardens, but they are on the whole immeasurably inferior in the elements of the Church and Churchyard. These are the traditional focal points of the life of our little settlements, ensconced in their sylvan setting but themselves deftly ordered and attesting frequently a cultured woman's taste and care ; in these we have an almost wholly British possession, that we must piously love and value so long as it is left to us unspoiled. ' A very large number, and perhaps the most interesting, of the monu- ments scheduled by this Commission, are parish churches.' Such is the weighty deliverance of the English Royal Com- mission on Ancient Monuments, in its report for Bucks.1 To make the life of the village a fuller and more interesting thing than it has come to be in comparatively recent times, is an
1 Vol. ii, North, p. 13.
chap. iv.J AN ELEMENT IN VILLAGE LIFE 99
aim which the Historical Association 1 has set before itself, and it lays it down in one of its leaflets 2 that ' the best method of arousing interest among villagers or townsfolk in the story of the nation ' is to associate it, as far as possible, with the people, the sites, the buildings, and the antiquities generally of the locality. The leaflet goes on to quote the opening words of a lecture in which a local magnate in a Kentish village contended that ' the unit of national patriotism is surely the parish. The parish, the county, the country — these are the steps.' If this be true, the Anglo-Saxon funereal stones come prominently into the picture, for in a vast number of examples they are parish monuments, and are by no means always associated with monasteries or important town churches and their adjuncts.
A question may be asked about the origin and earliest history of the form of art in question as a social and religious institution. It will be enough in this place to refer to the passages in the previous volume (Vol. v), where the relative facts and inferences are given in detail. The free-standing carved stone cross, then, seems to originate in the plain crosses generally of wood set up for various reasons, mostly as memorials, by the early Irish saints of about V or VI (Vol. v, pp. 1 52-1 61). Lives of these saints were as a rule written down in their own time by their disciples, but they have only come down to us as re-written in XII. They must, as every scholar will understand, be used critically, but, as their editor, Mr Charles Plummer, makes clear in his fascinating intro- ductions,3 they supply a large amount of trustworthy general information. Celtic missionary saints may have imported the cross mainly as an instrument of Christian propaganda into parts of North Britain not yet under Anglian domination,
1 Located with the Royal Historical Society at 22 Russell Square, London, W.C. 1.
2 No. 81.
3 Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, Oxford, 1 9 10, two vols.
ioo SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part n.
but King Oswald of Northumbria, who had lived in exile among the Celtic ecclesiastics, partly at Iona, introduced in a telling manner to his own people the free-standing cross of a monumental form, when in 634 he set up the famous Cross of wood on the ridge of Heavenfield (Vol. v, p. 151), and this wonder-working monument brought the cross form into the greatest possible vogue.
According to the recognized chronology, it would be within forty or fifty years from this date that the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses achieved an artistic triumph in Saxon England, and how this interval is to be filled up is a matter for the discussion of which material is sadly to seek. It involves the question of the origin, not of the cross form in its simple unadorned early Celtic aspect, but that of the enriched examples in often effectively carved stone that have made the British Isles, as we shall presently see, a distinct province of Early Christian Art. If anything can be said about this it will be given later.
There exists just one fragment, small and poor enough, which may have been part of a very early cross artistically shaped and inscribed. It is preserved at the gate-house of entry to the ruins of Whitby Abbey. It is part of a cross- head the arms of which are not plain square projections but are shaped in the very early form of a cross with expanding arms, or cross paty. A plain strip runs across the face of the transom with an inscription in runes, but nothing can be made of the few surviving characters.
Another worked stone was kept at the same place but was shattered by a shell from the sea during the war. This last stone had been found in working a quarry near the edge of the cliff together with some interments, and it has now been proved by excavations that in the immediate vicinity was the site of the ancient Saxon Abbey, the Streanaeshalch of Hild, so that if the provenance of the cross-head were local, like that of this other piece, it would have originated most probably
chap. iv.J STATISTIC OF THE CROSSES 101
in the Abbey, and there is nothing about it which would make impossible or even unlikely a very early origin. A sketch of it is given in Fig. 12.
A question may here be asked about the probable extent of the whole output of decorative and monumental sculp- ture which these Anglo-Saxon centuries witnessed, and also about its distribution in different parts of the Saxon kingdoms. An attempt is therefore made here to arrive at such a statistic by a survey of the Eng- lish counties in many of which the L. J materials for a numerical estimate are in existence. The method has been to argue back, from frag- ments of cross shafts and cross- heads that have survived, to the probable number of cruciform or similar monuments the previous existence of which they can be held to attest. It needs hardly to be said that care has to be taken to avoid the blunder of counting each surviving fragment as evi- dence for a distinct monument,
for two or three fragments may be part of a single piece and properly only count as one.
The two largest English counties have been thoroughly surveyed from this point of view, the first, Yorkshire, by Mr W. G. Collingwood, who described and delineated practi- cally all its monuments, while of those of Lincolnshire the Rev. D. Steadman Davies has published a careful and scholarly Catalogue Raisonne.1 The names of many other antiquaries could be mentioned as having devoted themselves with ardour to the study of the Saxon monuments of their own county or district, while the volumes of the Victoria History of the Counties
1 In the Archaeological Journal, xxxm, 1926.
WHITBY
Fig. 12. — Portion of Cross-head with runic inscription, from Whitby Hill. Possibly very ancient.
102 SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part n.
of England, and those containing the Reports of the Royal Commissions on Ancient Monuments, with other archaeological journals, national or provincial, present of course much most valuable material. With some of the more southerly counties there is more difficulty, especially in the case of those that have no noted collections of Saxon fragments. Cornwall was so exceptionally prolific that Mr Arthur Langdon reckons up an ancient treasure of more than three hundred crosses,1 but they were not all necessarily of pre-Conquest date. Perhaps a conjecture at about one hundred would not be far from the mark. The idea of ' conjecture ' must not give a false im- pression, for, all through, the various statistical results have been based on the evidence of existing or known fragments, and on the whole the figures given may be assumed to be under the mark, for a large number of pieces must have entirely perished or been lost to sight. It is possible that what is given here may call attention to existing gaps in the extant statistical Reports and lead to fresh and perhaps fruitful searches ; old churchyard walls may often have fragments of cross shafts built into them as was the case at Barking, and the church walls themselves may, as at Easby (p. 197 f.), hold in store treasures for us and our descendants.
The distribution of the monuments as well as their total number is to be noted, and it will be seen by the ciphers in each county that first the North and then the Midlands show a great numerical preponderance over the South. To this point we may return later on. The Map is Fig. 13. There are nearly fifteen hundred examples noted.
It may be of advantage, especially to any readers not native to the British Isles, if it be made clear from the first that it is only the carved crosses of what are now the English counties and of the Isle of Man that are the subject of the present volume, and it is no part of its purpose to deal with
1 Old Cornish Crosses, Truro, 1896.
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[p. 102]
chap. iv.J THE SEVERAL BRITISH GROUPS 103
the other extensive groups of such monuments found within the British Isles, but in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The English counties with the Channel Islands and Man now make up what is known as England, but in VII the Anglian territories of the ancient Northumbria extended further to the north and west than England extends to-day, and the region of carved crosses with which we are dealing stretched at that time to the north as far as the Forth, while to the north-west it included a good part of Dumfriesshire and of Galloway. The reason is that at different times both Angles and Scots inhabited these now extra-territorial English districts ; hence it is that fragments of Anglian work come to light in regions now Scottish, that are supplied with monuments of their own Scottish type.
Here the reader may be imagined remarking ' Scottish type — what is the Scottish type ? ', and in the interest of clearness it may be well to occupy a little space with an attempt at a summary notice of the chief characteristics in which each of these three other groups differs from the English one.
The Irish group is confined within definite geographical limits and is very distinctive, but its artistic development begins later than our Anglian development, so that advanced Irish art exercised practically no influence on English work, but it must of course be recognized that Irish ornamental art, apart from the crosses, exerted a potency that was well- nigh all-pervading in the artistic regions of N.W. Europe. The Irish carved crosses reach a stature that often overtops all others, and they offer a great display of figure sculpture on Scriptural themes which reminds us of the high reputation of the Irish in theological scholarship. Normally, a handsome socket with carved enrichment holds the base of the shaft. This is crowned above by the cross, the projecting arms of which are embraced by a ring of stone that reproduces the honorific wreath which in Early Christian art surrounds the
104 SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part n.
Christian monogram. An example from the Catacombs is shown on PI. xxvi, r. This gives us the so-called ' Celtic' cross-head, or, with an indication of its form, the ' wheel cross-head,' that is almost universal in Ireland and in the Isle of Man but of rather sporadic appearance in England proper.
Any attempt to characterize in a single paragraph the Scottish type is foredoomed to failure because there is not one type but many, and amongst the very numerous examples of great and varied interest it does not seem possible to pick out any one that represents centrally the Scottish style. One characteristic which Scottish ecclesiastical art shares with that of the Isle of Man, but which is distinctively non-Anglian, is the shape of the cruciferous monument, which in Anglian art is almost universally the free armed cross, but in the regions just mentioned is generally (not always) replaced by a comparatively thin slab of stone along the median line of which a cross is carved in relief, the surface of which, as well as the rest of the space of the slab, is enriched with carving. The motives of this are very various. Geometric or linear patterns are very common, but the naturally treated foliage scrolls which are characteristically Anglian rarely appear. Animals are freely used, but again, not in the Anglian form but of a type that is rather Irish. Then there are purely Scottish motives known as ' symbols,' found only in certain parts of the country, and not to be mistaken. Nearly all these abundant Scottish stones are figured and described in the great book already noticed (p. 95).
Welsh monuments, very numerous and often of great merit, have as their chief specialty a great development of geometric ornament while there is less display of figures, animals, and foliage. A nobly massive piece used to stand in the park of a nobleman near Carmarthen and was known as the ' Golden Grove ' stone. It is now in the Cardiff Museum. It stood 7 ft. in height by a width of 2 ft. 4 in., and carries an inscribed name on one side, but otherwise it is entirely covered with linear patterns.
PLATE XXVI
i, CATACOMB WREATH
2, NITH FORD CROSS, DUMFRIESSHIRE
[p. 104]
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[p. 105]
chap. iv.J STRZYGOWSKI ON SAXON ART 105
A Welsh cross, PI. xxvn, that stands on or nigh the ancient domains of Penmon Priory in Anglesey, and had no doubt some official purpose to serve, is a rare example of a large free-standing cross with all its essential parts — enriched socket, shaft, and head, though there is obviously something lost between the last two, which do not fit. We may take it in its comparative completeness as a convenient starting point for the succeeding business of the Volume.
If we embrace in one view the whole output of the monu- ments that have furnished the statistics of Fig. 13, and inquire into their aesthetic character and value, it is of interest to see the impression they have recently made upon a great authority on Early Christian Rea/ien, Josef Strzygowski. This experi- enced critic quite lately brought a fresh eye to them, and in his Origin of Christian Church Art uses expressions like the following : — ' The spiritual content of any art is the first of its values to be considered, even though its development is known. We may say at once of Anglo-Saxon works of art that they create an impression of spontaneity and freshness as enduring as that produced by works of early Greek or early Gothic art.' ' Whether I turn to the remains of Anglo- Saxon churches, to the crosses, or to the MSS. of the time of Bede, I feel in the presence of an art which differs from every other art in the world.'1 This distinctive character connects itself naturally with the fact that this British art of the crosses is entirely confined to these islands and makes no appearance at all in the Early Christian Art of the Continent and the nearer East. This may seem a bold statement, but the grounds on which it can be established will presently be made clear.
We have to emphasize this individual character of our monuments by distinguishing them from other classes with
1 Origin of Christian Church Art, by Josef Strzygowski, Translated, Oxford, 1923. pp. 246, 233.
106 SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part n.
which they must not be confused. In the first place the British cross of Saxon times is marked off by its early appear- ance from the mediaeval free-standing cross which in church- yards, as in other situations of a more secular kind, became, say from XIV onwards, a familiar British institution. Such monuments take the form of what are called churchyard crosses — artistic expressions of pious feeling with perhaps a funereal significance that is only general. If they are fine examples of their art, they dominate their surroundings and lay over the whole quiet hamlet of the departed a consecrating charm that brings together in one community the quick and the dead. Or again, the religious element may be in a measure in the background and the crosses may serve most directly the purposes of secular life. Their function may be expressed by the word ' Deictic,' that is, ' arresting and instructive,' as when a cross marks for the wayfarer his path, or directs him to a safe ford in a treacherous stream. There were Boundary crosses too, and most important of all in secular aspects the Market crosses. These last we must regard as on the whole a late form, as they flourished specially in advanced mediaeval times, but the deictic cross and the boundary cross may have come into existence quite early,1 and so too may the cemeterial cross.
This last brings us to the other class of crosses which have to be kept separate from those on which we have laid our finger. The reference is to crosses of a primitive type similar to those early ones said to have been fabricated and set up by the ancient Irish saints.
Aword or two upon each of these two classes of crosses that do not come formally under our notice will be here in place.
An interesting market cross of a date quite within our period appears in the illustration PI. xxviii that is owed to the kindness of the writer's friend Professor Paul Clemen of
1 A boundary stone, and in part a cross, is the St Peter monument at Whiterne, one of the early Galloway series. (See Vol. v, pp. 36 f., 5 1 f., 56 f. — [Ed.].)
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PLATE XXVIII MARKET CROSS AT TRIER, OF a.d. 985
[p. 106]
PLATE XXIX THE GRISY CROSS (NORMAN)
[p. 107]
chap. iv.J DEICTIC CROSSES 107
Bonn. To him had been addressed an inquiry similar to one directed to the Trocadero concerning Gaul, and he had replied that our Anglo-Saxon type of free-standing cross of funereal import ' can never have been usual ' in the German provinces, but he called attention to an early specimen of the market cross set up in the market square of Trier on the Mosel in the year 985. With the exception of one other similar cross, he knew of no further examples in Germany or the lands of the Mosel that could be in any respects compared with ours. But the numerous and ubiquitous market crosses are both too late and too secular to come within our purview.
Of the mediaeval deictic cross one good example from the country nearest to our own may here be introduced. Writing of the Normans, for whom as we shall see our early crosses had no interest, de Caumont in his Abecedaire1 confessed that in the Duchy ' there remains so little in the way of crosses erected in the cemeteries and along the roads in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that I can offer only one complete specimen . . . this is the cross of Grisy (Calvados) placed at the edge of a Roman road on the boundary of two communes.' Now the writer's inquiry as to prototypes or copies in Gaul of our early crosses, directed to the authorities of the Museum of Comparative Sculpture at the Trocadero, elicited the courteous reply that this same Grisy cross was the only piece of the kind they knew. It is a handsome monument, and a reproduction of it by permission of the Archives Photo- graphiques at Paris is given here on PI. xxix. There will be seen a certain cruciform character about the head, and this may be due to the influence of English examples, but this cruciform motive is rather decorative in its intention than a serious feature in the structure, as it would be on our side of the Channel. The chevrons and star patterns date it about XII, and it is too late to have any real connection with our Saxon work except by way of imitation.
1 Architecture Religieuse, Caen, 1886, p. 332.
io8 SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part n.
The number of examples, which we shall find crowding in upon us when we get really into touch with this Saxon work, makes it well to take advantage of any opportunity of getting any more or less important piece brought into notice when a chance offers itself. Now it so happens that in the west of England there has recently come into view a standing monument that bears an outward resemblance in form and placing to the Grisy cross, but exhibits the striking difference that its four sides were covered with figure sculpture on quite a considerable scale, whereas on the Norman piece there is nothing but geometrical and linear ornament. It is put down as Saxon and three or four centuries earlier than Grisy, but like Grisy it seems to have been connected with a Roman road, and may have been at one time a boundary mark. The monu- ment in question is known as the Bisley Cross from the Cotswold village of that name not far from Stroud, or as the Lypiatt Cross from a neighbouring park. It had passed through many vicissitudes, and was almost buried out of sight when there was directed to it the attention of Mr St Clair Baddeley, of Painswick not many miles away. Mainly through his efforts the stone has been taken in charge by the local authorities, and now stands as seen in PI. xxx, railed in, on what was probably its original base, by the side of a fairly frequented road between Bisley and Stroud. The height of the shaft is 5 ft. 9 in. and its breadth tapers upwards from about 1 ft. 8 in. to 1 ft. 3 in. One side has been planed away in quite modern times with the intention of charging it with inscriptions marking it as a parish boundary stone. The other three sides bear figures carved in bold relief and in standing positions but too terribly marred by time for any details to be made out. The figures are in two tiers. A larger one below stands in a recess with arched head, a very common arrangement as we shall see as we go on. The recess shown on the N.W. side photographed has been a little altered by enlargement, and has a height of 3 ft. 6 in.
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[p. 108]
\
chap, iv.] MONUMENTS ON ROADS 109
by a width of about 1 ft. 6 in. Rows of small drilled holes seem to show that something was attached here in old time. The illustration, from a photograph by Mr Ellis Marsland, has kindly been presented for use in this place by its author and by the authorities of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, to whom best thanks are returned.
Above the arched head is a plain face of stone giving space for inscriptions, which however are not preserved, and further up comes a niche with a square head that was occupied by a necessarily shorter figure. This arrangement seems to have been maintained on all four sides, which would mean eight standing figures, of goodly proportions, fully up to the standard of such statuary on the crosses as a whole, and in relief above the average. There is no detail preserved from which an exact date could be fixed or even conjectured, but the motive of standing figures in arched recesses is quite early, and VIII might be a reasonable suggestion. How the jambs of the arched recesses were treated cannot be clearly made out, nor have we any indication of the termination of the monument above, but most people pre-suppose a cross-head. Whether the purpose of the stone was connected with topography as seems the case with the Grisy pillar, we cannot say, but no definite ecclesiastical association can be predicated in either instance.
While we are on this subject it may be well to notice one or two more of our Saxon crosses that were apparently con- nected with roads rather than with churches, and this must suffice for the treatment of this class of monuments. Two stones of the kind in question are found in the neighbourhood of Peterborough. One stands now in a cottage garden in the village of Longthorpe about two miles to the west of the Cathedral city. Mr James Irvine of Peterborough, a sound authority on monumental antiquities, wrote about it that it had been moved from its original position where it had been set up to guide wayfarers on two roads which crossed in the vicinity. It is now erected on a stone base 2 ft. 9 in. square
VI H
no SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part h.
sunk in the ground of the little garden and much overgrown with foliage, as may be seen on PL xxxi, 2. The shaft is now 7 ft. high and in width on the front and back i ft. 6 in. tapering above to I ft. 4 in. The sides are narrower, 10^ in. below and 8^ in. above. The tapering shows that it was a cross shaft but nothing is known about the head. The arrises are carefully worked into roll mouldings, and one side turned now towards the south is covered with entrelacs attest- ing the Saxon character of the piece.
Another monument, also almost certainly a landmark, is a very curious piece that is in its very quaintness character- istically Saxon. Two views of it are given on PI. xxxi, 1, 3. It belongs to Stanground, a parish of great extent just south- east of Peterborough, and has now been placed immediately within the churchyard. It seems to have stood in old time looking directly east along a road that runs towards Whittlesea and may have given guidance to those venturing into the fenny regions. It had its back to a road running north and south, and that this was its original position seems indicated by the fact that the shaft is only worked on the face and two sides, the back being left plain, though there is on it a modern sinking for a brass. The monument is known as the 1 Lampass ' Cross and is put down by the Commissioners on Ancient Monuments as of XI or XII.1 With all possible respect to these authorities we cannot refrain from saying that this is a bad formula. XI and XII do not in the present connection make a continuous chronological period such as is formed, for example, by XIII and XIV. A work may be put down to some date in those two centuries because there was a continuous development of the same style going on all the time, whereas, as we shall see as we proceed, there is no continuity between Saxon and Norman sculpture. XI indi- cates the latest Saxon period and the beginning of the Norman
1 Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments, Volume on Huntingdonshire, Plate 50.
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era, and XII is Norman till in the second half of the century Gothic is beginning. There is nothing distinctively Norman about this Stanground piece, either in character, form, detail, or technique, and XII must be excluded altogether from consideration. The first half of XI might suit it as it is entirely Saxon. The height of the shaft is 5 ft. 4 in. above the modern base, and it has a decided taper. There is a wheel cross-head greatly weathered and a little lower down a shoulder projecting from each side, above which there are on each of these sides arcades of a normal Saxon type. Certain devices are incised in lines rather faintly rendered that come out better when the stone, which is Barnack rag, is wetted. A cross paty is on the front, and on each side is a St Andrew's Cross with a circle round its central part. This position, flanking a Cross, gives the device a Christian character, and we might suggest that the )( may stand for the initial letter of ' Christ ' and the circle for the ' honorific ' crown. The form of a descending dove or Angel can be made out, but the piece demands careful study. The meaning of the word ' Lampass ' is obscure.
An interesting form of these topographical monuments is the so-called ' Ford Cross ' that facilitated safe passage over a stream. There is a place in North Wiltshire called ' Christian Malford.' In Domesday it is given as ' Christemeleforde,' which means ' the ford of the monument of Christ.' The monument ' mal ' of Christ was a cross marking the place of safe passage, and it is important to notice that a utilitarian structure of the kind is at the same time a monument of religion, and a proof that our division between sacred and secular is not mediaeval, for the aegis of religion was in those days flung far and wide, and it was as much a Christian function to show where a stream could be safely traversed as it was to shepherd the people to an open air service.
Most fortunately there has been preserved a ' mal ' of this kind that still stands beside a Dumfriesshire stream, the
ii2 SAXON DECORATIVE CARVING [part ii.
predecessor of the bridge which now carries the road across it. The place is Thornhill, and the little river is the Nith. That particular region of southern Scotland is noted for its fine Anglian monuments and the ' ford cross ' at Thornhill can hold its own with the best, for it is covered with good Anglian enrichment consisting very largely in animals, and has pre- served part of its cross-head showing that it was a ' Christemal.' The first modern writer who dealt with it scientifically was Dr John Stuart, who in his first volume published in 1856 figured and described it, mentioning the fact that there existed a tradition that there was formerly a ford in that place, now replaced by the bridge. For all that the writer knows, the piece is unique. It will be seen figured previously on PI. xxvi, 2, facing p. 104.
We have in this way established the distinction between our crosses and those which we have called mediaeval, repre- sented centrally by the ubiquitous market cross, and must notice now the other set of crosses which will have also to be put on one side as not coming into the picture, the crosses of plain and primitive forms the use of which was connected with early cemeteries.
In Cabrol's Dktionnaire <T Archeologie Chretienne it is noticed in the Article ' Bretagne (Grande) ' by Dom. H. Leclercq that it is probable that crosses of the simple kind just referred to made their appearance early in monastic cemeteries. A support for this opinion may be found on the Plan of St Gall of about 810 a.d., where the burial-ground of the brethren, pleasantly laid out, has indicated in the midst of it a plain cross seemingly of wood, suggesting the Tree of Life. The little rudely shaped stone cross in the tiny monkish cemetery on Skellig Michael off the coast of Kerry in Ireland, already figured (Vol. v, PI. xxiv), may of course be of any age, but it shows the type. It is true that among the very numerous crosses of wood or of stone mentioned in the Lives of Irish Saints (Vol. v, early portion) such a cemeterial use is
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chap. iv. J EARLY CEMETERY CROSSES 113
hardly indicated, but in Irish cemeteries of later mediaeval times the cross is a constant feature.
Camille Enlart in his Manuel a" Archeologie Franfaise, 1 Architecture Religieuse,' p. 792, writing about early funereal sculpture in France, says, ' au centre du cimetiere se dressait une croix, et generalement au pied de la croix un autel.' He mentions however no example of such a cross as now existing in France.
It is evident that these monuments were very primitive in character, some of them, it is said, in Brittany being roughly hewn out of pre-historic rude stone memorials, and they were, so to say, crosses in embryo apparently without the power of developing like the British crosses into enriched works of art. This may explain the fact that they are not officially recog- nized as artistic products, and make no appearance in the well-stocked galleries of the Trocadero.
In de Caumont's Abecedaire and in his Stattstique Monu- mentale du Calvados there is, as we have already noted, dis- appointingly little, but this want is made up by the work of M. Leon Coutil, the veteran antiquary of Les Andelys, who has devoted a good part of a long life to a careful investiga- tion of the antiquities of his district. A plate published by him in connection with the Compte Rendue of an archaeological congress at Louviers in 1928, gives a number of these objects, of various dates but some quite primitive, that French archaeologists in general seem rather to neglect. They cer- tainly bear out the idea of a connection of crosses with cemeteries, and this comes out in the figured representations on the Plate xxxn, the reproduction of which has kindly been permitted by M. Coutil, who is hereby warmly thanked. These French crosses seem to remain in their primitive con- dition, and have no real relationship with our elaborately adorned monuments though both sets are cruciform. As can be judged from examples on the Plate xxxn, it seems likely that what Camille Enlart termed ' altars ' were more probably
ii4 SAXON DFXORATIVE CARVING [part n.
stone tables provided as places of rest for coffins during funereal ceremonies.
In the early months of the year 1930, M. Leon Coutil published an archaeological treatise entitled U Art Merovingien et Carolingien, that deals with the very period with which we are here concerned. His subtitles are ' Sarcophages — Steles funeraires — Cryptes — Baptisteres — Eglises — Orfevrerie et Bijouterie,' but in all his full-page plates, fifty three in number and crowded with examples, there is not a single specimen of the free-standing cross, which is the chief object of our present solicitude, though crosses in relief on sarcophagi or elsewhere, or on a minute scale as portable ornaments, are naturally enough in evidence as they have been in all subse- quent centuries.
In the interests of economy in space it will be convenient to introduce here a passing notice of a cross form that is rather Celtic than Saxon and occurs in Cornwall and Devon but not save exceptionally in the more purely Teutonic parts of the country. The reference is to plain unadorned crosses of stone found in wild regions such as Dartmoor, where they sustained the important function of direction-posts, and are also credited with a connection with folk-lore and superstition. Perhaps the two most characteristic examples of the Dart- moor crosses of this simple type, mediaeval in date but not necessarily pre-Conquest, are the two shown on PI. xxxiii, known, one as the ' Merchants' Cross,' the other as the ' Nun's Cross.' Mr Crossing in his ' Ancient Stone Crosses of Dart- moor ' notices them both. The so-called Merchants' Cross is the tallest of all upon the moor, standing 8 ft. 2 in. in height, while the other cross, called for no good reason the Nun's Cross, is not so tall but more massive. Some of these Dart- moor cross shafts taper slightly downwards like a Mycenaean column, and like some of M. Coutil's shafts on PI. xxxn. Certain of the crosses are mentioned in mediaeval records,
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chap. iv. J PLAIN CELTIC CROSSES 115
but it would be impossible to fix dates for their erection. Similar crosses occur in Cornwall, and as Mr Langdon re- marks,1 they ' are more numerous in the west,' that is the most Celtic part of the county. ' The N.E. part is bare of them.' PI. xxxiv gives a view of such a cross on a high bank at the junction of two Cornish roads on the way to St Just. On PI. xxxv is given an example of a pair of such stones, not in a Celtic region, but to be noted as specimens of pieces that occur here and there in Great Britain of varied and uncertain dates, uses, and history. The pair are called the ' Bowstones,' and stand together socketed in a base slab on the hill overlooking Lyme Park on the borders of Derbyshire and Cheshire. The taller one is debased with modern scab- blings, but the shorter clearly shows the beginnings of a cross-head of ancient Mercian type, and both are no doubt Saxon. The Victoria History agrees with this.
1 Arthur G. Langdon, Old Cornish Crosses^ Truro, 1896, p. 9.
CHAPTER V
SOME POINTS OF CONTROVERSY
It was subsequent to the publication in 1921 of the fifth volume of The Arts in Early England^ that the following works made their appearance. One is the long expected treatise on the carved stones of this period on which Mr W. G. Colling- wood has been for many years engaged, and the other, entitled Early English Ornament?- from the pen of Dr J. Brondsted of Copenhagen, contains in an English translation an enlarged edition of a paper he published in 1920 in the Tear Book j or Northern Archaeology 2 on ' Norse and Foreign Ornament in the Viking Period, with Special Reference to the Develop- ment of Ornamental Styles in England.' The drawback in this paper of the comparative dearth of illustrations has been amply made up in the English edition, and the translation is in an attractive style though it contains some pitfalls for the unwary reader. Such an one may be warned, e.g., that the words ' brooch ' and ' buckle ' are habitually confused. This is perhaps a trifling matter, but an irregularity of a more serious kind is involved when for the Norse expression ' figure-of-eight ' there is always substituted the word 1 eightfold,' which has an entirely different meaning and one impossible in the connection in which it is here used. The Danish-Norse word is ' ottetalslyngninger ' in the original draft. The last part of this word may be rendered 1 convolutions,' but the ' ottetal ' means ' figure-of-eight,' with reference purely to the shape of the sign for this
1 London, Hachette, 1924.
2 Aarbbger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed ogHistorie, 1920, Kjobenhavn.
116
chap. v.J BOREAL STUDY IN ENGLAND 117
number, just as ' firtal ' means the sign for four, not four times anything.
In the use of all the available critical apparatus Dr Brondsted is of course a past-master, and he possesses the advantage of an intimate knowledge of the sequence of styles in his own country which he is able to co-ordinate with the course of ornamental history in Great Britain. Our own scholars now employ the same process of co-ordination, and in the last few years, marked by the labours of the English Viking Society for Northern Research, much has been done for the furtherance of boreal study, and it is an omission on the part of Professor Strzygowski, in his paper ' Das Erwachen der Nordforschung in der Kunstgeschichte,' in the ' Acta ' of the Academy of Abo in Finland for 1923, not to mention the continuous activity of the English Viking Society. Dr Brondsted's dates and attributions may in the main be freely accepted, though no archaeologist is infallible. Indeed we may venture to temper our tribute of admiration for the Danish expert's work by noting a curious omission on his part to signalize a characteristic feature, markedly in evidence in Teutonic ornamentation, and just as conspicuous in its absence from similar ornamentation of classic or of oriental provenance. The reference is to a special development of interlacing. Interlacing work as was shown (Vol. v, ch. xvi) is as much continental and nearer-oriental as it is British, but abroad the panel of entrelacs tends to be a distinct ornamental domain to which interlacing is confined, whereas in Great Britain and Ireland, and to some extent also in Merovingian Gaul, there seemed to affect the ornamentalist an irresistible desire to twist together or cause to interpenetrate any two or more parallel strands that offered themselves for such treat- ment. Parallel strands in themselves are common enough in the decorative art of the period. The vine tendrils that encircle Roman bowls of ' Samian ' ware are multiform, and those that make up a great part of the rich ornamentation on
2.
118 OPEN QUESTIONS [part n.
the facade from Mschatta in Syria, transferred some years ago to the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum at Berlin, also run in
numerous quasi-par- allel stems — but — and this is the im- portant point — they do not interpenetrate, or if they pass one above or below another it is evidently a matter of necessity, to preserve the an- atomy of a pattern, or for some practical purpose of the kind, and is obviously avoided as far as is possible. On p. 34 of the English edition of his book Dr Brond- sted compares a vine scroll on Acca's Cross from Hexham,1 of mid VIII, with a scroll from Mschatta, of which he says that ' it is the same curv-
de
Fig. 14. Paul Gauckler, Basiliques Chritiennes
Tunisie, Paris, 191 3, PI. xxi. Fragment from Syrian temple of Ba'al Shamin. ing,2 the Same idea Southern Syria, by H. Crosby Butler, Leiden, of ornament,' but he 1919. Sect. A, PI. xxviii. ignores the very
3. Strzygowski, Koptiscke Kunst, Vienne, 1904, marked difference in
the fact that the Syrian piece, save at the necessary crossings in the figure-of-eight stem and at two other places, is entirely flat, and the designer 1 Now in Durham Cathedral Library [Ed.] . a Or is this a misprint for ' carving ' ?
[p. 1 1 8]
PLATE XXXV THE HOWS TONES, ABOVE LYME PARK, CHESHIRE
chap, v.] INTERPENETRATIONS 119
has in the clearest way signalized his preference for flatness by squeezing-in his leaves and tendrils so as to avoid crossing of stems, whereas in the Northumbrian piece the multiple stems twine in and out to such effect that more than sixty intersections can be counted in the three fields formed by the rounds of the figures-of-eight. This in-and-out interweaving of stems is characteristic of our north-western region, and where we find it, it gives good ground for laying claim to that work as Germanic. The plates of ornament in archaeo- logical works dealing with Mediterranean and near-eastern lands yield practically nothing of the kind, or only an occa- sional morsel like no. 1 on Fig. 14.1 As will be seen later on, this point is of importance as distinguishing a piece of western ornament from a product of the orient. To the eye of the present writer Brondsted's Figs. 15 and 16, from Hexham and Mschatta, tell out as much by their differences as by their general similarity in scheme of design, and these differences count for much in discussing the provenance of each of the pieces.
The writer embraces this opportunity of recognizing the unfailing courtesy of Dr Brondsted in his references to previous authors with some of whose opinions he may not agree, and as a worker in this same field with the Danish scholar he cordially acknowledges the very great service which Early English Ornament has rendered to our national archaeology by helping to draw it finally out of the misty atmosphere in which it was for so long a time involved.
On one all-important question however a consensus of opinion does not yet exist, and this is the question How this remarkable form of our Early Christian art came into being ? The general source of the figure-work and ornament on our earliest English carved crosses is not now contested and is universally accepted as classical, though all may not yet agree on the special phase of late-classical art which supplied the 1 Paul Gauckler, Basiliques Chritiennes de Tunisie, Paris, 191 3, PI. xxi.
1 10 OPEN QUESTIONS [part ii.
inspiration and the models. How the art found its way on to the stones is the real problem, and here Dr Brondsted has revived a theory once held in another form in the Durham Palatinate by the northern antiquary Canon Greenwell. This is the theory that foreign artificers, brought up in the classical schools of Mediterranean lands, were invited or came inde- pendently to ancient Northumbria and carried out the figure, animal, and foliage carving which is so universally admired. Canon Greenwell thought that these were Italians, but in his day, the latter part of XIX a.d., Rome was still the traditional source from which art and culture were supposed to radiate towards the barbarous lands of the Teutonized north-west, and Strzygowski had not yet carried us far in the movement eastwards to find the real sources of the classical inspiration that affected the West. At present, as we shall see later on, Syria is looked to as the source of the decorative style of the earliest and best of our carved crosses, and Dr Brondsted believes that this style was imported into Northumbria by Syrian sculptors who formed there a sort of colony and executed works of art for clients among the Northumbrian nobles and ecclesiastics. Of the truth of this theory he is absolutely assured, and hints that it is only a misplaced patriotism that prevents English scholars generally from accepting it.
In England, as has been noticed more than once in these volumes, the tendency has been rather anti-patriotic, in the sense that we have felt a sort of satisfaction in the belief that the foreigner has been responsible for the best artistic achieve- ments that make their appearance in our country. There is a touch here of the feeling affected by the Romans when they handed over contemptuously to the ' graeculus esuriens,' as Juvenal calls him, the task of making attractive works of art. In this case Greenwell's Italian craftsmen seem to have been contentedly accepted. The writer remembers him explaining his theory to a meeting of architects, without any patriotic
chap. v.J THE ANTI-PATRIOTIC BIAS 121
objection being hinted at. Furthermore, in the standard work on English mediaeval sculpture by Professor Prior and Mr Arthur Gardner, M.A.,1 the authors express their conviction that ' while the form and material of the Anglian crosses label them as English and a product of British soil, the skill of their carving and particularly the style of their figure-work, were importations,'2 and after noting that 'Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, had . . . the opportunity of bring- ing into the north of England Greek masons and artists in the last quarter of the seventh century,' 3 they ' think it was probably not from Gaul nor Italy but from further east that there came the hands which wrought this delicate work in England.' 4 We have therefore here a weighty expression of English opinion that proceeds on exactly the same lines as Dr Brondsted's more recent affirmation. The anti-patriotic bias moreover makes a startling appearance in a curious passage in Mr Collingwood's recent study of the crosses, presently to be noticed. Here we find a conscientious expert who has spent a good part of his life in making this form of art intelligible and interesting to his followers, as a national asset of which we do right to be proud, suddenly turning round upon the acknowledged masterpieces of the style and cheapening their artistic value in a few easy sentences which it seems are all he considers them worth. ' Has not,' he asks, ' the artistic value of pre-Norman cross-carving been rather exaggerated by admiring antiquaries ? Its interest is un- deniable, but as design and execution it rises only here and there above a very moderate standard. ... As stonecarving the whole of the Bewcastle cross is elementary. . . . The crosses . . . are experimental and ingenious, sometimes pretty. They are fair amateurs' work as a whole.' 5 Now of course,
1 An Account of Medieval Figure-Sculpture in England, Cambridge, 19 12.
2 ibid., p. 120. 3 ibid., I.e. 4 ibid., p. 121.
5 Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age, by W. G. Collingwood, M.A., F.S.A., London, Faber & Gwyer, 1927, p. 19.
122 OPEN QUESTIONS [part n.
as will be sufficiently shown in the sequel, there is a very great difference in artistic value between the earliest and best work and most of that which follows down to the Conquest. What Mr Collingwood writes applies, though doubtfully, to the mass of the later work, but certainly not to all of it, for the Gosforth Cross is not an early production, and Mr Collingwood himself calls the Cumbrian monument 1 beautiful ' towards the end of his book. How again are we to take his depreciation of the Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses in view of what Professor Prior has said about the early Northumbrian crosses, in such sentences as ' A well-propor- tioned and technically accomplished sculpture in nearly full relief ' * ; ' The fine figure work of Bewcastle and Ruthwell '2 ; 1 The Anglian cross-work, ... its well-disposed and shapely ornament, its rounded forms and correct figures.' 3 Dr Brondsted shows that he is in accord with this when he writes about ' these advanced and admirably executed sculptures,' 4 and calls the fragmentary piece of work at Aldborough ' this beautiful and elegant monument,' 5 and indeed there is a consensus of opinion on the artistic merit of the best Nor- thumbrian work broken only by this curious outburst from the presiding genius of these stones and the natural shepherd of their reputation. There is no undue patriotism here, and if a personal word may be allowed, Dr Brondsted's friendly little sermon on the present writer's supposed patriotic bias might have been spared if he had noticed that the latter had actually excluded the beautiful Ormside Bowl from our Northumbrian treasure house because of the un-Anglian and Merovingian character of one integral portion of the famous piece (Vol. v, p. 320 f.).
The fact is that archaeological science has in recent years made so marked an advance that writers on antiquities may be credited with a sense of responsibility which puts sentiment
1 Medieval Figure-Sculpture, p. 112. 2 ibid., p. 114.
3 ibid., p. 116. 4 Early English Ornament, p. 79. 5 ibid., p. 45.
chap. v.J FRESH CONSIDERATIONS 123
aside and bases judgements on evidence. This evidence may be variously interpreted by different inquirers, but bona fides may fairly be credited all round. Hence if in this Volume the same guarded attitude in regard to the provenance and chronology of the best examples of Northumbrian sculpture be maintained as in Volume v, this is due, not to perverted sentiment, but to a recognition of the force of two fresh considerations not hitherto brought into the controversy.
One is based on the answer to the query whether there existed at the date with which we are dealing Syrian sculptors capable of executing monumental work of the type repre- sented on the crosses. There can be little doubt that the style of the work on the crosses is Syrian, an opinion already quoted from Professor Prior. Syrian decorative carving of the earlier Christian centuries shows the late Hellenistic type of sculpture at its best. There is a lightness and grace about it and a classic ease in the treatment of the figure that surpass in artistic merit what we find at the same dates in Gaul or in Italy. This Syrian style, no doubt developed specially at Antioch, was not very different from that represented at the same epoch at Alexandria, so that it is impossible to say with assurance to which centre is to be ascribed the famous VI rvory chair of Maximian at Ravenna, and the name Syro- Egyptian might be used for the style which also flourished in Anatolia, where some finely carved marble sarcophagi exhibit it, but all the same Syria is the acknowledged centre for the best class of this IV and V work, and Dr Oskar Wulff, a Curator of the Berlin Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, claims for Syria the best Hellenistic sarcophagi as well as masterpieces like the round ivory pyxis with Christ and the Apostles at Berlin. In his valuable work Altchristliche und Byzantinische Kunst} he writes * from the middle of the 4th century Syria assumes more and more decidedly the leading part in the development of Christian art . . . we can scarcely form to
1 Berlin, 1914, Vol. 1, p. 126 f
124 OPEN QUESTIONS [part n.
ourselves a sufficiently rich idea of its opulence,' but he goes on to add a phrase of sinister significance to the effect that ' its collapse meant a loss to art history of the most disastrous kind.' What he refers to is the fact that after this brilliant period, say of IV to early VI, the development of the plastic art in Syria and the activity of her sculptors gradually ceased. On this M. Charles Diehl, in his Manual of Byzantine Art?- writes as follows : — ' During the time that in Byzantine art architecture and painting were in process of development in an. original fashion, sculpture, and especially grand monu- mental sculpture, was in decline ' : 2 while in his second edition 3 he notices the gradual dying out, from IV to VI, of plastic feeling in the Hellenistic lands, where ' the taste of the period was not favourable to the development of sculpture.' * It is well known,' he points out, 'how under the influence of the East sculptured ornament suffered a transformation, and, in the desire to substitute for effects of form those of colour, relief was attenuated more and more and was replaced by a sort of engraving with a point upon a flat surface instead of modelling in the round,' and he clinches the argument by the reminder that in ' the dead cities of Central Syria, destroyed in the Arab conquest of the seventh century, not a single statue not a single bas-relief has been found,' while sculpture was entirely confined to drawing a sort of lace-work pattern over architectural forms.
The foreign expert theory has of course -prima facie much to recommend it, but the considerations here adduced set serious difficulties in the way of that ready acceptance which the Danish scholar claims in a manner so unhesitating.
The second consideration referred to above (p. 123) con- cerns the nature of the task which foreign craftsmen would have before them, and their total unpreparedness to cope with it. They would be expected first to fashion and then to
1 Paris, 1910; 2nd Ed., 1925.
2 1st Ed., p. 261. 3 p. 278 f.
chap. v.J EARLY CHRISTIAN PROVINCES 125
enrich free-standing crosses of chiselled stone, but as a fact this was not a style of work in which any foreign carver had at the time any experience. We ourselves look upon these enriched and at times inscribed memorials as part of the natural order of things, and as expressive of a common Christian sentiment, but in truth this particular form of monu- ment, far from being widely diffused through Christendom, belongs essentially, and we may even say, as was said above, exclusively, to the British Isles. This statement must be carefully examined, for upon the establishment of the truth of it largely depends our judgement on Dr Brondsted's revived theory of the importation of foreign workers. It is notoriously difficult to prove a negative, but a confident appeal may be made to the travelled reader to bethink himself whether he has come across anything abroad, either in situ or in a museum that looked like a prototype, or even, save in Scandinavia (p. 239 f.), an imitation, of our Early Christian Carved Crosses. The reference is not to the figure or orna- ment motives employed in their decoration, for these come largely from the stock of such motives common to the provinces of Christendom generally, but to the monument as a whole with base, shaft, and cross-head, all cut out in the round, the ornamentation being also to an appreciable extent sui generis.
We will now proceed with a rapid survey of the ancient provinces of Christendom, giving in each case the result of personal observation or inquiry or of reference to standard books for the settlement of the question whether the types of Early Christian sculpture so familiar here at home do or do not occur in these continental and near-eastern provinces. Gaul has been already disposed of (p. 107 — p. 1 14).
To judge from the evidence of the great Spanish publica- tion Monumentos ArquitectonicosJ- the Christianized Visigoths did not make free-standing crosses though they cut crosses in 1 Monumentos Arquhect6nicos de Espana, Madrid, 1889.
VI
126 OPEN QUESTIONS [part n.
relief or incised them on sepulchral slabs.1 The Early Christian remains in N. Africa show examples of ornament similar to that on our crosses, but the monumental cross form is not in evidence in the illustrations in such works as Paul Gauckler's Easiliques Chrettennes de Tunisie,2 or S. Gsell's Promenades Archeologiques aux Environs a" Alger?
Coming now to Italy, we are met at once by the old tradition of the dependence of our own Early Christian archi- tecture and decoration on the models provided in the Peninsula. British visitors to the archaeological collections at Milan have been struck by the likeness of some of the decorative sculptures from the demolished church of Aurona in that city to what we find on some of our Anglian crosses. A number of these stones date from VIII,4 and when upright pillars or shafts ornamented with carving in panels make their appearance among them, these are claimed as portions of cross shafts, and we seem to have all that is required for a free-standing stone cross like our own. Appearances here however are deceptive, for if these upright shaft-like pieces be examined and measured they show no sign of the tapering which is almost, though, it must be acknowledged, not quite always,5 present in cross shafts. They are really fragments of architectural pilasters that carried capitals or imposts, but not cross-heads, a form that never occurs among these fragments. The two enriched square-sectioned pillars of V or VI covered with florid vine ornament, that were brought to Venice from Acre, it is said in 1258, and set up beside the southern face of St Mark's, might easily be claimed as Syrian prototypes of our cross shafts, but they give themselves away by the absence of tapering and the presence — not of cross-heads — but of carved
1 Mon. Arqu., Vol. iv, pis. 5, 10 ; Vol. vi, pis. 48, 84, etc.
2 Paris, 191 3. 3 Paris, 1926.
4 Cattaneo, Architecture in Italy, English translation, London, Fisher Unwin, 1896 ; and Venturi, Storia dell' Arte Italiana, 11, 166.
5 The condition of very many of the fragments of cross shafts renders accurate measurement almost impossible.
chap, v.] EARLY CHRISTIAN PROVINCES 127
capitals forming their architectural finish. They are well figured at p. 241 of Strzygowski's Origin of Christian Church Art. This tapering is an excellent criterion as to whether a pillar-like fragment of the kind is really a part of a cross shaft or only an architectural member, and should always be tested by the measuring-tape. Neither the Aurona pieces nor any other similar fragments in Italy give any evidence for the free standing cross as an early Italian form. This is no new discovery, but was recognized as a fact by Canon Green- well, when he wrote ' In Italy ... no crosses exist at all like those so common in our own country, and this class of memorial may be considered as specially belonging to the British Islands.' 1 We are not surprised therefore when Italian collections such as that at Brescia give us in the main either sculptured slabs with Christian devices in relief that are sometimes funereal, or more often balustrades or screens (cancelli) of architectural use, and when in the Christian Museum of the Lateran at Rome the carved sarcophagus is as conspicuous as in the Early Christian collections in France, while the free standing cross makes no appearance at all in either place. The elaborate article ' Latran ' by Dom. H. Leclercq in a recent part of Cabrol's Dictionnaire makes no mention of the cross form.
There remains the nearer East — Greece, Armenia, Ana- tolia, Coptic Egypt, Syria and Palestine.2
In Armenia and Coptic Egypt funereal art in Early Chris- tian times assumed very largely the form of the flat slab that might be six or eight feet high but is commonly about half that size, richly ornamented with decoration in low relief in which a cross, commonly a cross paty, is the principal motive. The ' Coptic tombstone ' figures in all our museums and is
1 A Catalogue of Stones in the Cathedral Library, Durham, 1899, p. 59.
2 Abyssinian metal cross-heads exist, and three were noticed in The Times of Dec. 4 and Dec. 10, 193 1. They were for processional use and quite small, and do not come within our view.
128 OPEN QUESTIONS [part n.
sufficiently well known, but such monuments are to all seeming equally widely diffused in Armenia. It is noteworthy that Coptic funereal art has produced — but only by a sort of acci- dent— the only specimen of a free-standing sepulchral cross that the present writer has been able to find outside our own domain. This is in the British Museum and is shown on PI. xxxvi. It is in one piece, a thick slab i ft. 9! in. high and 8 in. wide, cut simply into the form shown in the illustration and inscribed with two names.1
For Armenia the only source of information accessible to the writer is the work by Josef Strzygowski, Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa, published at Vienna in 191 8, and on this a word must be said, for the author of the book, whom O. M. Dalton has called the ' most indefatigable of pioneers,' is specially anxious to bring out every possible link of connec- tion between eastern art and our own. In his recent volume Origin of Christian Church Art? he writes of our carved crosses :3 — ' These do not connect with the Roman tradition, inter- rupted about 450 a.d. ; if they did, the connexion would be unmistakable, however rough the work. As, however, despite the interval of two hundred years, these crosses rank with the best work produced during a period of half a millennium, we may perhaps infer not only the creative vitality of the local element, but also the importation into the island of some vigorous foreign influence such as that which I believe to have been exerted in Gaul and the Frankish dominions by the Visigoths and their retinue of Anatolian and Armenian crafts- men. The parallel examples from the Orient which I was able to adduce do in fact suggest that the general trend of influence in these times from the East westwards was decisively felt in England.'
1 Published in H. R. Hall, Coptic and Greek Texts of the Christian Period \ London, B.M. Trustees, 1905. It is numbered 1339, anc^ is m one °f tne upper Galleries.
2 English Edition, Oxford, 1923. 3 I.e., p. 247.
PLATE XXXVI COPTIC FUNEREAL CROSS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
[p. 128]
chap, v.] EARLY CHRISTIAN PROVINCES 129
These ' parallel examples ' Strzygowski finds in Armenia, a region very rich in carved tombstones ' distributed,' he says, ' by thousands over the whole country,' and in most cases they follow the familiar Coptic fashion, though, it would seem, on a more monumental scale. All have the crosses cut on them in relief. He pounces with ardour on an exceptional piece,1 dating VII or VIII, in the form of a broken slab that would have been about 8 ft. high, and has the peculiarity that the rounded top of the slab is pierced, leaving the upper part of the incised cross standing out solid against the void. This he compares with the wheel cross-heads familiar in Ireland and to a lesser extent in Great Britain, and calls it ' a cross freely cut out with an encircling wreath.' 2 The photographic illus- tration he gives hardly bears this out, for the wreath seems not to be a complete circle, but only a semi-circle enclosing the upper arm of the cross. The resemblance is rather to the 1 transenna ' or pierced slab with a cross left in the solid, that fills up an Anglo-Saxon window opening at East Lexham in Norfolk.
More striking in their resemblance to what we find in Anglo-Saxon churchyards are certain Armenian bases for shafts or pilasters of a cubical but slightly pyramidal form with sinkings above to receive an upright shaft or the tenon of one, and at times with carved reliefs on their faces, the descriptions of which strike us as quite familiar. Later on will be shown or described bases at Hornby, Lancashire, and Walton, Yorks, that seem to agree with Strzygowski's notices. He gives also portions of enriched shafts apparently similar to numerous British fragments, but the great Viennese scholar does not tell us if they taper, nor does he produce or refer to any cross-head or fragment of one. What we seek is the constructive form of the cross, not its decorative presentment in relief or cut out against the light on a transenna slab. The pierced Oschakan
1 From Oschakan, in the Museum at Edschmiatsin.
2 Baukunst der Armenier, 11, p. 718.
1 3o OPEN QUESTIONS [part n.
slab is a long way from giving us the cross mounted on its shaft as a plastic entity in all its dimensions, and the shafts indicated by the fragments just noticed, may have resembled those from Acre in Syria at Venice, and have not tapered nor carried cross-heads at all.
In the case of Anatolia and Greece, kind letters received from Professor T. Callander of Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, and Professor Ramsay Traquair of M'Gill Uni- versity, Montreal, have furnished evidence of the customary negative kind. The former, who has done much work with Sir William Ramsay in Asia Minor, has been good enough to write as follows : — ' So far as I remember I never saw in my travels outside Britain anything resembling the carved stone crosses of which you write. The district I am most familiar with is the central part of Asia Minor and Early Christian remains were much sought after, so that we were not likely to overlook carved crosses did they occur. . . . Any stone inscribed or decorated that could be ascribed to the Early Christians was a find, and I feel pretty sure that the style of cross found in Scotland does not belong to Lyca- onia, Galatia, Cappadocia, and Pisidia. The Constantinople Museum has none either, as you say.' A similar report as to the apparently complete absence from Asia Minor of this par- ticular form of Early Christian art, has been kindly furnished by the writer's colleague, Professor Calder, who for many years past has given a great deal of time to the practical exploration of the Early Christian monuments of Anatolia.
Professor Ramsay Traquair, who worked with the late Professor van Millingen on the Architecture of Constantinople and Greece, writes : — ' I think I can answer your query without hesitation. I have never seen anywhere in Greece or in any part of the Byzantine lands which I have visited any- thing of the nature of a free standing cross. . . . My sketches and photos record nothing.
1 I have myself always looked upon the free standing
chap, v.] RESULTS OF THE SURVEY 131
cross with its tapered stem as a peculiarly Northern type.'
What has been already said about Syria prepares us for a similar negative result from inquiries in that region. Neither in de Vogue's classic work,1 nor in the valuable though irregu- larly published folios of the American exploring expeditions of which Howard Crosby Butler was for many years the guiding spirit, is anything to be found, and of Wulff's thorough and well-illustrated study 2 the same may be said. The ' crosses ' indexed in Dalton's book are of the ' pectoral ' or ' reliquary ' order and quite small. Charles Diehl indeed mentions a ' great cross ' in the forum at Constantinople standing between statues of Constantine and Helena,3 but monuments to the imperial glory are quite other than the crosses with which we are here concerned.
From this somewhat lengthy survey something of value may be derived. In the first place it is a noteworthy fact in the history of Early Christian art that a form of that art, at once natural and effective, that lends itself to an artistic treat- ment which may be quite simple or as elaborate as means permit, was not generally recognized in Christendom as a suitable method of giving artistic expression to Christian feeling. Why was it practically confined to one or two small Christian provinces embraced within a limited group of islands on the extreme verge of the Christian world ? Here and there no doubt in Christendom, in regions for instance such as Celtic Brittany, the form may chance to make its appear- ance, and we have seen one Coptic example, but such a phenomenon is rather in the nature of a freak, and does not imply that the form was a recognized popular mode of religious
1 Syrie Gentrale, Architecture civile et religieuse du Ire au VIIym Steele, Paris, 1865, etc.
2 Prof. Dr Oskar Wulff, Altchristliche und Byzantiniscke Kunst, Bruck- mann, Munchen, 1914-24.
3 Manuel, 1910, p. 262.
132 OPEN QUESTIONS [part ii.
expression. The facts which have just been detailed are at any rate worth attention from this general point of view. The bearing of the result of our survey on the important question in the background, Who made the first and best of our British crosses ? is a matter to us at the moment of more intimate interest. When we put the question of the decora- tive enrichment on one side and consider the form of the monuments as a whole, we are met with the serious difficulty that neither the Syrian nor any other Early Christian com- munity was familiar with this form. Hellenistically trained stone-carvers might have come first to southern and then to northern England at the end of VII and have been set by Jutish or Anglian employers to exercise for these their metier, but if the demand were for enriched stone crosses, the Anglo- Saxons as we have seen would have had to begin by teaching the expert newcomers their business. To carve a cross-head like that at Ruthwell or those hard by at Hoddam in Dum- friesshire, is not anybody's work, nor a job to be picked up in a moment, and the patrons would probably agree with the colonists from the East that the latter should turn their hands to work familiar to them in their oriental homes. It will be agreed that there is a difficulty here though some may make light of it, but the whole subject bristles with difficulties, and as it is now time to turn away from it a final word may be in place.
We may cordially agree with Dr Brondsted that the work on the two great crosses is in the main of a kind that all artistic critics would pronounce beyond the capacity of Anglian carvers not only of VII but of any age up to XII, but then there are portions of the work that we cannot imagine executed by professional sculptors trained in the Hellenistic schools. The theory of a partition of the work (which must be assumed to account on the Brondsted hypothesis for the runic inscrip- tions) may be met by the fact that on the Ruthwell Cross the best work and the worst come on the same piece — the fine
chap, v.] A NON LIQUET VERDICT 133
Christ of the Magdalen scene, and the childishly bad arm and hand of the woman. The immense unconventional eagle with its puny St John, of the top piece of the same cross, has on the other side the noble eagle, technically up to the best style. There is something here of the nature of an antinomy. The crosses are before us in evidence, and some one must have been their creator. By ourselves we could not have accom- plished the extremely notable figure work, and now, as for a good time past, we are proffered stranger artists with that classical training which all would say was a sine qua non in this connection — and yet, there are those stones-of-stumbling between us and them which we cannot quite get over, and which seem to make their coming and the whole sequent procedure incredible.
To Dr Brondsted it may seem obstinacy or misplaced patriotism for an English student of his native antiquities to refuse or even delay acceptance to the theory of foreign craftsmen which the Danish expert has re-asserted with such force. To such an English worker difficulties present them- selves that are not so easily recognized as such by a foreign expert however skilled and sympathetic, and the formula non liquet which he has employed may be left in the meantime inscribed over the whole question, though it is possible that we may find some new light thrown upon it as we go on, especially when we come to the south-eastern corner of the island so open to access from the Continent.
CHAPTER VI
SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING
Mr W. G. Collingwood's book ! is a fitting monumental record of many strenuous years of conscientious work on the subject of our English carved stones, which have given him a place in this sphere of scholarship very near the throne of honour till lately so happily held by the Altmeister of our Early Christian archaeology, Bishop G. F. Browne. Mr Romilly Allen no doubt stands next to the throne of the first Disney Professor of Archaeology, but conspicuous in the inner ring is Mr Collingwood, who by his critical acumen and his artistic gifts has proved himself their worthy successor. His work in continuation of Calverley on the stones of the Carlisle diocese was followed by an exhaustive examination of the five hundred fragments of Yorkshire Early Christian monuments still preserved in that enormous county. These fragments he measured, critically described, and drew, and in many cases sketched out on paper a restoration of the complete monument of which only fragments were extant. Apart from all this, the immense value of which to the study has been universally acknowledged, the papers in which the matter was published in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal were accompanied by some general information on statistical questions of form, material, and technique of an extremely useful kind.
The Collingwood contributions to Archaeologia Aeliana and the publications of the archaeological societies of the
1 Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age, by W. G. Collingwood, M.A., F.S.A., London, Faber & Gwyer, 1927. 131
chap, vi.] THE COLLINGWOOD VOLUME 135
north of England were numerous and important, and the results of all these activities implying the work of a lifetime are summed up in the imposing general work just brought before the reader (p. 134). A perusal of this seems to show that the author had in these more recent days in some respects changed his views, especially on chronology. He has also to a great extent omitted to incorporate in the monumental work those notes on form, material, and technique, and those statistical entries, which formed so valuable a part of the Yorkshire papers, and which we are sorry to miss in the compendious treatise.
The critical attitude here adopted towards some of Mr Collingwood's recent utterances has been really forced upon the writer by his sense of duty to his subject and his firm conviction that Mr Collingwood valued above all things the truth on these often puzzling matters to whose elucidation he has consecrated his life. Any opposition must be to him not a personal matter but rather a move in the process of ultimately building up a sound fabric of truth to which he has already contributed so much.
The change of view here noted has greatly affected the book, and hardly we venture to think to its advantage. The general criticism to which Mr Collingwood's volume seems to be open is that important archaeological facts or problems which have a direct bearing on questions of date or of pro- venance are lightly blown aside as if they were not worth attention for more than a moment. This is of course not done deliberately because these facts come in the way of the author's own predilections, but an uneasy impression of the kind occasionally intrudes itself. Mr Collingwood makes up an early history of the crosses, starting with the dated Acca cross of about 740 a.d., and relegating the Ruthwell and Bewcastle monuments to the latter part of VIII, instead of to nearly a century earlier, a date accepted by foreign experts of the first eminence such as Emile Male and Drs Zimmermann
136 SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING [part 11.
and Brondsted,1 as well as by most English scholars. We should have been prepared to consider seriously his arguments for which certainly ground exists, but instead of advancing and sustaining these he gives us an attractive fairy-tale about family arrangements among different royal houses at the close of VIII which resulted in the resuscitation of the memory of King Alcfrith of more than a century earlier. It all reads very well and is humanly possible, but, in fact, the inscription on the Bewcastle Cross makes it impossible. Mr Collingwood accepts this as genuine, and it is a funereal inscription of a normal kind, though rather elaborate as suited the dis- tinction of the deceased, and applies like other such inscrip- tions to the actual time. An inscription referring to events more than a century back would have taken quite another form. Without unduly extending these criticisms we may note another instance from the close of the period which exhibits the same lightness in the treatment of a weighty subject. It concerns the remarkable buildings at the western end of the nave of Monkwearmouth Church, Durham, the date and early history of which involve difficulties in criticism that no serious student will ignore. Mr Collingwood's treatment of them is characteristic of his present mental attitude. ' Recently,' he writes on his p. 174, ' an examination of Monkwearmouth Church has revealed the comparative late- ness of the fabric. It is not the nearly untouched Anglian of Benedict Biscop, and the figures and animals there carved must be coeval with the eleventh century restoration of Hexham. They are of the Anglo-Norman overlap. . . .' What Mr Collingwood means by recent revelations of ' the comparative lateness of the fabric ' is impossible to under- stand. The only new feature which came into view during the recent reparations, described (Vol. n2, p. 470 f.), was a feature indicating a specially early date for the fabric, as it brought it into line with Brixworth.
1 Dr Brondsted dates the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses to early VIII [Ed.].
chap, vi.] THE COLLINGWOOD VOLUME 137
What has been said here applies only to one part of Mr Collingwood's monumental work. It is a part of great importance for the interest of the subjects involved, but it occupies but a small space in the volume because as we have seen he passes lightly over many of the themes that are of a general kind and of a broad interest. They are as it were in an outer ring, while within the ring the subjects concern details rather than more general considerations. If the general state- ments have here been made the theme of some criticism, for the other part, the more definite and detailed discussions, the present writer has only the most cordial admiration. Within the ring there are analytical discussions of various types of monument with careful drawings of specimens of each type, supplemented, when the specimen is only a fragment, by the restorations in praise of which a word has already been said. The whole forms a sort of Corpus of the enriched crosses and funereal and other slabs which gives an almost staggering impression of the lavish output in this kind of work which the centuries between about 700 and 1070 a.d. witnessed in the English counties. There are numerous village churches especially in the northern and midland counties that hold within them carved stones in a more or less fragmentary and dilapidated condition each one of which is a part small or large of some cruciform monument, of ample size, and of an aesthetic merit seldom entirely wanting, though of course greatly varying in quality. As the palaeontologist is able from a single bone of some extinct creature to build up in idea its complete framework, so the lover of this abundant and varied popular art of the country-side can learn — if not always from the formal volume, yet by working through these invaluable early papers — can learn how to reconstitute the shattered monument from characteristic portions, that may have survived the shocks of time and the destructive activities of those who, whether in the name of religion or of road- mending, brought them to ruin.
138 SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING [part 11.
We must not however part company here from Mr Collingwood without inquiring into a matter of importance over which he passes with his easy insouciance. This is the question of the end of this carved-cross art, which followed upon its latest phases, and which presents us with problems almost as interesting as those about its beginnings. In his recent elaborate volume he seems to regard very late Anglo- Saxon as practically equivalent to Norman, and treats this as a case of overlap. It will not do, however, to assume an overlap in the case of decorative sculpture because there is evidence of one in the building art. Norman architecture is of course beyond all comparison superior to Saxon, and even after Mr Clapham's generous and well-reasoned appreciation of the achievement and still more of the promise of the Saxon Romanesque style,1 we cannot feel that the two arts can be brought upon a level. The Saxon church builders, however, had their established methods of design and work which had been exercised on the undoubtedly numerous churches built in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and of the help of Saxon masons the Normans to some extent availed themselves. In spite of the differences between Saxon and Norman archi- tecture the builders in both cases had the same end in view, the erection or the extension of churches, while on the con- trary Saxon and Norman sculptors were not working on parallel lines, and indeed the difference between the two arts is of a fundamental kind. It was put excellently well by Romilly Allen in one of the earlier volumes of the Victoria County History. * It is a curious fact,' he remarks,2 ' that in the pre-Norman period Saxon decorative sculpture is almost exclusively found on sepulchral monuments and crosses which were erected for various purposes, and hardly ever on the details of churches, while in the twelfth century ' (that is in
1 English Romanesque Architecture before the Conquest, by A. W. Clapham, F.S.A., Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1930.
2 V.C.H., Hants, Vol. 11, p. 238, note.
chap, vi.] AN ARTICLE IN JNTIQUITT 139
the Norman period) ' exactly the reverse is the case.' In other words, the Normans employed sculpture in connection with their architectural monuments especially their churches, while Saxon sculpture, though of course religious in its intent, was only in a very minor degree connected with buildings as part of their structure.
In comparing the actual work of the carvers of the two schools, Late Saxon and Early Norman, reference may be made to an article in the archaeological journal named Anti- quity1 in its issue for December 1 93 1 , where specimens are shown of about the earliest Norman sculpture in the kingdom in the form of some carved capitals from the six columns in the early Castle-Palace Chapel at Durham (quite apart from the Cathedral), and dated by Prior and Gardner 2 as early as about 1070. With these the article shows by way of comparison, as a piece of very late Saxon work, an enriched cross-head not greatly differing in time.3 The contrast in the work is clearly marked. Where the ornamental motive has anything of an architectural or tectonic character, like the corner volute of a cap, the Norman work is incom- parably the firmer in execution and clearer in design, but the foliage and animal motives on the Norman caps are treated in a dull and heavy fashion and offer nothing attrac- tive, whereas on the contrary the work on the Saxon cross- head, though excessively crude both in design and execution, is full of life and animation, and challenges us to try to understand the various quaint motives that almost crowd each other out.
These deep-seated differences between the sculpture of the two peoples has hardly received sufficient attention, and it is not realized that there cannot well have been an overlap from one art to the other because the Norman carvers set them-
1 Edited by O. G. S. Crawford, F.S.A., Nursling, Southampton.
2 Medieval Figure-Sculpture in England, Cambridge, 191 2, p. 147.
3 Figured in the sequel, postea, PL lxxii.
HO SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING [part n.
selves to quite different tasks from those which had for centuries kept the insular sculptors busy. At the Conquest the Saxon tradition of the enrichment by the plastic art of the free-standing stone cross was not carried on by the Normans but came to an end, and was superseded by a new type of decorative sculpture of Norman provenance, applied to the tympana or half-moon shaped slabs filling in the arches of church doorways. How completely this Norman ecclesi- astical fitting took the place of its Saxon predecessor is brought into the clearest light by the fact that the late C. E. Keyser, in his monumental publication of all the Norman enriched tympana in the country,1 was not able to find any plausible instance of overlap — that is a Saxon tympanum enriched with sculpture in a Norman doorhead, or a Norman one as an integral part of a Saxon church. His suggestions pointing in this direction seem only half-hearted, and he appears to have assumed that there must have been an overlap though he cannot point to any sure evidence of one.
Mr Collingwood does not recognize the existence of this break, and he seems, as we have said, inclined to regard very late Anglo-Saxon as practically equivalent to Norman, so that the earlier style may be held to have passed away through being merged into the later. It is the conviction of the present writer that no such merging took place, but that the Saxon sculptural work came to an end because it was applied to the enrichment of ecclesiastical objects for which the new rulers of the country had no use.
As a fact the writer knows of only two instances of distinc- tively Norman detail blatantly, so to say, in evidence on a cross shaft of obviously Saxon date and character.2 One occurs at Creeton near Corby in Lincolnshire. The other,
1 Norman Tympana and Lintels, 2nd Ed., London, 1927, by Charles E. Keyser, M.A., F.S.A.
2 The chevron on some Northallerton stones of pre-Conquest date, and the acanthus on works of the 'Winchester ' school, do not invalidate what is said above.
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chap. vi.J WAS THERE AN OVERLAP ? 141
which will be noticed later, is in Essex. As our illustration, PI. xxxvii, shows, the face of the Creeton shaft exhibits a characteristic Norman motive, sometimes called the ' star ' pattern, in the form of small squares cut into so as to leave a St Andrew's cross on the face of each. The date must be XII. The rest of the ornamentation on the shaft, and the whole character of the latter, are Saxon. The shaft is 5 ft. 4 in. in height, and nearly square, measuring in width and thickness 1 ft. 7 in. by 1 ft. 3 in. at the base, tapering to 1 ft. 3! in. by 1 ft. 2 in. at the top. That is to say, it is characteristically Saxon in form and dimensions and is ornamented on the back and the two sides with entrelacs in panels, also Saxon and of rather a late period. The intrusion of the Norman element can without difficulty be explained as a palimpsest. The Rev. D. S. Davies, who has done so much for the scientific study of these Lincolnshire crosses, has acutely noted that the sculptured panels of the original Saxon work have rather wide plain margins, as can be seen in the photograph on the one side panel shown, but the side with the Norman enrichment has only the narrowest possible margins, and the same applies to the edge of the side panel which abuts upon this face. Now all this, which the reader may easily verify on the photo- graph, can be readily explained by the cutting back of the original face with its Saxon enrichment and so narrowing the near margins of the side panels, while the new face was worked all over by a Norman mason. There is another shaft in the churchyard, part of a smaller monument of the same purely Saxon character, and this has the same wide margins to the panels that appeared on the larger pillar. There is a projecting band round the upper part, which has been explained by the suggestion that such broad projecting bands call up the idea of arms, and were used when the stone was not wide enough to allow an extended arm. This is a question the discussion of which must be reserved, as it raises points which wait for elucidation.
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142 SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING [part ii.
The fact that we do not find Saxon and Norman sculpture running as it were into one another,, gives to this particular form of Saxon art with which we are dealing an individuality and a distinctive character that we are well pleased to see belonging to it. This quality comes out in one or two carved stones of a highly remarkable and even intriguing order, which form a little group in a part of Yorkshire of which the metropolis is the ancient town of Rotherham, near Sheffield. The most interesting piece of the group stands now well placed and duly honoured in a new cemetery recently opened at Thrybergh, a few miles N.E. from Rotherham. When the British Association met at Sheffield in 1910 a series of notes on The Early Christian Remains in the district were drawn up by Mr C. F. Innocent, A.R.I.B.A., and he puts down this Thrybergh piece as one of the ' Late Norman cross-shafts.' As the reader will see, on PI. xxxvm, 1, there is abundant and varied enrichment on the Thrybergh shaft, but Norman orna- ment of a distinctive kind is conspicuous by its absence. The acanthus which is freely used is of course a Carolingian im- portation and not specially Norman. It was used in some forms of Saxon art long before the Conquest, though not in stone carving. The Norman acanthus has its own decided forms which hardly appear in the work now under notice. In this work the foliage is used quite tentatively, straying over the surfaces in a rather aimless fashion. There is no impress upon the stone of a Norman hand, but it is clearly of a date con- siderably after the Conquest, and there are features that at first sight even suggest XIII. The character and shape and dimensions of the stone are however in full accord with the Saxon tradition. It stands foursquare, of white limestone, and measures 4 ft. 6 in. in height, by a width below of 14 in. and a thickness of 10 in. It tapers, but it is so roughly wrought and broken above that exact measurements are not practicable. It is at any rate a squarish tapering pillar and not a slab. With this traditional form it unites the much later
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chap. vi.J STRIKINGLY LATE FORMS 143
detail of chamfered arrises with irregularly disposed bosses. We need however be in no hurry to conclude that this, which is a characteristic Gothic detail, implies a XIII date for the monument, for the chamfered arris and its ornamental bosses are to be found on Saxon stones of IX, as in the case of the so- called ' Apostles ' shaft at Collingham in the W. Riding, and also at Gulval in Cornwall and other places. The chamfer may owe its first appearance to the fact that the original arris was imperfect in parts and was cut back all along to make a neat appearance. The projecting bosses at intervals had a decora- tive intention to relieve the monotony of the long plain strips. They can easily have originated accidentally, when the stone had been in parts broken away but in other parts stood out effectively. This may explain why the bosses on no. 1 stone are irregularly spaced. They would only come where the stone suggested them. Later on they would be regularized and made an integral part of the treatment of the corners. PL xxxviii, 1, 2, 3, gives all the sides of the monument, of which no. 1 shows the principal face, turned now towards N.W. The stone is probably pretty perfect below but is broken away above where there might have been a broadening out of it perhaps into a round disk on which may have appeared a representation of the Crucified. In the case of Thrybergh the legs and feet with the bottom of a short tunic may be all that is left of a crucifixion, while the quadruped would be an Agnus Dei. See Fig. 15, 1, for orientation.
On the lower part of the shaft, in a niche surmounted by a pointed arch, appears the half-length figure, very rudely carved, of an ecclesiastic of episcopal rank, or of a saint that may claim the same distinction imparted by the round cap worn upon the head. A similar head-piece crowns the half- length figure (much better carved) of a bishop (?) on the interesting stone at Crofton in Yorkshire, with animals and knot-work and scrolls, which suggest to Dr Brondsted a date at the end of IX. This round cap possesses liturgical im-
144 SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING [part n.
portance, and is well known from its appearance on the head of the enthroned St Gregory in the formal opening page of the Saxon MS., Cott. Claud. A. in, reproduced by West- wood on page 50 of his large volume of specimens from early manuscripts. To this head-piece a good deal that is of interest is imparted by Father Braun, S.J., in his recent work on ecclesiastical vestments published in 1907.1
Beside the chief face of the shaft, the illustration PI. xxxviii, 1, shows the sinister side of it facing S.W., but no. 2 on the Plate giving the back view, S.E. side, shows this same side more clearly. It is filled with a scroll in which acanthus foliage takes the place of the vine of the earlier Saxon tradition. Similar acanthus leafage, very loosely designed, fills in on the chief face the space between the top of the pointed arch and the Agnus Dei, if this be the true designation of the quadruped. Still keeping to no. 2 and looking for the arris between the S.W. side and the back facing S.E., we observe with consider- able interest that this arris is chamfered off above and provided with projecting bosses at intervals, the profiles of which can be seen also in no. 1 in the upper part on the sinister side. This treatment of the arrises of the shaft is not an afterthought, for in no. 3, the view which gives the back or S.E. face most distinctly, it will be seen that the acanthus foliage is brought out on to the face of the boss, so that the chamfered arris and the bosses must have been there before the foliage enrichment was taken in hand. This back or S.E. side exhibits the central feature of an upright stem of a cross starting from the top of a hillock in a manner familiar to all in the case of the coped tombstones with the beautiful foliated crosses so abundant in XIV. Unfortunately the shaft is broken off above and we do not know how it ended.
The last side to notice is that facing N.E., and this pro- vides us with an intriguing surprise, for it is occupied by a
1 Die Liturgische Gewandung im Occident und Orient, von Joseph Braun, S.J., Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907.
chap, vi.] THE THRYBERGH STONE 145
thoroughly Saxon figure-of-eight twist. Every crossing place in this twist or scroll is enclosed in a complete ring which conveys a Scandinavian suggestion (p. 285). The middle of each round of the eights is punctuated by a pellet, and the scroll is carefully finished off with good acanthus leaves below. The general form of the tapering shaft is, as we have seen, Saxonic, and the figure-of-eight scroll, with the complete rings and pellets, is not only a familiar bit of Saxendom with Scandinavian admixture but it is executed with a firmness and assurance that contrast markedly with the feebleness and un- certainty of the rest of the work on the monument. The illustration Fig. 1 5, 2 based on a photograph by Mr Innocent gives the detail in a clearer view than PL xxxviii, 3, and will be seen to bear out what is here said. As a contrast the pointed arched niche, most of the acanthus foliage, the central cross shaft in relief on the back, and of course above all the chamfered arrises with their bosses, are not in any respect Saxonic, while they are equally non-Norman. Apart from the acanthus, which was of course freely used by the Normans though it was at the same time common property, the features just enumerated are mediaeval and recall work of XIII rather than anything datable near the Norman Conquest. But in the midst of this non-Saxon mediaevalizing work there suddenly bursts into view a piece of most characteristic Saxon enrich- ment, the juxtaposition of which with its surroundings must seem to the chronologically minded archaeologist quite in- explicable. The same scroll work is found on a Manx stone, 86 Braddan, which Shetelig dates about 940 ; so it is fairly early.1
The Thrybergh stone is the most elaborate and varied in its enrichment of all those in the little group of very late but still Saxonic pieces which are all easily accessible from Rother- ham. In a field that adjoins the Thrybergh cemetery, fenced in by iron rails, there stands a plain tapering Saxon shaft,
1 Saga Book of the Viking Society, Vol. ix, Part 2, p. 271.
146 SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING [part n.
4 ft. 7 in. high, with arrises chamfered and supplied with a complete set of bosses much more regularly distributed than on the stone first noticed. They form a continuous series, whereas on the cemetery stone they are quite tentative. In the cemetery the two on the southern arris are not of the same form as the two on the eastern, and they do not range together in elevation above the ground. It looks as if the artist of the first cross were trying his prentice hand on forms that attracted him but were outside the range of his experience. In the fenced cross in the field shown in PI. xxxvin no. 4, he managed the arrises quite rightly, but on the shaft's front and back he was content with the mediaeval motives of a sword placed vertically on one face and an upright cross with foliage on the opposite one. The sides are plain. The tapering is very marked. The width is 1 ft. 4 in. below and 1 1 in. at the top, which as usual is broken off. The colour of the stone is at present quite black, as is the case with so many monuments cut in the Yorkshire grits, and the details can hardly be made out.
Not far off is the pleasantly situated village of Barnburgh, where in the church, but awkwardly placed for photograph- ing, is (PI. xxxix, 1, 3) a Saxonic shaft, 6 ft. high, and in width and thickness 15 in. by 12 in. below and 13 in. by 11 in. at the present top. On each of the two narrower sides, 1 and 3, is a boldly designed human figure in high relief, standing out as much as 3 in. from the background. That on the northern narrow side wears a curious cap. The two broad sides, east and west as the stone stands in the church, are treated in very low relief with a trellis pattern that seems to have been an importation from Italy. Colling- wood calls it the ' Cimitile ' pattern from a place near Nola in Campagna where it occurs in VIII. In IX it makes its appearance in one or two places in England, notably at Collingham in Wharfedale where is the piece shown on PL xl, 1. The Barnburgh work is the same, but in low
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chap. vi.J THE ROTHERHAM GROUP 147
relief and much damaged. It must be noticed that this is not interlacing work with its upper and under, but a flat trellis. There are no chamfered arrises, but in this position, as at Bewcastle, there are bold roll mouldings. On the lower part of the southern narrow side of no. 1 there is a repetition of the Saxon pelleted scroll that we noted on the shaft in the cemetery at Thrybergh, and this gives the same distinctive Anglo-Saxon stamp to the whole piece, carried out by the tapering and the rectangular section of the shaft.
We have to consider now one more monument of this Rotherham set, and finally the other one of the two pieces which were said at the beginning of this digression to be exceptional in actually exhibiting Norman work upon a Saxon stone.
Beginning with the first, in the churchyard of Rawmarsh close to Rotherham, there stands now in a conspicuous posi- tion south of the church an obviously Saxonic tapering shaft, crowned with a cross-head with enrichment in the same style that looks however suspiciously modern. Including this head the whole height of the monument is about 7 ft. 6 in. The shaft is what interests us. It has a width below upon the face of about 132 in. and on the small side a thickness of a little over 1 1 in. At the top of the shaft the corresponding measurements are ii£ in. by 9 in., so that the tapering, which we have always found a decisive indication of Saxon origin, is conspicuously in evidence. The most striking feature of the shaft is the treatment of the arrises, all four of which are chamfered and have, much weathered, the bosses which are present on the two Thrybergh stones. The abso- lute plainness of the shaft on all sides is a little relieved by some suggestion of carved ornament at the very top of the face just under the cross-head. It is shown as no. 2 on PI. xxxix.
The other exceptional piece, shown on PI. xl, 2, may be singled out as unique, because, so far as the present writer's
148 SAXON AND NORMAN CARVING [part 11.
experience goes, it is the only monument in the English counties that can be fairly claimed as representing a Saxo- Norman overlap. The Creeton shaft, figured on PL xxxvn, is really an exception that proves the rule we have ventured to lay down, because there is no continuity from Saxon to Norman which there would be in an ' overlap,' but the Saxon enrichment had to be completely cut away to provide a clear field for the Norman operator. The case of the other shaft grouped on p. 140 with Creeton is quite different. Here we have what looks more like a piece of Northumbrian or Yorkshire stone-work than what we expect to find in Essex — a monolith over 6 ft. high, of sandstone, tapering slightly, with every arris chamfered, like the railed-in shaft at Thry- bergh, and a complete equipment of bosses in the form of small cones not enriched by carving. This is all of course Saxonic, of this extraordinary extra development, but upon the four bare sides of the shaft we see a display of distinctly Norman art, unmistakable though simple and even ele- mentary. There are some straggling Norman linear patterns that have apparently been overlaid by some more advanced Norman designs such as carefully drawn palmettes.
The history of the monument is unknown until quite our own time, when it was discovered in the cellarage of one of the well-liking inns with which Castle Hedingham village is fully supplied. The Monument Commission reported on it, and since the issue of the Report1 the stone has been rescued from its unsuitable associations and erected near the gate of the churchyard attached to the beautiful church of Castle Hedingham.
We thus obtain four2 certainly post-Conquest but also undoubtedly Saxonic monuments proved to be such by their tapering shafts of more or less square section — a form which Norman and mediaeval sculpture did not favour. The details
1 Report of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments, Essex, Vol. iv.
2 Thrybergh ; do., railed in ; Rawmarsh ; Barnburgh.
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chap, vi.] A YORKSHIRE PROBLEM 149
and enrichment upon them are in no instance Norman, but are in part acanthus which might be employed at any time or place from X to XIII without much historical significance, and are also in part of a kind that only came into vogue in XIII. One might imagine that in this particular district of Yorkshire Saxon carvers had fallen into a Rip van Winkle slumber soon after the epoch of the Conquest, and when they woke up at the time when Romanesque was passing into Gothic, they took up some of the details and motives which they found coming into vogue, and worked them in to the general scheme of their monuments which had remained all along inflexibly Saxon.
A consideration of historical and social interest here pre- sents itself. Two years after Hastings Yorkshire experienced the terribly drastic visitation when the Conqueror ' ravaged the country as far north as Durham with such completeness that traces of devastation were still to be seen sixty years later.' 1 It is for students of Yorkshire history and of the Yorkshire character to ask themselves whether, or how far, this harrying of the land may have affected with a temporary paralysis the activity of the decorative arts as well as of other forms of culture. Explain it however as we may, the fact is fully established that in these latest interesting expressions of Saxon plastic art Norman sculpture is completely ignored, and neither its forms nor its technique, in both cases very distinc- tive, were brought into service. Hence the main thesis of this rather lengthy chapter, the practical independence and individuality of Anglo-Saxon plastic art, will it is hoped be recognized as proven. The exceptional Castle Hedingham monument can of course be used for all it is worth in defence of the theory of an overlap.
1 Enc. Brit., Ed. xiv, Art. ' William I.'
CHAPTER VII
THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION
It may conduce to clearness if there be offered in a concise form a conspectus of the subject before us that will make clear what were the artistic elements out of which were formed the objects, some beautiful and nearly all interesting, that we must get to know.
If we reckon our whole period as the four centuries from 650 to 1050, ignoring the curious appendix of the Rotherham shafts, we can divide it roughly into two halves, before and after the admission of a Scandinavian element that makes itself felt in the last half of IX. In the earlier epoch the elements of the art will be found to be classical, derived apparently from Hellenistic Syria, with perhaps an admixture of elements that came into use in the so-called ' Migration ' period, which saw the settlement of the Germanic tribes in the western provinces of the Roman Empire. The subjects of the art were first of all the human figure, and next in order animals, nearly always treated naturalistically. Of equal im- portance with these last were foliage motives, the most note- worthy being the vine, or devices founded upon it, and a secondary place being taken by a motive characterized by pointed leaves sometimes set trefoil fashion with one long leaf bordered by two smaller ones, or in a shamrock-like trefoil. This also might come from Syria, though some would propose a Coptic origin. The pointed leaf motive is often used for narrow bands of ornament, specimens of which we shall see as we go on. Syrian prototypes occur in abundance on the enriched ceilings geometrically laid out, that are conspicuous
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chap, vii.] THE CHAIR OF MAXIMIAN 151
in the Temple of Bacchus at Baalbec and in the Palmyrean tombs. The Coptic use of the motive is rather for the filling up of spaces on the enriched tomb slabs than for long narrow bands, but these bands are in full evidence on PL xli, a portion of the ceiling of the peristyle at Baalbec. At Baalbec also, on the jambs of the temple doors, we may find early examples of the scrolls of vine foliage with birds and animals introduced in the convolutions. No. 1 on PI. xlii shows these motives in very elegant forms treated with consistent naturalism, the five lobes of the vine leaf being always sharply rendered, and the stems crossing each other in the form of figures-of-eight with- out any play at the points of meeting. It must be noticed that the similar scrolls in Saxon art, as on the two great crosses and other early examples, do not as a rule copy this naturalism, but where it is a question of the parting of a subsidiary shoot from a main stem the point of divergence is enclosed in a sort of sheath, of which many examples will come before us. It is a very noteworthy fact that at Palmyra, the partly Roman city in northern Syria, on a building of about Diocletian's time, there is a carved pilaster whereon vine stems, that cross in the figure-of-eight pattern, do so with a distinct play, as may be seen on PI. xlii, 3, where the stems seem knotted together where they cross. The oriental naturalism is, however, occasionally copied by ourselves, and instances will be noticed as we proceed. Conversely the Anglian detail of the sheaf, or trumpet-shaped aperture, at times makes its appearance in the East, and a couple of examples has been added to Fig. 14 on p. 11 8.
It needs hardly to be said that the classic example of the nearer-eastern treatment of the vine foliage motive is the well- known ivory chair of Maximian at Ravenna, shown in our PI. xliii from a photograph by Signor Ricci, Ravenna, who in the most handsome fashion allows the free reproduction of it. The carved ivory scrolls of special boldness on the front of the chair are the parts of the artistic decoration best known
152 THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION [part n.
in the West, but the work on them is confused and florid, as may be seen in the enlarged portion given in PI. xlii, 2, where all we see is a medley of animals in all sorts of scales of size, disporting themselves among irregularly growing branches. Some of the other panels, especially the narrow ones on the back of the chair, are treated in a far chaster fashion and are much more like the beautiful Baalbec door-jambs. The modifications that time brought to these artistic elements were chiefly the loss of this naturalism, especially in the foliage motives, while as VIII advances, the fauna on the monuments changes little. If a feeling for the fantastic, so highly devel- oped in the animal design of the ' Migration ' epoch, make itself occasionally apparent, it is specially to be noticed that on our Anglian crosses the fanciful treatment of the birds and quadrupeds is never carried so far as it is with the animals in the ' Migration ' art, but every creature keeps with us enough of his anatomy to give him a reasonable possibility of existence. In this he differs, to his own great advantage, from the in- numerable tours de force due to the zoological imagination ranging unrestrained and producing the most complex of all impossible creatures. On these something has already been said in connection with Anglo-Saxon tomb furniture.1 Wearied with these zoomorphic figments which seem to have neither beginning nor end, the student of this period will rest with satisfaction on the comely forms of what has been called by a complimentary term ' the Anglian beast,' at which nature and a quaint but sane artistic fancy have worked in harmony. The beginning of the later of our two periods comes in the second half of IX and is specially marked by the taking of York by a Danish host in 867. On the Scandinavian elements thus introduced a word or two must be said. Two branches from the northernmost stem or stems of European peoples made themselves conspicuous from about this time onwards in English affairs. These were the Danes and the Norsemen,
1 (Vol. in, p. 13 f., etc.)
PLATE XLIII CHAIR OF MAXIMIAN
[P- r52J
chap, vii.] IMPORTANCE OF COLLINGHAM 153
for the Swedes were less in evidence owing to the fact that their foreign relations were rather with the Baltic lands and what is now Russia than with the countries west of the North Sea. The Norwegians, as their geographical position would make probable, took the lead in western voyages, though the men of the island of Gotland in the Baltic, off the coast of Sweden, were perhaps even earlier in their cruises.1 Ireland was at first flooded by the Norsemen, but later on many of the Norse immigrants in Erin came back in a sort of reaction and settled in the western parts of northern England, especially in Man, Cumberland and parts of Yorkshire, while a more direct movement brought the Danes to eastern England, in- cluding Yorkshire. It is in this immense county that we see in the art of the carved stones the first traces of Scandinavian influence that seems to have been partly Danish and partly Norse. Later on we shall find in the carved cross slabs of the Isle of Man the most conspicuous evidence of a Scandinavian artistic activity that was almost entirely Norse.
No writer can deal duly with the coming in of Scandinavian art without a reference to the Yorkshire site in Wharfedale of Collingham. Here is a partly Saxon church where are pre- served two important enriched cross shafts as well as several other fragments on which are notable motives of ornament. One of the two shafts, truncated above and below, is enriched with a somewhat motley group of figures of the apostles, dis- posed as on Bisley Cross and on other monuments in niches with arched tops. The lower parts of the arrises of the shaft are chamfered. This is specially to be noticed.
The other and loftier shaft is in two sections with a total height of 5 ft. 7 in. It is carved in panels on all four sides with animals, knot-work patterns, and a rather coarsely
1 For a good deal of the Scandinavian matter which follows, the writer has been indebted to the interesting work of Alexander Bugge, Vesterlandenes Indfiydelse paa Nordboernes i Vikingetiden, Oslo, 1905. The English title is ' The Influence of the West on the Norsemen in Viking Times.'
154 THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION [part n.
wrought vine scroll. There is a plain surface below the lowest panel on which is a runic inscription that has been read in a number of ways, but appears to the writer after several visits to the church to give on the face the letters oswini with one other character before the o which may be the last letter of the word ^efter for the rest of which there is room on the adjacent narrow side. Four panels, two on the face and two on the back, are carved with animals, which make for us the interest of the piece. Most unfortunately the shaft has been cemented into the pavement of the church, with the back of it only a few inches from the wall so that it is impossible to get a photograph of it. Mr Collingwood has however made one of his excellent drawings of the four sides of the shaft and has had the kindness to allow the reproduction of the drawing in Fig. 1 6, with the omission of the fourth side. What we see now in Fig. 16 is on the sinister lower panel a quadruped, though with only two legs shown, that has a properly anatom- ized body and a head with open jaws out of which appears to issue its tongue that goes off into convolutions which fill all the free space left on the stone. The beast is clumsy enough but he is at the same time thoroughly Anglian in style and shows the Teutonic two toes on his one forefoot. Now if we carry our eyes to the face where the inscription comes, we are met by a strongly contrasted zoological display presenting two creatures of a totally different breed, that are facing each other in erect positions and exhibit characteristics which make no appearance in Anglian art, but are in evidence in the animals now introduced if not from Scandinavian sources, at any rate through Scandinavian channels, after the capture of York. These characteristics are certain markings on the bodies of the animals used in decoration, and fanciful growths from these bodies, to describe which there is used here the word ' livery,' meaning a distinctive dress, or adjuncts thereto, making the wearer easily distinguishable. When complete this ' livery ' comprises the following items, some of which
Fig. 16. — Part of the Collingham Shaft.
156 THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION [part n.
have been noticed in the last chapter of Part I of this volume. Very constant is the appearance of the so-called ' contour-line,' a doubling of the outline of the body or of a limb, in evidence on the two erect Collingham beasts. Another that they show is a spiral, indicating the place where a limb is jointed on to the body. A form of decoration of which the Norsemen were very fond and which they used very largely in their wood carving on the bodies of sculptured animals, was diaper patterns of various kinds which some think were a conven- tional method of indicating the textures of fur or feathers. Of fanciful adjuncts the most curious is the so-called ' lappet,' a band which starts from the back of the head or of the neck, and is worked into knots and convolutions filling up all the vacant spaces on the panel. Collingham gives a good display of this motive. It really originated in the elongation of the ear, as previously explained (Vol. v, p. 364).
Romilly Allen, following Riks-Antiqvar Salin, noted certain marks which occur on the decorative animals of certain peoples but not on those of others. Thus he points out that in Teutonic work the animals have two toes while in Irish art they have three. Furthermore there are differences in the treatment of the eye. The little process in the corner of the eye called the ' caruncle ' is in Teutonic animals either absent, the eye being a full round as in the Collingham beasts, or is turned to the front, that is to the nose, as in normal heads, but the Irish artists put it on the side furthest from the median feature of the face.
The following mnemonic lines are based on the fact that there are two t's in ' Teutonic ' and none in ' Irish ' —
' Two t's, two toes, Caruncle to nose.'
These motives and details are a Scandinavian importation, though, as we shall see, their initial source lies further back, and as they show themselves freely on the numerous animals
chap, vii.] DIAPERS IN WOOD CARVING 157
figured in the Gospels of Lindisfarne it is natural to assume for them an Irish provenance. To see these imported ele- ments displayed on the same stone with genuine Anglian beasts free from all foreign suggestions, is a notable fact, and it gives Collingham a distinct place in the archaeological history of the period. In the matter of date, Dr Brondsted goes back so far as to place it only a few years after the epoch-making capture of York in 867. His suggested date is c. 875.
This Collingham piece we may take as a starting point, not of a development, for there is nothing so systematic as this, but for a varied display of archaeological facts all reflecting the relations between the older Anglian style and decorative motives which come in with the Vikings. Sometimes the new motives seem to overpower or wholly to obscure the exist- ing ones, while at other times the contrary relation obtains, and the work seems still almost or entirely pure Anglian.
The new artistic elements, introduced upon our Anglo- Saxon stones, were partly human figures drawn from northern mythology, but in the main animal forms, to the practical exclusion of foliage or geometric motives. In Norse art the animal in this period reigns supreme, and the different forms which it assumes have been made the subject of careful analytical discussions by the leading Scandinavian archaeolo- gists. These discussions have been carried on largely on the basis of the remarkable discoveries made recently in connection with the Oseberg ship, about which Professor Haakon Shetelig says justly that ' Few museums can boast of more impressive exhibits than the collection of early 9th century wood-carvings to be seen in the University Museum of National Antiquities at Oslo.'1 On PI. xnv, 1, is shown a specimen from the Oseberg ship of a kind of work very freely represented in the Norse wood-carving of the period. It consists in cross hatchings in various patterns to produce a 1 Saga Book of the Viking Society, Vol. x, Part 1, p. 12.
VI L
158 THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION [part 11.
diaper-like effect on bodies of animals and on lifeless objects. The ' penetrations,' a Scandinavian specialty, are also in evidence. See for these (Vol. vi, Pt. i, p. 85 f.). Norwegian decorative artists had subsisted for generations on the animal forms of the Migration period about which Bernhard Salin wrote his classic treatise.1 These forms had changed from age to age from what he called ' Style I ' to Style II ' and 4 Style III,* but which Dr Shetelig prefers to term early and late ' Vendel style.'2 Salin's ' Style III,' or Shetelig's ' late Vendel style,' had by early IX lost all the ancient vigour of the conventionalized Migration beast and had degenerated to a play of insipid lines representing convoluted limbs and bodies all on the flat, and the way was certainly prepared for a new start.
The impulse towards this is found by Oseberg experts in the work of a designer and carver in wood who from his unconventional vigour and originality is called by Professor Shetelig the ' Baroque Master ' and is signalized as ' the original creator of the new style which began towards the middle of the 9th century.' The typical product of this ' new style ' is a creature which seems to have derived from the classical carvings of the Carolingian Renaissance a vigour of design that contrasts with the tame flat linear patterns of the late Vendel style. It is specially characteristic of this creature that it seems to require some outlet for the life that fills it, and it finds this in the action of seizing hold on a part of its own body or that of a neighbour, or on some other accessible object. This is so persistent that the creatures have received the name in Norse-Danish of ' Gribedyrene ' or, as Dr Brondsted has translated it, ' Gripping Beasts.' The origin of this distinctive trait in the animal's behaviour has been a good deal discussed, but it is quite allowable to suggest that it does not come from
1 Die Altgermanische Thierornamentik, German Edition, Stockholm, 1904.
2 Vendel, a district of Upland in Sweden, has contributed to archaeology the contents of a series of chieftains' tombs, which adorn the Museum at Stock- holm.
PLATE XLIV i, WOOD DIAPERS 2, IRISH BRONZE
[p. 158]
chap, vii.] THE 'GRIPPING BEAST' 159
any modification or process of development as an ornamental motive, but is the expression of the changing spirit of the age. Haakon Shetelig writes of it x as a phase of art ' that leads from the old disciplined and regulated style to the violent and baroque modelling ' which he describes in a very significant phrase, as ' the first manifestation of the aesthetic feeling of the epoch of the Vikings.' The phrase implies the possibility of effective action on ornamental forms from the side of human feeling, and is supported by the much discussed theory of Alois Riegl in his Spdt-Romische Kunstindustrie, where he con- tends that modifications in artistic styles may be the expression of a change of mental attitude, or of a fresh imaginative ideal. It must be borne in mind that the date of about 800 a.d. is held to mark the beginning in Norway of a great era of national expansion, which the restlessness and vigour of these new animals may be held to prefigure, and an era also of very extensive acquisition, with which the name of ' The Gripping Beast ' seems rather happily to accord. In the history of ornament at large the general principle which is practically always at work is that of a fairly close adherence to tradition according to which in style and facture decoration may be continually changing, but within very narrow limits, and always along recognizable lines that are the lines of evolution or degradation. The well-nigh universal sway of this prin- ciple does not however preclude occasional divergencies into new lines, or the introduction of some fresh motive not known in the previous history of that phase of decorative art. A striking example of this intrusion of a fresh motive into a firmly established style is to be found at Venice. In orna- mental work of the style called ' Italian ' which covered Renaissance buildings with conventional acanthus foliage, elegant and crisply carved but wearisome in its unrelieved sameness, we find here and there, as in the gallery of the Ducal
1 Haakon Shetelig, Prtkistoire de la Norvege, Oslo, 1926, French Edition, p. 244.
160 THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION [part n.
Palace near the top of the Giants' Steps, motives drawn from the life of the sea, as shells, fish, seaweed, and the like, that strike pleasantly a poetic note and freshen up the whole decorative effect of the parts near them.
The introduction of new animal motives into Scandinavian decorative art affected our native design because these new motives were very soon in evidence on the carved stones which up to this had been purely Anglian, and the innovation was important enough to mark the separation between the first and second of our two periods.
This second period, that of the Viking age, is more com- plicated than what has gone before, and it brings us in face of a complication that underlies the whole subject of the decor- ative arts in the West in this pre-Romanesque period. This is the difficulty of rightly estimating in its character and im- portance, the contribution of Ireland to the general artistic output of the age. Ireland, from the first romantic but very effective Christianizing of the land down to the destruction of its artistic originality by the Normans, was the seat of one of the most gifted artistic communities that the world has ever known. The Irish, moreover, in the early days of their Christianity which came to them much sooner than to the Anglo-Saxons, impressed themselves on the peoples of western Europe by their personal characteristics and attainments. Endowed in ample measure with those same qualities of courage and determination that we admire to-day in our heroes and heroines of the air, they ' compassed sea and land ' in their ardent zeal to bear the Christian message to the people who were still walking in darkness. When the pagan Norsemen landed in IX to take possession of Iceland, they found there already installed a colony of Christian men such as the Norse- men called Papa. This last word, with stress on the first syllable, indicates that they were priests, and they would have with them monks, not necessarily in orders but possessed by the same missionary zeal, who were prepared to journey forth
chap, vii.] THE IRISH AND THEIR ART 161
in little companies to found monastic settlements in the islands
or on the mainland. These became centres of Christian
propaganda, and at the same time seats where were cultivated
learning and practical activities not only sacred but profane,
blossoming in Tara Brooches equally with Ardagh Chalices.
Psalmody was a Celtic specialty and so too was writing — a
Celtic art par excellence, that would multiply the sacred books
and others of a pious tendency, and supply them with almost
magically inspired adornment, while other arts were turned
to holy purposes in the preparation and embellishment of
objects of use in the various offices of religion.
The Norsemen who met these strange, but in their
simplicity and earnestness attractive sea-farers, found they
were a new type, but there was soon discovered a common
ground, and this was an instinctive love of art and beauty.
The Scandinavians, and perhaps especially the Norsemen,
possessed a natural gift for the decorative arts, and could
appreciate the wonders of Irish fine bronze-work displayed on
portable objects of sacred use such as shrines and reliquaries.
We gladly explain on this basis of genuine artistic appreciation
the fact that the museums of Norway, especially on the western
side of the peninsula, are abundantly supplied with objects
mostly in bronze of Irish workmanship. Dr Boe * states that
1 It is a fact that more Celtic bronzes from Early Christian times
are preserved in Norway alone than in all the rest of Europe,'
and what has just been said is borne out by the fact that in a
number of cases these ornamented objects, or more usually
portions of them, have by their pagan owners been adapted as
brooches by the attachment of a pin at their back. The
delicate chasing thus exposed to view is given the place of a
1 Two overprints of papers, printed in English, one by Johs. Boe, entitled ' An Ornamented Celtic Bronze Object found in a Norwegian Grave,' from Bergens Museums Aarbok, 1924-25 ; the other by Th. Petersen, headed ' A Celtic Reliquary found in a Norwegian Burial Mound,' from Det Kgl. Norske Videnskabers Selskabs Skrifter, 1909, no. 8, supply full and authentic informa- tion on this interesting subject.
1 62 THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION [part 11.
setting of jewels. On PL xliv, 2, is given a good specimen of this Irish work from the Museum at Stavanger.
The question how these artistic treasures came into the country can be answered only in one manner — they are in the majority of cases the product of casual or systematic raids on sites in Ireland or sites in Irish occupation. Several are reliquaries, and these were sacred objects which would not be parted with save under compulsion.
The point on which it is desired to lay emphasis here is the artistic impression made by Irish design and craftsmanship on the receptive minds of the Norsemen. The effect of this came to be that Irish forms and details were by them freely adopted into general use, and became part of the contribution of the Vikings to the art of the English carved crosses in the second of our artistic periods.
There does not seem to exist, at any rate in a form access- ible to English students, a clear and amply illustrated state- ment based on a thorough analysis, of what are in truth the special characteristics of this famous Irish animal ornament.1 There are however certain specific features that occur so constantly on the animals that appear in early illuminated MSS. of the Celtic school, such as the Gospels of Lindisfarne, that we are justified in considering them beyond all question Irish. They were noticed but not fully discussed on a previous page (p. 73 f.), where the conscientious student was warned against treating these details in too doctrinaire a spirit. The full complement of the characteristic marks, which we have called a ' livery,' are not always in evidence, nor does the appearance of any one of them, or of the whole equipment, necessarily mean that we have to do with the work of an Irish executant. All that can safely be said is that Irish influence has been directly or indirectly in operation.
1 On questions of Irish archaeology and art the student will find lucid demonstrations, and conclusions based on commonsense as well as learning, in Professor R. A. S. Macalister's The Archaeology of Ireland, London, 1928.
chap, vu.] THE IRISH CONTRIBUTION 163
If Irish art and its influence is a subject of some complica- tion, there is another aspect in which we are able to look to it for guidance. The reference is to chronology. We have just noticed that some Irish artistic objects show by their ornamentation that they are of early date. The criterion is the appearance upon them of forms or details belonging to pre-Christian Ireland. The country had its art before the era of its conversion, and this is the art known as ' Late-Celtic,' developed in the Celtic regions of Europe in the centuries before and immediately after the birth of Christ. The repertory of this art, which of course as a whole cannot be dealt with here, included a style of ornament founded on the spiral which is treated in a special fashion that makes it un- mistakable. This is a Late-Celtic form of ornament, an inheritance from the pagan epoch, and wherever it occurs in the period with which we are dealing, it carries with it a certain suggestion of early date. An analysis of this curious orna- mental motive will be found on a later page.
The introduction of Christianity brought with it a con- spicuous change in Irish decorative art. The Late-Celtic spirals continued in use, but a great part of what may be called the apparatus of Migration art came over to Erin with the new religion from Gaul, and was, it appears, received with avidity. This applies specially to Germanic animal ornament and to interlacing, which soon became Irish specialties, and as they were unknown in pagan Irish art, their appearance conveys a suggestion of a later date than we should ascribe to the spirals. These facts are useful indications in the matter of chronology.
It may be well here to lay down for ourselves a definite rule the soundness of which has been forced in upon the mind of the writer. This is the rule that artistic elements which come in from outside and modify the native Anglian style are never direct importations from Irish sources, but are brought in by Scandinavians, whose receptivity to Irish influences we
164 THE SCANDINAVIAN INFUSION [part n.
have seen to be phenomenal. The elements in question may be of Celtic origin but the bearers of them to the English were Scandinavian. The deep-seated grievance which divided the British churchmen from the Anglo-Saxons of the South, exacerbated by Augustine's dreadful mistake, was quite sufficient to keep the two parties aloof from each other, and the fact is emphasized by Dr Brondsted that through all the early period of Anglian art history before the coming of the Vikings, there is no sign at all, either on our numerous carved crosses or in any other artistic milieu, of the influence of Irish art. So soon however as the Vikings put in an appearance, Celtic elements are abundantly represented in our art, and the question is forced upon us, whether, seeing that the Irish had left our Anglian art severely alone during its first and most impressionable period, it was reasonably possible that all of a sudden they would begin to influence it, just because important political changes which had nothing to do with art had power- fully affected the country. It was natural enough for the Scandinavians, artistic races, to take up the art of the people with whom they were brought into such close contact, and as their own northern art had been greatly influenced by the Irish, they naturally passed this influence on to the diffident and receptive English.
CHAPTER VIII
EARLY MONUMENTS IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND CHURCH FITTINGS IN ANGLO-SAXON TIMES
Before we embark on a more or less systematic study of the Crosses, one or two general questions that readers might ask about them may have a word. ' What purposes were served by the different kinds of monument ' is one of these. Attempts have been made to enumerate and define these purposes, and Cabrol's Dictionnaire d'Archeologie Chretienne supplies one in a foot-note to an article headed ' Grande Bretagne ' by Dom. H. Leclercq, in Vol. n, p. 1 171. This list gives some of the purposes which early crosses served in the British Isles, but practically all the different purposes within our view have in these pages already been noticed or will presently receive attention.
An interesting but a disappointing inquiry is that of the extent to which the form and the enrichment of the stones varied according to the purpose that each was designed to serve. It soon becomes clear to a worker on these stones that neither the general shape nor the detailed treatment of the monuments was as a rule arranged to correspond to special purposes. The work, that is to say, was not standardized in accordance with prospective uses, and this is all in harmony with the spirit of Saxon artistic work, wherein individuality was generally allowed the freest play. One all-important exception did however exist, and this was the principal and most characteristic English monument, the free-standing stone cross. The main form of this memorial proclaims its char- acter, and it is a silent witness to the central Christian doctrine.
165
1 66 EARLY MONUMENTS IN THE SOUTH [part n.
The spirit of it we might expect to find expressed in the artistic garb in which it had been clothed and decked out, but with our Saxon work all expectation of the kind is vain. We should find that the Irish, far more theologically minded than the Anglo-Saxons, displayed more sensitive religious con- scientiousness than their Teutonic neighbours, and made rather a point of carrying the Christian ideal of the Cross into the decorative detail. With the Anglo-Saxons artistic con- siderations, or, rather, easy-going habits of work where not much attention was paid to logic or consistency, generally carried the day, and while the Irish cross-head displays as a rule a religious theme such as the Crucifixion or the Ascension, the Saxon designer chose rather the shaft, where these subjects could be disposed much more easily and with better artistic effect.
The question of the distribution of the monuments is another that might arise. Where, we may ask, if in any definite region, was the native home of this phase of English art, that ultimately became so widely popular ; and, again, in what parts, as its history advanced, was it represented by the most numerous and the best examples ? The whole of the rest of this volume has a bearing on this theme, and the first of the above queries at once confronts us.
It is the general impression that the carved cross is a native Northumbrian product, and that from this region, as a place of origin and centre of diffusion, it found its way first into Mercia, and then through the Midlands to parts of the South. This view corresponds well enough to the present condition of things, but it need not apply necessarily to the historical past. On this Sir Charles Peers has remarked ' the scarcity of early stone carvings in the south of England, contrasting with their abundance in the North, has long been a matter of real regret to historians and antiquaries. Arguments based on the com- parative lack of good freestones are not convincing, and personally I cannot but believe that it is rather a matter of
chap, viii.] GLASTONBURY 167
ill fortune than of paucity that so few now remain.' x It so happens that when we look into the evidence for early times it is the South rather than the North that seems to take the lead. It is in the South that we are told of the common use of crosses to mark preaching stations before churches came to be built,2 while of one important southern cross of VII we possess fragments which will presently be illustrated and discussed. What seem to be the earliest monuments of the kind in those parts of the country are located at Glastonbury. William of Malmesbury, who has a place in our early historical literature second only to that of Bede, wrote an account of Glastonbury with its history and its monuments, in all of which he seems to take as much pride and interest as in his own Malmesbury, and early in his description of the antiquities of the sacred spot3 he expresses regret that he is unable to give a fuller account of what he terms ' pyramids,' obviously funereal monuments, that stood close by the famous archaic wooden church and just on the border of the cemetery of the monks. They were of stone and were inscribed with the names of deceased worthies whose bodies he surmised were resting in stone cists beneath them. The taller of the two ' pyramids ' (from the use of which word we can infer that they were tapering shafts), that is the one nearer to the church, arose in five stages (guinque tabulatus) to a height of twenty- eight feet. The monument was very ancient and threatened ruin, but it presented certain evidences of antiquity which one could read but not wholly understand. On the uppermost stage was a figure in the dress of a pontiff, on the next below one of becoming royal dignity, with inscribed names. These he gives as far as he could make them out on the third and fourth stages and also on the fifth where there was a sculptured figure as well as inscribed names. If there were sculpture on
1 Arckaeologia, Vol. lxxvii, p. 241.
2 See the reference in (Vol. i2, p. 254).
;i Gesta Regum, 2 vols., Rolls Series, no. 90, 1, p. 25,
1 68 EARLY MONUMENTS IN THE SOUTH [part ix.
the lowest stage as well as on the first and second we may be pretty sure that the intermediate stages were similarly fur- nished. The other pyramid was twenty-six feet high and had four stages. The names here were clear and recognizable, and among them were those of King Kentwin of Wessex, Bishop Hedda, and Bregored and Beorward, whom he notes as abbots of the monastery in British days. Kentwin was King of Wessex 676-685, and Hedda its Bishop 677-705, so we have a date for the monument about the end of VII, while the other ' pyramid ' would be older as the historian seems to imply.1
William has more to tell us about crosses in the South. In his account2 of the funeral ceremonies at the burial in 710 of the south-country Saint and Bishop Aldhelm, we learn that on the processional route to the place of burial, from Doulting in Somerset, where he died, to Malmesbury, stone crosses were set up every seven miles (ad septem miliaria). All these crosses, the historian assures us, remained to his day and were known as the ' Bishop-stones ' ; one, he says, was to be seen in the Malmesbury cloister. We are not told if there were any figure carving or other enrichment, including inscriptions, on these stone crosses, but considering Aldhelm's exalted repute something beyond the mere cross form must almost necessarily be assumed.3 From what has now been said we
1 In his complaint about its ' vetustas ' and threatened ruin.
2 Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, Rolls Series, no. 52, p. 383 f.
3 With this account in the Gesta Pontificum there is connected a quotation from a rescript of the Bishop of Winchester, who prescribes that every place where the bearers of the sacred body rested should be marked by the erection of a cross, but the probability is that these casual marks would be slight wooden crosses made up perhaps only of twigs or splinters. In the Introduction to Henry Taylor's Ancient Crosses and Holy Wells of Lancashire (see p. 188, note 1), we read that ' in a remote district in Ireland a curious ancient custom was recently witnessed. Wherever the funeral procession stopped little wooden crosses were fixed in the ground where the body rested. These were prepared before the ceremony, and were carried with the procession for this purpose.' This custom may go back to a very early period.
chap, viii.] RECULVER 169
should infer that there is no reason to doubt the capacity of the makers of English carved crosses in the North or the South, whoever they may have been, to turn out good work long before the Acca period of the middle of VIII.
How good that work may have been we can judge not only from the two great Northumbrian monuments, but from the facts that an important southern Cross of early date in the Isle of Thanet was noticed by the antiquary Leland in the days of Henry viii, and that quite recently what should be surviving fragments of this have been brought to light and described and figured by Sir C. R. Peers, C.B.E., in an article in Archaeologia, Vol. lxxvii. This conspicuous specimen de- serves the best attention we can give to it.
The following is an extract from Leland's Itinerary? 1 Reculver . . . ys fro Cantorbury v. goode myles. . . . The old building of the chirch of the abbay remayneth having ii goodly spiring steples. Yn the enteryng of the quyer ys one of the fayrest, and the most auncyent crosse that ever I saw, a ix footes, as I ges yn highte. It standeth lyke a fayr columne. The base greate stone ys not wrought. The second stone being rownd hath curiusly wrought and paynted the images of Christ, Peter, Paule, John and James, as I remember. Christ sayeth, ego sum Alpha et o). Peter sayith, Tu es Christus filius dei vivi. The saing of the other iii. wher painted majusculis Uteris Ro. but now obliterated. The second stone is of the Passion. The iii. conteineth the XII Apostles. The iiii. hath the image of Christ hanging and fastened with iiii nayles, and sub pedibus sustentaculum. The hiest part of the pyller hath the figure of a crosse.'
The more we consider this notice in Leland, the greater the interest it assumes in our eyes. Leland visited Reculver from Canterbury in the furtherance of a Commission from
1 The Itinerary of John Leland. In or about the years 1535, 1543. Newly edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith, v Vols., London, 1907, etc. Vol. iv, p. 59 f.
170 EARLY MONUMENTS IN THE SOUTH [part ir.
Henry vin issued to him in 1533,1 charging him ' to search the libraries of monasteries and colleges for the monuments of ancient writers.' 2 The time was that of ' the renaissance of learning and literature which arose in the later years of Henry vn,' and ' was a movement which . . . powerfully affected men and events in the following reign. Henry vm, himself a fair scholar in his brilliant youth . . . encouraged learning and progress in many directions. ... It was a time of broadening change, a thirst for knowledge was spreading.' 3 That knowledge was sought for the most part in the ancient classical world. Leland was a good Latin and also a Greek scholar, and imbibed classical lore not only at Oxford but at Paris,4 so that he threw himself con amore into his work under the King's Commission. The situation was like that which obtained in our own country, when in the last half of XIX there was a fresh movement for the study of our older British memorials of the past. It is significant that the first class of these memorials to which attention was directed here, was the same that was contemplated in Henry's Commission to Leland — memorials that is of a literary kind, and Leland became the spiritual father of the Royal Commissioners on Historical Manuscripts, whose work has gone on so fruitfully in our own days. The parallel here drawn may be carried further. Some little time after the British Government had shown its rather belated solicitude for our literary treasures of the past, a movement was carried through, with considerable difficulty, to extend official notice and as far as possible effective protection to ancient monuments of a material order. The first Act for the safeguarding of such national treasures dates from 1880, and has been followed by a succession of similar measures aiming: at the same end. With Leland an advance
'to
1 The first fifty pages of the first volume of the above five-volume edition contain introductory matter which has furnished material for these paragraphs. They are referred to in what follows as Leland, 1, p. so-and-so.
2 Leland, 1, p. ix. 3 ibid., p. vii. 4 ibid., p. viii.
chap, viii.] IMPORTANCE OF LELAND 171
of the same kind from literary to monumental studies is described by himself in a valuable document entitled ' The Laboriouse Journey and Serche of JOHAN LEYLANDE for Englandes Antiquities, given of hym as a Newe Yeares Gyfte to King Henry the viii. in the xxxvn Yeare of his Raygne.' This is a report to the King of his proceedings under the Commission, and he describes the effect upon his mind of his readings in monastic and other libraries of the past history of the land which Henry now ruled. ' Wherefore,' he writes, ' after that I had perpendid the honest and profitable studies of these historiographes, I was totally enflammid with a love to see thoroughly al those partes of this your opulente and ample reaulme, that I had redde of yn the aforesaid writers : yn so muche that al my other occupations inter- mittid I have so travelid yn yowr dominions booth by the se costes and the midle partes, sparing nother labor nor costes, by the space of these vi. yeres paste, that there is almoste nother cape, nor bay, haven, creke or peere, river or con- fluence of rivers, breches, waschis, lakes, meres, fenny waters, montaynes, valleis, mores, hethes, forestes, chases, wooddes, cities, burges, castelles, principale manor placis, monasteries, and colleges, but I have seene them ; and notid yn so doing a hole worlde of thinges very memorable.' 1
The awakening as result of historical studies of the topo- graphical sense in this XVI scholar is a fact of interest, and one may note that the objects and scenes of nature have the first claim on his attention, the works of man coming after- wards. It is clear however from the comparison he draws between the Reculver Cross and others which he had seen that his attention had been given to objects of antiquity of this kind, and the admiration which bursts from him at the sight of the former is a really remarkable testimony alike to the character of the monument and to the exceptionally open mind of this
1 Leland, 1, p. xli. Among the ' thinges very memorable ' were most likely, as we shall see, the early churchyard carved crosses.
172 EARLY MONUMENTS IN THE SOUTH [part n.
alumnus of the Renaissance, who must have stood pretty well alone among his scholarly contemporaries in feeling and expressing admiration for mediaeval work such as that upon the crosses.
What do we learn from his sentences that have been quoted, and from the existing fragments, which are to be seen, not at the old Reculver church with the spires, but at a modern church at Hillborough about a mile inland ?
The situation of the monument is explained in the article in Archaeologia referred to on (p. 169). It stood in front, that is on the nave side, of the central archway in the triple-arched screen separating nave from chancel. This location can be inferred with perfect certainty from the existence in this situation of a foundation of masonry, that is embedded in the substantially constructed original paving of the church and is clearly contemporary with this.1 This masonry foundation, so obviously intended to support the weight of the stone cross, is evidence of its early date, so that the Leland Cross, as it will be convenient to call it, may be put down in date to the latter part of VII when the church was being built. Peers quotes a record of the end of XIII in which reference is made to a certain church-fitting as being ' juxta magnam crucem lapideam inter ecclesiam et cancellumj and this fixes indubitably the position of the cross.
The question whether the existing fragments are parts of what Leland describes might be considered problematical. Leland tells us that the shaft of the monument was cylindrical 1 lyke a fayr columne,' and that there were figures upon it. Such a piece of decorative sculpture with enrichment was fully familiar in the classical and Early Christian worlds, under the name of ' columna caelata.' Perhaps the best known speci- mens of columns of the kind are those that hold up the roof of the canopy called Ciborium which shades the High Altar in
1 * It is contemporary with the plaster floor, which stops against it on the north and south sides,' C. R. Peers, in Archaeologia, lxxvii, p. 247.
chap, viii.] THE RECULVER CROSS 173
St Mark's at Venice. The two front columns are the original ones, and may date early in VI. These columns, which do not taper, present us with nine superimposed drums so arranged as to furnish suitable positions in each for compara- tively small sculptured figures. Each drum has above it and below it a round disk of stone or marble the full diameter of the column, and this serves for the separation of drum from drum. The parts between the upper and lower disks are arranged to exhibit the carved figures which make the ' caelatura ' or ' chasing ' or as we should say the ' enrichment ' of the monu- ment. The available space on every drum is subdivided by a series of light piers running up between the lower and the upper disk. Such piers are often as at Venice joined above by round arches, and at other times, as here in Leland's shaft, they run up the full distance available. Each one of the spaces between the light piers was filled by a standing figure carved in the original stone, and it is unfortunate that the drums are so divided that we seldom have more than half a figure from which to judge the work.
Figures of the above kind, carved out of the mass, are those that make their appearance on the mutilated drums, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 4a, the newly found piece.1 Drums 1, 2, 3, 4, have mostly lost the light piers that divided the spaces but exhibit portions of draped figures which give us a good idea of the quality of the art of the time. Before we analyse this it will be well to ask what relation exists between the figures on the drums and the subjects of which Leland has given a list. These subjects are — Christ and the Apostles — the Passion — the XII Apostles — the Crucifixion, and it is a somewhat staggering fact that we can hardly find anything in the existing
1 It is a curious fact that just as the above was being corrected for the press news came from Canterbury that Canon Grevile Livett, so long known for his work in Kentish antiquities, had in a garden rockery in the Cathedral city come upon another mutilated drum, that he found to register with 1, 2, 3, and 4, and has numbered 4a.
VI M
174 EARLY MONUMENTS IN THE SOUTH [part ii.
fragments that corresponds with any part of Leland's descrip- tions. Properly speaking each of the drums that ought to be part of Leland's 'fayr columne,' that is stones no. i, 2, 3, 4, 4a, should show a portion of one or other of these indicated subjects. Portions of draped figures do occur on each frag- ment, as seen in the three specimens on PL xlv, but there seems to be only a single case in which any attribute or anything distinctive in surroundings, dress, or action, gives any clue to identification. The figure no. 1 on PL xlv holds a scroll and may be a Christ. On no. 2 on PI. xlv there are two figures with a single column between them, and the bare possibility that it might be the scene of the Scourging from the Passion series presented itself to the mind. A reference however to Prof. Kiinstle's valuable Ikonographie showed that this subject was not known in Christian art before X. The column is only one of the piers used for dividing up the spaces for the figures. The third of the photographs on PL xlv gives us a light and youthful-looking figure, in a cloak over a tunic that reaches to just above the ankles, who is striding upwards over rocky ground indicated by three large boulders. To bring a figure of the kind into connection with any of the scenes or personages indicated by Leland seems hopeless, except it be permitted to see in it an angel hastening over rough ground in the Garden on the slope of Olivet for ministry to Christ. The rest of the illustrations, with others that are given by Sir Charles Peers in his Archaeologia article, exhibit a close family likeness, and in all the pronounced classicism of the drapery with its zig-zag falls is very apparent. One notes the fre- quency with which the naked foot, quite well executed, comes markedly into view, and the same praise is deserved by some well-modelled hands. There can be no doubt that in the detail of drapery and the drawing of extremities the Reculver artist surpasses his Northumbrian rivals in that he is nearer to the classical fountain-head, and he could never have per- petrated the arm and hand of the Magdalen on the Ruthwell
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chap. viii. J THE RECULVER CROSS 175
Cross. The climbing figure just noticed is marked by grace of movement, and has more action than any of the northern figures, though we must not put it above those of the Ruthwell Annunciation.
We must now leave the figured drums 1 to 4a, that in the meantime can be reckoned with practical certainty parts of Leland's ' fayr columne,' and give attention to another frag- ment of the same order, that stands alone, but may come to be recognized as of considerable importance. It is of slenderer make, and while the pieces of the other set register a diameter of 18 in. this one is only 15 in. across. It is reckoned in Sir Charles's paper as no. 5, and is shown on our PI. xlvi. In it is introduced a new ornamental motive not represented elsewhere in the early sculpture of Saxondom. It is the motive of human busts in compartments furnished internally with foliage scrolls, and outside by geometrical bands that if they were more fully shown would suggest a comparison with the Baalbec ceiling shown in our PL xli, p. 150. In the illustration, PL xlvi, it is seen that the stone bust of a beardless man, whose hair clusters in thick curls over the forehead, and whose eye sockets were hollowed out and perhaps filled in with some colouring material, is enclosed in the sweeping rounds of a Syrian scroll, where he occupies the position normal for a bird or an animal, though only his upper part can be seen. The bust and the enclosing foliage are on a sort of panel framed by broad bands of interlacing work. These last convey, of course, a pronounced Saxon impression though the entrelac cannot be claimed as exclusively insular, and the combination of such marked Syrian features with a distinctly Saxon motive demands careful consideration. In view of this novel treat- ment are we not really forced to give some fresh thought to the theory of imported Syrian carvers in the train of Theodore of Tarsus ? They would come first to Canterbury, and if a suggestion were made about their showing some specimens of their art, the form chosen would not be that of the English
176 CANTERBURY OR HEXHAM [part 11.
free-standing cross, a form of which they had no experience. Here comes in the significance of the fact that the existing Reculver fragments are not parts of the normal Saxon cross shaft of more or less square section, but are drums of a cylinder that to Leland suggested a ' fayr columne.' To the Syrian the column would be a very familiar object, and the art of carving figures in relief upon it, so as to make it a ' columna caelata,' was traditional in that particular region from the days of Croesus of Lydia downwards, though it had recently been dying out. Given suitable material the Syrians might have set to work at once, leaving the cross-head for after considera- tion. The stone came from over the Channel, and it may have been originally imported by the Romans for use in the fort of Regulbium and re-employed by the Early Christian carvers. The cross-head would have had to be a product local in design as well as in execution, and the fact that the English antiquary finds nothing to say about it may be taken to show that it was a poor affair. This assumes of course that the hypothetical Syrian carvers had brought with them some far back reminiscence of the monumental style which had flour- ished in their land a couple of centuries earlier, and that ' columnae caelatae ' were still within their powers.
It might of course have happened that the earliest school of Saxon sculpture found its centre at Canterbury in the South rather than at the Northumbrian Hexham, but except for the sarsens on the South Downs, one of which was utilized later on for the coped tombstone at Bexhill, while another1 came to light in the recent excavation of the Saxon church at St Augustine's abbey, there was not much stone in that corner of England to tempt the carver, and moreover the Roman monks were, with the one exception of Paulinus, too drearily un- enterprising to inspire a movement in Christian art. Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop were sons of the North. Enough has now been said to show that from the very first the South must 1 See Vol. ii2, pp. 93-94 and fig. 45. — [Ed.].
chap, vih.] REVETMENT SLABS 177
be reckoned with as supplying at all periods, especially the earliest, a very fair quota to the sum total of Saxon crosses, though Northumbria will still hold pride of place in the history of the art as a whole.
Mention of the two great Northumbrians reminds us that in this earliest epoch of established Christianity in the leading Anglo-Saxon realms of VII, we may expect vigorous efforts for the advancement of the art, which was a conspicuous outward expression of the religion of which they were such enthusiastic devotees. Anglian culture among the higher classes in Church and State is not to be looked down upon as something homely. Though of Wilfrid's achievement at Hexham and at Ripon1 nothing above ground remains, yet we have still in existence and in use the contemporary Brixworth, the church of what was only a country monastic settlement, but yet possesses a size and pretension that give us a high idea of what the greater churches of the time may have been. We have definite information in Bede that Benedict Biscop brought back on successive journeys to and from Rome church fittings of which he must have seen specimens in many Italian churches. No fittings are more common in these than marble slabs or panels enriched on one face with reliefs, or else pierced with geometric patterns, that were used as screens, 1 cancelli,' or as revetments of walls. That Anglo-Saxon churches were not without such enrichment we have monu- mental evidence alike in South and North. The sculptured slabs used in a rather elaborate scheme of revetment for the jambs of the lateral archways of the nave at Britford, Wilts, were noticed in an earlier volume in connection with the architecture of that church (Vol. 11 2, p. 207). The well-
1 At Ripon, in connection with Wilfrid's crypt, the interesting discovery was made in 1930 that the barrel vault of the crypt had been constructed in scientific Roman fashion with transverse ribs and filling. The writer owes his thanks to Mr W. J. Jones, F.R.I.B.A., architect in charge of the work, for kindly giving him a view of it.
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178 INTERIOR CHURCH FITTINGS [part 11.
known little church (' ecclesiola ') at Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts,
contains in its north porch a , sizable enriched slab of the i good local stone that must I have formed part of such a I revetment for the wall of the doorway, not of the little chapel, but of some much l more pretentious building I that was the predecessor of 1 the existing parish church i which is hard by. The piece • is badly lit for photographic i purposes, but PL xlvii will, i with Fig. 17, the measured -l plan of it, give the necessary information. The slab is 13 in. thick, all in one piece, and as it lies in the porch it is altogether out of position. The present height from the floor to the top, over where the accidental round hole comes, is 2 ft. 3 in. This would correspond to the thick- ness of the wall in which the doorway occurred and would form its revetment, but we must imagine the whole piece turned up at right angles to its present position. The dimen- sion, which is now in the photograph its length, is really
Fig. 17. — Plan of Bradford Revetment
its height, but the measurement of this cannot be exactly given because the slab is truncated at both ends. At the one end,
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chap, viii.] ORNAMENTAL MOTIVES 179
the dexter end in the photo, there are two fragments which by the work on them show that they belong to the end at which they are now standing. The length (properly height) of the main piece is 3 ft. "j\ in., and this, as it is, would be too short to make a suitable revetment for a church doorway, so we must add in thought an unknown increment to the height. James Irvine published the piece in 18771 when it was discovered serving as a lintel over a doorway in a wall of late Norman date connected with the parish church. He recog- nized it correctly as the revetment of a door jamb, and thought it would have been when complete about 6 ft. high in itself, and would have had under it a plinth giving another foot of elevation, so that the jamb as a whole measured 7 ft.
The enrichment on the slab is disposed in two rectangular panels divided and bordered by a band of interlacing work about 4 in. wide of a rare and somewhat complicated design. The panels have plain margins and measure with these about 18 in. in width but of a height made uncertain by the trunca- tions. On one panel, which probably came uppermost, the field is marked out in squares in a step-pattern scheme of early date, that is considered by Bernhard Salin 2 to originate with the step-like shape of the cloisons for the garnets in the inlaid gold jewels of the Kentish pattern. From this work of the Migration period the step-motive was adopted in the earliest Irish or Hiberno-Saxon MSS., such as the Book of Durrow and the Gospels of Lindisfarne. According to Mr Romilly Allen it is only here at Bradford that it is found on English sculptured stones, while there is only one example in Ireland.3 This may be held to confirm its early character. The other panel is filled with a somewhat debased form of the spiral motive which is also conspicuous on the Deerhurst font (Vol. 112, p. 212). This again has been noticed as an early
1 Ass., Vol. xxxiii, p. 215. 2 Thierornamentik, p. 337.
3 Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times, by J. Romilly Allen, London, 1904, p. 279.
180 INTERIOR CHURCH FITTINGS [part n.
motive, for it was inherited by the Irish of the period with which we are dealing from the older Celtic art of the pagan period, where in its early form it is conspicuous in the beautiful Irish bronze chasing, from which it found its way to the early MSS. It must have been in this first form, how or why we can only guess, that it acquired the name of the ' trumpet pattern ' or ' trumpet spiral,' for as we find it upon our carved stones there is nothing about it suggestive of the appellation. It needs hardly to be said that the resemblance of the motive to a horn or trumpet is purely fortuitous. Like other orna- mental forms used in Late Celtic art it drew its origin in all likelihood from ancient Greek conventional floral patterns. In his paper on the ' Sources of the Irish Illuminative Art,' 1 Mr W. R. Hovey gives us no study of the ' trumpet pattern ' but is content to say that ' simple S-curves became long graceful trumpet forms,' see p. 108. The Hovey paper is really only on MS. illuminations, not on Irish decorative art as a whole. Its scope is therefore limited. It is perhaps worth while to go back upon the history of the motive so that it may be under- stood even under its curious name.
The initial motive, which may ultimately be so manipulated as to cover with enrichment any desired surface, occurs in a simple form in a roundel on the face of King Flann's Cross at Clonmacnois in Ireland. In the sketch, Fig. I 8, I , we see three shapes resembling horns, with expanded trumpet mouths in their upper parts and going off below into narrow strips, which are coiled together in the middle of the field. To complete the ornamental scheme a large number of these forms is needed, and they must be combined in twos or threes or fours or sixes by twisting tightly together in the middle the long ribbon-like continuations which together form a sort of drum composed of spiral bands, the arrangement leaving free the front trumpet-shaped portions, Fig. 18, 2. Where these
1 Published in the second volume of Art Studies, an extra number of the American Journal of Archaeology, Harvard University Press, 1928.
THE SPIRAL MOTIVE
81
ISI
CHAP. VIII.]
come together, the ornamentalist, whether he is working in metal or on the parchment of an MS., interposes an upright narrow oval form which is a surviving relic of the open ends of the trumpets. The final stage is shown in Fig. 1 8, 3, where all definite indication of these ends is given up and they coalesce into a single band joining the two spiral drums but showing by its swelling middle part some recollection of its past history.
On the Bradford slab the step- pattern panel is carefully and effec- tively wrought, but the one with the spirals is far too crowded and needs more background to show up the ornament. Other examples of the same enrichment make the design clearer, and one at any rate gives the pattern at an earlier stage in its history than Bradford or Deerhurst in England or Ahenny in Ireland, where we miss in the connecting bands between the spirals the central inflation, reminiscent of the con- fronted trumpet openings, which adds much to the beauty of the design.
This is seen in an interesting- „ ,«,„'.,,,.
r & Fig. 18.— The Spiral Motive,
fragment no doubt part of a revet- ment from some early church in Lincolnshire, preserved now by being built into the chancel wall of the church of South Kyme in a position by no means favourable for either inspection or photographing. The general view PI. xlviii shows this and other fragments as they are now built in, the piece with spirals coming in at the dexter bottom corner. We notice at once with interest the moulded frames round
182 INTERIOR CHURCH FITTINGS [part ii.
panels which are enriched with interlacings and other devices. The moulded frames are specially important as they carry our thoughts to the Italian ' cancelli ' rather than to the panels for revetment with which we have hitherto been concerned. The ornament, though rather carelessly drawn out, illustrates what has been said of the motive in the early form in which the connecting band has a distinct inflation in the middle. Mr Clapham 1 points out that the piece may date at the end of VII or early VIII, when the fittings of churches were the expression of the religious enthusiasm of the times.
The last piece that comes under the present category of enrichments of church fabrics takes us to the extreme northern limit of the Anglian kingdom when it reached beyond the Tweed.2 The reference is to that well-known specimen of Northumbrian art, the Jedburgh slab, a panel enriched with animals in vine scrolls in a style familiar on the two great Anglian Crosses. The slab is shown on PI. xnx. It measures in height 2 ft. ~]\ in., but as the photograph shows it is trun- cated at the top, and this is a fact of capital importance when it comes to the question of the original purpose of the piece. Dr Brondsted calls it a cross shaft, but for this it is far too wide. The full original width can be gained when we note that on the dexter side it has lost several inches. As it is now, there is on the sinister side a border about 7 in. wide enriched by a narrow band of knot work. A border of a similar width on the mutilated dexter side would bring the whole width of the slab to at least 2 ft. 6 in., while the absence of tapering again excludes the idea of a cross shaft. On the sinister side the thickness of the slab is seen to measure 6 in. and the surface of the stone is unornamented but dressed smooth as if intended
1 A. W. Clapham, F.S.A., English Romanesque Architecture, Oxford, 1930, p. 74.
2 It is convenient to keep all these pieces of internal fittings of churches together, though these are northern and not southern, as in this chapter they ought to be.
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[p. 182]
PLATE XLIX JEDBURGH SLAB
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chap, vin.] JEDBURGH MONUMENTS 183
to be in view, while the back of the slab is unevenly dressed as if intended to be built into a wall. Connected with the fact that the slab is broken off above we have to note that, in the course of elaborate operations of preservation, carried out before 191 3 by the then Marquis of Lothian through his architect Sir Rowand Anderson, and since that date by the Ancient Monuments Department of His Majesty's Office of Works, several other worked pieces came to light that had been built in by the Normans to their XII walls, thus incident- ally confirming, what few will now question, the pre-Conquest date of all the artistic work with which we are dealing. Two of these fragments are seen at the top of the main slab in PI. xlix, and on the one on the dexter side there is a bird in foliage like that on the slab, though, one might say, of superior artistic excellence as one of the twigs is undercut clear of the ground — a detail always to be noted as evidence of fine technique. This piece may be quoted as a proof that the slab may at first have had additional height which would make it suitable as a revetment of similar use to the Bradford-on-Avon slab. Certain incisions in the back of the slab seem connected with its fixing as a revetment. The artistic character of the carving will have a word in connection with the similar work in the Anglian North, but the boldness of it may be realized from the enlarged view on PI. l.
Before we turn away from Jedburgh it is worth while from the statistical point of view to note that counting these last discoveries there are now to be seen at Jedburgh, over and above the well-known slab, no less than about a dozen frag- ments of varying character and technical merit that are wit- nesses to the activity of the native carvers, and give an idea of the local monuments that must have once adorned the place. The stone used for the best pieces like the revetment slab is a white fine-grained sandstone, but time has greatly darkened the surfaces.
CHAPTER IX
SELECTED PIECES ANALYSED AND DESCRIBED
The space here given to the enriched pieces that were in intimate connection with Saxon sacred buildings is justified by the fact that this particular phase of the art of the period has not hitherto been fully appreciated, though it is important as showing the attention to detail in the interior fitting-out of early Saxon churches of an ordinary type. We will now turn to artistic objects that possess more inherent interest and beauty, and that admit us more intimately into the char- acteristics of the Anglo-Saxon sculpturesque style.
The object here must be to select a number of the most characteristic and aesthetically pleasing specimens of sculpture, which exhibit the purely Anglian style in the three established motives, human figures, vine foliage, and animals, without any infusion of Scandinavian or Celtic motives. The work in question covers VIII with the last part of VII and half or three-quarters of IX, before Scandinavian influence has made itself strongly felt, as a consequence of the Danish capture of York in 867.
The human figure must in a sense be taken for granted. That is to say there was no recognized formula for its treat- ment except that nature was to be followed as closely as was practicable and success in this endeavour depended largely on the artistic endowment of each individual sculptor. It is true that at times certain conventions in the handling of the human figure show themselves and prescribe a method of treating certain parts of the form which for a time at any rate is obedi-
184
PLATE LI NATURALISTIC FIGURE WITHIN SCROLL AT OTLEY
[p. 184]
PLATE LI I OTLEY SCROLL WITH INTERPENETRATIONS
[p. 185]
chap, ix.] DR BRONDSTED'S SELECTION 185
ently followed. An example will presently come before us in the matter of the disposal of the feet, but in the main the artist exhibits here the same individuality as he shows in other parts of his work.
It might be well to begin this survey with the monuments that Dr Brondsted has singled out as the most classical, the most Syriac, of all that he has noticed in his searching analysis of our early Anglo-Saxon sculpture. These are at Otley in Wharfedale, a site that more than a millennium later was made again a famous place of art by the visits to Farnley Hall of J. M. W. Turner. Otley church houses a considerable collec- tion of fragments giving evidence of several monuments of the first order of merit, and Brondsted lays special stress on the fact that the vine scrolls give off their side-sprays quite simply without any bands or cups of leaves. This is supposed to be a Syrian countermark and is much relied on, though we have seen that it makes its appearance from time to time in our own work. The animals too in the Otley scrolls are quite natural, as is shown in PL li. It must not be forgotten, however, that the twisting together of stems that are parallel in their direc- tion, a northern not a classical motive, is represented here on this very same cross shaft at Otley that is claimed so plausibly as of Syrian origin, see PI. lii. This vigorous piece of design is about as little like a vine scroll as can well be imagined, and this general character, accentuated by the interpenetration of the two main stems, makes it a capital instance of a piece of work which we cannot help regarding as a stumbling block in the way of the acceptance of Dr Brondsted's theory of the Syrian colony. The bird on PL li we should be quite ready to accept. Otley we may have occasion to visit again, but we may now pass on to another good centre for figure design, this is Dewsbury near Wakefield.
Among the fragments of figure sculpture at Dewsbury are some which formed part of a circular shaft, and these with Reculver in our minds we can reckon as possibly early and
1 86 SOME SELECTED PIECES [part n.
southern. As such they have at any rate a good claim to be considered. Two of them are shown on PL liii. On one is a Christ seated and holding a scroll with the left hand while the right is raised in what is meant as an attitude of blessing, though no fingers are bent.1 The fragment as a whole is about two feet high. The other piece, also originally part of a cylinder, is nearly of the same size, and gives evidence of the presence of seven figures, the lower four of which stood under the arches of an arcade. If we compare as sculpture these figures with the Reculver fragments we miss in them the impression of savoir-faire of the Kentish pieces which are far nearer to classical models, but the decline has not reached anything like degradation, and the two figures truncated above on the sinister side of the seated Christ in PI. liii are excellent in pose and drapery, and like the Christ are treated in bold relief coming in parts as much as 2 in. from the ground. The Christ is not so good sculpturally as the standing figures, because the form within the drapery is not realized as in the case of the figures on His left hand, while the head is far too large for the breadth of the shoulders, though in itself it is not wanting in dignity.
From the same set of Dewsbury fragments there are portions of what must have been a figured cross shaft not of cylindrical but of square or rectangular section, and the scriptural subjects and their treatment are of interest. The cable margins which the two pieces PI. liv, i and 2 exhibit, correspond, so Mr Collingwood is satisfied, in their somewhat elaborate design so as to furnish proof that the two are parts of the same shaft, which may accordingly be called ' the " Mary " Cross,' with a reference to the appearance of the Mother in both. The figures of the Mother and Child as we
1 In the Greek form of blessing the first, middle, and little fingers are raised, and the thumb and ring finger kept out of sight ; in the Latin form the three longest fingers are utilized. Of course the three digits, whichever they are, signify the Persons of the Trinity.
PLATE LIII DEWSBURY FRAGMENTS
[p. 186]
PLATE LIV DEWSBURY 'MARY5 FIGURES
[p. i87]
chap, ix.] DEWSBURY AND HORNBY 187
have them here are not without a pleasant expressiveness. Both are nimbed. This is perhaps the earliest and at the same time the best treatment of this favourite theme of Christian art that Saxon sculpture appears to have given us, though Mary and the Child are represented most effectively in the ' Flight into Egypt ' on the Ruthwell Cross. Mary makes another appearance in no. 2 on PI. liv, the theme of which is the miracles of Cana and of the five loaves and two fishes. We must supply in thought to the dexter side of no. 2 enough of the broken panel to accommodate two more water- pots to complete the six. Christ occupies the central position and we may note that as at Ruthwell His face wears the utterly unclassical moustache without a beard.1 Mary comes up from behind Him and seems to be whispering in His ear about the trouble with the wine. Christ lifts His right hand — a miserable bit of carving — as the Hand of Power, while in His left hand he seems to hold some object not easily identified, but in all probability a scroll. The Latin inscription above the Cana panel with the restoration of the two first letters reads (vi)num fecit ex a. where the full stop implies abbreviation.
A similar inscription heads the lower panel (vp)anes et dvo pis., and there is the same mark of abbreviation. Below we see only the upper parts of three figures of which that on the dexter side with a nimbus must be Christ, prepared to work the miracle of the loaves, two only of which are seen. For this subject a parallel can be adduced from the Lancashire site of Hornby in the Lune valley, where there are some fine and important stones which must be dealt with in their place. Here the only one that concerns us is that figured on PI. lv, where we see below, first the two fishes, and then five round loaves. Behind these there stand two figures seen in half- length, while between them is an upright conventional tree.
1 For the importance of this small but highly significant detail see (Vol. v, p. 20).
1 88 SOME SELECTED PIECES [part 11.
Both figures are nimbed, and the one on the dexter side of slender and graceful form seems in his right hand to be holding a scroll. The other figure, not quite so tall, is more homely of aspect. The two would be Christ and a disciple, probably Peter. The piece is evidently a portion of a cross shaft which tapers slightly, and the other three sides have compositions of knot work, the back showing at the top the bust of an angel.1 Still keeping to the subject of the treatment of the human form, we must now take account of a phase of the national art which gives us figure work in a fairly large quantity, but at the same time presents characteristics that on the basis of our general knowledge of Anglo-Saxon sculpture we should hardly at first sight recognize as our own. This is sculpture almost entirely decorative with the representative element kept in subordination because of the small scale on which everything is rendered. The sculpture on the Saxon Crosses generally is rather bold and massive, running off almost inevitably into clumsiness, and the forms are on the whole ample. Now as a contrast we have in this special phase of our sculpture extreme delicacy of figure work on a small scale that is in design lively and even playful, and in execution sharp and well accentuated. The piece exhibiting these qualities that has been longest known and most discussed is one built into the external south wall of the western tower of the North-Riding Yorkshire church of Hovingham, but at a height which makes photo- graphing rather uncertain and close inspection only possible from a ladder. It is a slab or panel, PI. lvi, 5 ft. 3 in. long by 1 ft. 10 in. in width or height, that may have served as a revetment to an altar or for some purpose of the kind. The surface is chiefly occupied with a range of eight standing or
1 This interesting stone which gives us a cross shaft of norma] section and good enrichment, is published in a portly volume by Henry Taylor, F.S.A., entitled The Ancient Crosses and Holy Wells of Lancashire, Manchester, 1906, a work replete with the lore of Crosses, ancient and comparatively modern, and pf great interest for the study on which we are engaged.
PLATE LV HORNBY SHAFT WITH LOAVES
[p. 188]
- 2
[p. 1S9]
chap. ix.J THE HOVINGHAM PANEL 189
seated figures a little over a foot high in an arcade of simply treated forms, without any capitals or imposts where the arches spring from the shafts. Some ornament fills the spandrils. Below the figures runs a narrow band of ornament filled with the Anglian motive of a foliage scroll with an animal enclosed in each convolution.1 Nothing can exceed the deli- cacy and the graceful lines of the scroll work or the variety and spirit that characterize the animals, while kindred qualities can be discerned in the figures. The two subjects at the dexter end of the range give us a seated Mary on a folding stool, receiving the celestial visitant who comes in bearing a sceptre-like rod with movement of the form and inclination of the head that show quite the style of good sculpture. The occupants of the other six arches are not to be identified, but the last two almost repeat the pose and action of Gabriel and Mary, while for the central four Mr Collingwood suggests very plausibly the four Evangelists, though the figures seem to have too much action and too much variety in their poses to suit these dignified personages. The Evangelical symbols make no show. On the whole we feel it to be a great artistic loss that the piece so suggestive of interest and beauty has suffered so much from time, and one is sorry that it is still exposed to injury from the elements. The material is a fine grained yellow sandstone.
On the question of date for a work of this kind opinion has greatly changed in recent days. Years ago, when Anglo- Saxon art was not so well understood as is now happily coming to be the case, its obvious merits in design and execution, which we have signalized, seemed to take it out of the range of Saxon art, with its supposed tendency to clumsiness, and 4 the twelfth century ' was generally on the critic's lips. But how does this XII date fit the architecture into which the
1 This lower part of the Hovingham panel is one of the pieces singled out by Dr Brondsted, with the Otley Cross (PI. li), and one or two other fragments, as the assured work of immigrant Syrian carvers. — Early English Ornament, p. 37.
VI N
igo SOME SELECTED PIECES [part n.
piece is now incrusted ? The tower has both Saxon and Norman features and belongs to a class representing what is called the Saxo-Norman overlap, which in architecture has a real existence. This means that for a century after the Norman Conquest, church building might partake of the character of both the Saxon and the Norman styles. The coming in of the Gothic style put an end to this, and the new pointed-arched facture dominated the building art. This means that neither the Hovingham church tower nor the carved panel could be later than say the third quarter of XII without exhibiting some Gothic symptoms, and if they are both alike XII work how is it that when the church was being built or rebuilt, and there was at hand a beautiful piece of contemporary decorative sculpture, this piece was not placed as an altar frontal or in some other position of honour, but incrusted in an outer wall, where as Lord Leighton said about Cleopatra's Needle it ' emphasized nothing, and was by nothing emphasized ' ?
Completely to vindicate the pre-Conquest origin of the Hovingham panel it must be compared with other pieces of the same character which carry with them satisfactory criteria of early date. Two curiously constituted collections of these exist, and though well enough known to the few have been ' caviare to the general,' in part no doubt owing to the sup- posed impossibility of getting agreement on the subject of their date. In both cases what has been preserved is a number of fragments that formed part of the sculptured decoration of important churches, and that have been pre- served by being like the Hovingham slab built in to the walls of churches of more recent origin than those for which the decoration was originally devised. The larger of the two collections is to be seen at the fine and nobly situated church of Breedon-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire; the smaller one sparkles at the church of Fletton close to Peterborough. At Breedon are to be counted about thirty mostly composite items,
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chap. ix.J THE BREEDON FRAGMENTS 191
consisting for the most part in fragments of decorative friezes, one of which is preserved to its full original length of 1 8 ft. These present an extraordinary variety of ornamental motives, some of them of great rarity, while others come from the recognized repertory of ornaments used by the peoples of north-western Europe. Each kind has its own value for us. The recognized forms of ornament help us to determine chronology, while the interest of the rare motives is of a higher kind, for the evidence they offer concerns the artistic inventive- ness, the sense of composition and consequently of beauty, and the knowledge of outland forms, with which each par- ticular carver has been equipped.
In this respect the fragmentary Breedon friezes are at times almost startling in the novelty of the displays they offer. For example PI. lvii shows a number of fragments of friezes built into the south wall of the south porch, and into other parts, which show the artist revelling in the frisky movements and momentary poses of human and animal figures, as well as in fanciful shapes that remind us of nothing so much as Dicky Doyle's world-famous title-page to Punch peopled with kindred forms. Another portion of a frieze, no. 1 on PL lvii, exhibits composite animal figures rendered with great spirit and pre- senting, with others, a sphinx, a winged quadruped, and a centaur. The last is known in the art of the carved crosses and occurs at Aycliffe near Darlington and Nunburnholme in East Yorkshire. The work here would certainly be pro- nounced ' advanced ' and relegated to XII, but it is fortunately safely anchored in the pre-Danish period, that is our period One, by the fact that these creatures are disporting themselves in convolutions of foliage scrolls of the Bewcastle-Ruthwell type, and these scrolls have that plainly emphasized detail that does not occur in post-Conquest work of the kind. This is the thickening of a main stem and its encirclement with bands where subsidiary boughs or tendrils are given off. Of this detail and its chronological significance Dr Brondsted makes
192 SOME SELECTED PIECES [part n.
a good deal, and it never did better service to the cause of art than when it comes in here to prove the early date of carving of this surprising kind. In an elaborate and singularly con- vincing paper in Archaeologia, Vol. lxxvii, 1928, Mr A. W. Clapham has in the most painstaking manner applied the comparative method to the pieces all and sundry of this Breedon collection. On this same PL lvii there is ornament apart from figures and animals. No. 1 has a piece of linear decoration in the form of a diagonal fret, in later times a rare motive, but one now occurring several times in the work we have before us. Nos. 3 and 4 on this Plate give us examples of the real rarities spoken of above, for which reference can be made to the Archaeologia paper. The final result of all these studies is to vindicate for this Breedon collection and also for that at Fletton not only a pre-Norman but a pre- Danish position, which it will hold in the future as a notable phase of our best Anglo-Saxon sculpture of VIII.
With regard to the similar but far smaller collection at Fletton by Peterborough, the sculpturesque fragments now built into the chancel walls of about mid XII date, have upon them marks of fire, and they may have been parts of an early church destroyed by the Danes in 870, but picked out to be re-used when the church was rebuilt in XII. There seems no indication of a connection with the neighbouring Abbey. The fanciful figure work on a small scale which has delighted us at Breedon, occurs here on fragments built into the exterior eastern buttresses of the chancel.1 On PL lviii the two lowest inserted pieces have angels' busts, in one case under arches, and the charming and well-preserved single bust on the lowest panel is relieved against a background of fretted stonework unique in England, so far as the writer knows, in its wayward design and sharp cutting. It is called by Mr Clapham the Pelta
1 And, let us gratefully acknowledge, carefully inserted with some archi- tectural feeling, and not regarded merely as so many cubic inches of building stone.
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PLATE LVIII FLETTON FRAGMENTS
[p. 192]
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chap, ix.] BREEDON-FLETTON DETAILS 193
ornament, and is used abroad, so that one might be tempted to guess that the artist was a travelled man.
The Breedon-Fletton figure sculpture must receive its due attention. Breedon has to show, built into the internal chancel wall, and figured PI. lix, i, two interesting figures pressed closely side by side and carved in bold relief within a square-headed panel that forms a frame for them. They are not nimbed, nor have they attributes or adjuncts that might help to identify them. If we hide for a moment the heads, with which time has dealt rather unfairly, we shall readily agree with Mr Clapham who says, ' the figures are rendered with considerable freedom and facility,' and speaks too of the 1 light and pliable characteristics ' of the drapery.1 The reader can verify this on PI. lix, i. Each figure holds a plant stem that ends above with a leaf that is boldly hollowed almost into a cup shape. Now this particular detail needs a word because it is one that is only of rarest occurrence outside the range of the works we have in hand. The leaf, possibly originally of the vine, was ultimately transformed to a pointed leaf of a single lobe worked into a deep hollow, but in the various inter- mediate shapes assumed by the leaf between its more or less orthodox vine form, and what it came to, the sinking of the hollow seems universal. This special detail in fact gives a sort of individual character to this particular phase of our Anglo-Saxon art.
Returning to the human figures, we must note carefully the treatment of the feet. The carver shows his inexperience in this rather difficult branch of his work, for he feels evidently that when he has designed a figure for a front view the front view of the feet created a problem. The artist of experience is familiar with devices for getting feet into profile-view posi- tions, but the beginner tries by raising the heel to keep the front of the foot in the same vertical plane as the rest of the full-face figure. This has been done, the reader will see, in the
1 Archaeologia, Vol. lxxvii, p. 233.
194 SOME SELECTED PIECES [part n.
two Breedon figures which are balanced on their toes, see PI. lix, i. At Fletton there are also two figures built into the inner chancel wall but in separate niches. The one that is figured as no. 2 on PI. lix is 2 ft. 5 in. high, and the relief is 2 in. The figure is in some respects not badly done. He is nimbed, and he holds a long rod with a ball at the bottom and a flower at the top. His drapery has not the lightness and freedom of that of the Breedon figures, but his singularly well-treated head makes up for it. One notes the effect secured by drilling out the iris of the eye and sometimes filling it in with some suitable coloured substance. The Christ of the ' Lechmere ' monument is so treated, see p. 254. The feet are most noticeable. The carver has advanced beyond his brother at Breedon and has given a profile view, but has not observed that there is no reason now to raise the heel and to balance the figure on his toes, and he could have kept the whole foot on the ground without getting any part of it beyond the vertical plane.
The figures now passed in review have been for the most part members of the celestial hierarchy, and it will be interest- ing by way of contrast to take a differently figured stone from the rich collection formerly in the Hospitium at York, that is now freshly and excellently installed in the Museum building. It is somewhat over two feet high and shows by its tapering that it is part of a cross shaft. It is PI. lx. On the principal face are carved in bold relief two male figures in civil dress that present a curious problem in interpretation because of their homely every-day appearance and costume. Mr Collingwood thinks they may represent ' ninth century Anglian gentlemen, dressed in costumes not usually seen in MS. illuminations.' As portraits do occur on the crosses — we shall see a fine one of a Viking chief on the wonderful cross shaft at Nunburnholme in the East Riding — this may be the explanation here, but what they are supposed to be doing is quite uncertain. The dexter figure wears a long kirtle with a girdle from which
PLATE T.X I WO FIGURES FROM YORK
[P- l95l
chap, ix.] BISHOP AUCKLAND CROSS 195
hangs a hunting horn. Over his head is a rather voluminous hood fastened with a round button in front, and he is stretching out his right arm towards the right hand of his companion which is holding the hilt of a short sword or long dagger though there is no suggestion of hostility. This, the sinister figure, wears an ample cloak reaching nearly to the ankles and furnished above with a handsome collar perhaps of fur. Both faces are of a pleasant type, with rounded cheeks and friendly expressions of homely good-nature. They wear shoes, but what they are standing on one cannot divine.
The examples of figure sculpture we have now had before us are one and all wrought with true plastic feeling, that is with a sense in the carver's mind of solid mass in three dimen- sions, though the work is always in relief and not completely in the round. There are other examples of the treatment of the same subjects by artists who have sometimes excellent qualities as designers in the matters of distribution and ex- pressive action, but are draughtsmen, at home on flat planes and destitute of any apprehension of the artistic possibilities of mass. As an example may be taken the surviving remains of what must have been a very stately monument, the great Cross at St Andrew's, Bishop Auckland, County Durham. Some massive fragments were long preserved in the N.W. corner of the church within a railing, crowded together so as to make study and photography far from easy. The fragments here shown in photographs and described, have now (July, 1 93 1) been put together and mounted in cross form. A view of the cross is given on the dexter side of PI. lxi. The curious want of light and shade owing to flatness militates against the effect. On the two broad faces were figures grouped close together in panels, bordered first with roll mouldings and then by boldly treated cable mouldings marking the arrises of the shaft and also framing the panels. The sides of the shaft with their narrower faces have stiffly designed foliage scrolls
196 SOME SELECTED PIECES [part n.
like those at Bewcastle but devoid of the free swing and trained grace of style of that noble foliage. Within them are animals treated in fairly natural fashion but with their legs interlaced with the foliage stems instead of standing on them. At the bottom of one of the narrow sides there is an archer aiming at the beasts above, a motive we meet for the first time on the head of the Ruthwell Cross, but which is repeated several times on the extant fragments. One example from Sheffield has been added lately to the Anglo-Saxon room at the British Museum. The best preserved piece on PI. lxi certainly belongs to a conspicuous part of the shaft. Two angels nimbed and furnished with wings, one of whom holds a sceptre with three balls at the top, are clearly portrayed, and they are effectively grouped together, with a well-designed play of drapery, and hands that are by no means bad. The damaged panel below shows three figures with the same want of relief. The centre is a Christ, and above His head is a small panel with the inscribed letters pas, a contraction, it is explained, for passus est. It would be a Christ of the Cruci- fixion, probably with an angel on each side. The greatest admiration for the artistic qualities of the work was expressed by the late Charles Clement Hodges, who published the pieces in the first Durham Vol. of the Victoria History, but he does not comment on the curious flatness of the figures. The animals on the sides have much more feeling for relief. Mr Colling- wood thinks that they are earlier than Ruthwell because the creatures have not yet learnt to stand on the branches. It seems much more likely that they have abandoned the earlier and more Syrian natural position for an interlacing of legs and boughs that is so characteristically Anglian.
Before leaving this highly interesting piece we must notice what is rare in the case of our English crosses but very common in Ireland, that is a socket which is also a pedestal and in addition to its imposing mass presents enrichment in the form of figures. The three that have their place on the front of
PLATE LXI THE BISHOP AUCKLAND CROSS
p. E96]
chap, ix.] THE EASBY CROSS 197
the base on PI. lxi seem to be a youthful Christ, as at Hornby, but here between two disciples.
As a contrast to the flatness of parts at any rate of Bishop Auckland, we may turn now to a Yorkshire monument or rather a series of fragments of one, from which ' if imagination mend them ' we can restore in thought what must have been one of the most artistic masterpieces in the whole Anglo- Saxon repertory. The reference is to the Easby Cross, now one of the treasured possessions of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The reader has already (p. 94) been invited to offer a bold challenge to time by restoring in imagination what has perished from some monument of our fine Early Christian sculpture. This, of course, can only be done on the basis of one or two surviving fragments that may be of a kind to stimulate thought. The whole procedure in itself is no more than a play of fancy, but in the year in which these lines were written, 1930, a happy combination of circumstances invited such a fancied restoration to materialize.
At Easby near Castle Richmond in Yorkshire there had been preserved one of those fragments of square cross shaft that we have seen to be so numerous and so tantalizing. The fragment, about 18 in. high, and carved on all four sides, exhibited work of exceptional charm and was well known to students of our early art, who may often in musing have framed some airy picture of what must have been the beauty of the whole monument. One special point of interest attaching to the work was the fact that in the XII Church of Easby close by, certain stones had been used in the walls as building materials, that on their exposed faces exhibited foliage ornament which in style and in measurements seemed to correspond with what appeared on the already known and admired fragment. A year or two ago this capital piece passed into the possession of the Victoria and Albert Museum,
198 SOME SELECTED PIECES [part ii.
and as a natural consequence negotiations were set on foot the result of which was the extraction of the stones just men- tioned from the walls of the church. It was then seen that the worked faces of these stones had been plastered with mortar so as to fill up all the hollows and make them more useful as building stones. This it may be noted had been the case long ago with a classical chef d'auvre, the pieces of the colossal Frieze from Pergamon. These had been broken up, filled in with mortar, and built into a Byzantine wall. Now completely cleared, and with a surface that had in this way been preserved from weathering, they are displayed in their connections in the Pergamon Museum at Berlin. To com- pare small things with great, this is what befell in the case of the Easby pieces, that were cleaned in the same way and revealed on the hitherto hidden sides excellently preserved foliage and figure sculpture that obviously had belonged to the original cross. Some of these newly rescued pieces can be accommodated, though not exactly fitted, to the original fragment and to each other ; and they make it possible to obtain a fuller view of the remains, and to give some material substance to the complete monument, which had before been purely visionary. A sizable fragment of the cross-head is valuable as showing that this was enriched with figure sculp- ture of sacred import, and on both back and front. The front is seen on PI. lxii, i, and will presently be noticed.
The scheme of the enrichment is more regular and con- sistent than is the case as a rule in Saxon design. It is true that there is great clearness in Bewcastle, but the elements there are few and simple. At Ruthwell there are more ele- ments and little if any connection in thought among them, except what is due to their common religious character. Here there was evidently no strictly ordered scheme in the enrichment. Easby in comparison does give us a formal scheme, and on a single surface PI. lxiii, i, 2, 3, 4, shows to us assembled all the main elements of the design on a
PLATE LXII
EASBY CROSS DETAILS
i, FRAGMENT OF THE CROSS-HEAD. FIGURE WITH
HAND RAISED IN BENEDICTION 2, DETAIL OF APOSTLE FIGURE (ST PETER ?) ON THE MIDDLE PORTION OF THE SHAFT [p. 198]
PLATE LXIII EASBY CROSS. THE FOUR SIDES OF THE SHAFT FRAGMENTS
[p- i99]
chap, ix.] THE EASBY CROSS 199
necessarily small scale. On the back of the shaft there appears to have been a continuous design of animals and foliage that seems, as at Bewcastle, to have occupied the whole of that side of the shaft. The two narrow sides of this exhibit panels with knot work and highly conventionalized foliage scrolls apparently alternating.1 All this work on the narrow sides seems rather dry and hard as compared with the Bew- castle foliage and, say, the Carlowrie and Spital (Hexham) scrolls, but that on the back, which gave the monument its reputation, is excellent both in its birds and its quadrupeds, and in the composition of its stems and tendrils, though these seem to lack a little of the lusciousness and soft floral char- acter that delights us at Bewcastle.2
The fragment of the cross-head is of the utmost value as it carries out that regularity and consistency which has been noticed as characterizing the design as a whole. It shows the bust of a figure, PI. lxii, i, with the hand raised in the act of benediction, and the carver has been at the trouble (too often shirked) of trying to give the right positions of the thumb and fingers for benediction in the chosen form. There are more pains taken here than in the Christ of the Majestas, who seems to keep all His fingers elevated, but as to which form of benediction is the chosen one on this Easby cross- head it would be hard to speak with assurance.
Easby accordingly presents to us a monument comparable with the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses and with a cross at Otley, PI. li, in Yorkshire, of beautiful and probably of early workmanship. These four monuments, of which two are by this time well known, are sufficient to give us a clear view of the artistic character at its best of this form of art in Anglo-
1 The fragments were all fully photographed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a special meed of thanks is due to the Director of the great Institution for the handsome gift of fine photographic prints of which are shown here as many as space allows. For the narrow sides see PI. lxiii, nos. 1 and 4, also for Carlowrie and Spital see PI. lxvi and cvm.
2 See postea, 'Aesthetic of foliage scrolls rendered in stone,' p. 208 ff.
200 SOME SELECTED PIECES [part ii.
Saxon Britain. We have already seen that the finest and earliest of our crosses exhibit classical forms derived beyond all reasonable doubt, but not exactly borrowed, from Syria. This applies to the principal ornamental motives, the human figure, animals, and foliage. The human figure has been sufficiently vindicated as a product, not of Roman as might have been expected, but of Hellenistic art, while Syrian sculpture, not as we have seen (p. 123, f.), of VII date but of the earlier epoch of IV or V, was the primary model for the Bewcastle Christ and the Mary of the Ruthwell Annunciation. The foliage is based (somewhat distantly) upon the vine, and this plant, artistic in the manner of its growth and in the resultant forms, has been claimed to be a native of the Iranian plateau whence its diffusion over the neighbouring regions would be easy. A Greek historian1 tells us that in the sleeping chamber of the Persian King there was a golden vine which bore bunches of fruit formed of emeralds and Indian car- buncles. We are told also that near the golden vine there stood in the room a golden bowl the work of Theodorus of Samos, the greatest of archaic Greek metal workers, and indeed one of the great artists of the world. If the vine was, as is quite likely, also the work of the supreme Ionian artist, it would be probably the earliest recorded ornamental use of the vine motive, and perhaps the most decoratively beautiful. It should indeed not be put out of sight that such a magnificent early craftsman as Theodorus was at the disposal of the Achaemenid Darius, and assuming that he brought with him to his work his own Greek craxjipoavvy] to temper oriental profusion, we may opine that Darius and Xerxes were better housed and more artistically equipped than any potentates before or since.
1 Chares of Mitylene, a writer of Alexander's time, whose notes on the old Persia of the Achaemenids must be taken for what they are likely to be worth. There is nothing at all improbable in what Chares and others tell us about Achaemenid splendour.
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chap, ix.] THE EASBY CROSS 201
The original Easby fragment shows on the face of it a fairly successful enthroned figure of Christ with two angels' heads one on each side of His fully nimbed but badly weathered countenance. He holds with the left hand an orb, and raises the right in the action of blessing, which is not however carried through by any proper disposition of the fingers. The relief of the figure is well managed. The difficulty with the feet in the front view is surmounted by raising the heel on the lowest step of a footstool, and the projection of the thighs is quite well indicated.
The portions of the face of the shaft below the Majestas are occupied by a set of busts very obviously of the Apostles who seem to include St Paul, but even with him are shown only to the number of eleven. The artist has made the most of this by devising a marked difference in his grouping between the set of six and the group of only five. This con- trasted arrangement is, artistically speaking, the best thing in the whole monument. There is used the motive of the niches with arched heads, and the arches are supported by columns, sometimes twisted, that carry simple but quite massive capitals of bold projection. The spandrils are em- ployed for animals, mostly eating fruit. Twisted shafts are in service for the arrises of the main shaft.
All this detail means comparatively advanced work, and this impression is enhanced as we look further into the artistic qualities of the design and execution. On PL lxiv where the Majestas and the Apostles are shown together, and still more of course in the Victoria and Albert Museum where the pieces are now (Jan. 1932) exposed to view, one is forcibly struck by the vigour of the artist who has cut deeply in parts into the stone so as to get telling bits of dark, and has taken infinite care to get variety into the busts by the different methods of holding the books and scrolls which the holy persons carry. It is of course the heads and faces of the Apostles that are the crucial matter, for they are far better
202 SOME SELECTED PIECES [part ii.
preserved than any similar ambitious details on any of the crosses. Naturally names are suggested for the personages represented, and the task of identification is the same that meets us when we enter Sta Pudentiana at Rome and note the Apostles, not quite in full number, seated on either side of the enthroned Dominus. A few can be readily identified in the Roman mosaic, Peter and Paul of course each heading one half of the company, and then the youthful John and the white- haired Andrew ; but for the rest it is personal guess-work. Here at Easby one hardly feels it possible to avoid giving the name of Peter to the very noble and expressive head which with its closely clustering curly locks, short beard, firm mouth and general dignity, holds the uppermost position on the dexter side of the middle piece on PI. lxiv, and also on a larger scale in the head on PL lxii above the portion of the cross-head. This may pass, but where then is Paul ? The Paulo-Petrine feeling in the early church which might have been suffered to turn into a path of danger even of schism, was schooled by churchmen of sound judgement into a neutral feeling of equal favour for each of the two Christian pro- tagonists. Where Peter is there as a consequence must be Paul and vice versa, and so some critics have seen Paul in the sadly mutilated figure on Peter's side. There seems to be this possible objection that in that case Peter's (rather solid) nimbus would come in front of that of his friendly rival and trouble might arise among followers. On the other hand, the central bust of the five in the illustration has a position of equal dignity with that of the fine bust above him and has the long thin face and (perhaps) the straggling beard of the hero from Tarsus. For the rest opinions must necessarily differ, but the general merit of the carving is less marked perhaps in the more monotonous row of three in the lowest line of the heads in the dexter group on PL lxiv. There is more character in the heads of the two above, and one would be quite disposed to see a bearded Andrew in the topmost figure.
PLATE LXV EASBY. THE ORIGINAL PIECE
[p. 203]
chap, ix.] THE EASBY CROSS 203
The photograph, PI. lxv, gives the animal and foliage composition on the back of that section of the cross shaft which carries on its face the Majestas. It is the notable piece that has been known for so long and gave the monu- ment its title to distinction. The little quadruped is most happily designed, and one might almost stroke it. It is un- fortunate that the head of the bird has been damaged, for the anatomy of the creature reminds us of the best work of the kind at Bewcastle.
There is one consideration which in fairness cannot be passed over. Any detail of exceptional artistic merit suggests at once the old controversy about the imported artists, and it may be conceded at once that Easby presents less difficulties than any other of the monuments of the first order, with the exception of Otley. There is an absence almost complete of those details or incidents which to some English critics seem to involve impossibilities, things which one feels could not exist in performances of trained foreign sculptors from a Mediterranean school. There are no runes at Easby and indeed no inscriptions at all, nor is there any show of that delight in twisting stems or tendrils together which is a sign manual of our western design. In the carving there are no Magdalenian arms and hands, and no eagles with their little St Johns. The work is all of even quality and there are no surprises. A trained Hellenistic carver, so far as the execu- tion of the busts is concerned, might have been brought in and commissioned to take the work in hand, but the anomalous position would present itself that he was being asked to engage in cross making, which was not his job, and which he would have to be taught.
CHAPTER X
ANIMALS AND FOLIAGE ANALYSED
Enough has now been said and shown to give a fair idea of the qualities of this Anglo-Saxon sculpture as evidenced in its presentment of the human figure and face. While retain- ing hold on the main theme it will be necessary now to apply the same treatment to the animal and foliage subjects.
The Easby piece furnishes an excellent text, for both the animals and the scrolls are tastefully disposed, and the latter, obviously not designed by any one who had ever studied a vine, shows that the draughtsman possessed an excellent natural gift for composition in line. The positions and forms of the animals, and especially the relations the creatures bear to each other and to the foliage, are beyond criticism. In general the chief display of this foliage is to be seen on the vertical spaces of the various upright cross shafts, whether these spaces are used at once for the full height available, or divided up into a series of panels. The master craftsman would be guided in his design by the proportions of his shaft, the main element of his composition, and this would of course depend on the resources of the local quarries open to him. There can be little doubt that the prevalence of the monolithic main shaft, which is quite a feature of these crosses especially in the north, is due to a sense of the monumental in the designers, and their artistic schemes were no doubt influenced by this consideration. Why they made their shafts as a rule in section not square, though at times very nearly so, we cannot tell, but it was constantly rectangular, the front and back being broader than the sides. Perhaps this was to secure differences
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PLATE LXVII NUNNYKIRK
PLATE LXVIII NUNNYKIRK
O 2°5]
chap. x.J NUNNYKIRK 205
in the shape of the fields which the craftsman would have to fill with his ornament — another homage to the spirit of variety ! On the comparatively narrow side panels a single stem undulating from side to side in sweeping curves, and giving off at intervals lateral branches that fill the spaces marked out by these curves, gives a simple scheme (PI. lxvi). Vine leaves, it may possibly be with the correct five lobes, or, what is far more likely, with an irregular fanciful shape, alternate with bunches of grapes to fill out this scheme. In the case of the broader spaces at front and back, though, as on the eastern or back face at Bewcastle, a single stem may give the scheme in its undula- tions, in other examples there are two main stems starting from the bottom corners, which approach and recede in a way that reminds us of the arabic numeral eight, or else cross each other so as to give an opportunity eagerly embraced by the designer, of dividing the stems and making them intersect (Frontispiece). If there be considerable breadth in a surface a single central stem may be used to give off lateral scrolls on each side, like a tree with spreading branches, and this is called sometimes a ' Tree of Life.' The classical example here is the Jedburgh slab, PI. xlix, but the scrolls there are stiff and woodeny. There may also, as at Nunnykirk, be a pair of upright scrolls parallel to each other with curling sprays given off from each on either side, those which meet in the middle clinging together. PI. lxviii illustrates what is here said, and other scrolls of special merit are shown here, PI. lxvii, from excellent Anglian work in the ' north Countree.' The work shown in PL lxvi originated at Aberlady in East Lothian, and is now kept at Carlowrie Castle near Edinburgh. The swing of the scrolls is fresh and effective. There is a sense in them of life and growth, and they should be contrasted with the scrolls at Jedburgh on PI. xlix, which seem to be in a dead material which takes its form only from the rule and measure.
One marked point of difference between Anglo-Saxon foliage and that of Mediterranean lands has been noticed vi o
206 ANIMALS AND FOLIAGE [part n.
perhaps too often but may have here a final word. The appearance in Anglian work of what has been called ' play ' at points of divergence of stems, whereas such stems in almost all continental designs part quietly without any fancy leave- taking, has been elevated into a crucial test as to what is or is not western or eastern, and Dr Brondsted has made many references to the curious point. It should be clearly under- stood that the distinction is not an absolute one, and that there are plenty of Anglian side-sprays that come away quite simply from the nutrient stem. One example from the midst of the noble desolation of Northumbrian moors brings in a delicate touch of beauty to the carving of what must have been a lovely piece of art. The place is Simonburn, a large parish in the North Tyne valley with a tradition going back to the earliest artistic Anglian times. There survives of the cross that evidently stood in the church precincts a portion of the square shaft the carved enrichment of which is as original as it is charming. On Fig. 19, the midmost of the three sections of the shaft is one of the narrow sides, and the other two are each one half of one of the broader sides which has been split along the median line. No. 1 has portions of birds that one would have wished to see in full in their varied movements. The third section is most remarkable as it introduces an entirely new motive in the form of a study from nature, slightly conventionalized, of a campanula blossom from the neighbouring fields where the late Charles Hodges, to whose pen the drawing is owed, reported that he had found it grow- ing. In contrast to the refined simplicity of Simonburn, a portion of an Anglian cross shaft from Abercorn on the Forth, Fig. 20, gives an extreme instance of a bold use of the sheaf motive in manipulating curved stems. The condition to which the vine leaves and grape clusters have been reduced is worth notice as an example of advanced conventionalization of foliage forms.
The animal forms, as was previously explained (p. 152 ff.),
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[p. 206]
PLATE LXIX ALDBOROUGH
Fig. 20. — Conventionalized foliage at Abercorn on the Forth.
I
PLATE LXX
i, THE LAWSON MONUMENT AT ROECLIFFE z, FRAGMENT OF THE CUNDAL CROSS
[p. 207]
chap. x.J ALDBOROUGH AND CUNDAL 207
resist this process for so long as the Anglian artistic move- ment, starting with Ruthwell and Bewcastle, was not yet affected by the powerful northern influence which came in after the fall of York. The eyes of the reader will already have been delighted with the soft forms of these lissom creatures whose limbs and tails are often so daintily curved but are so seldom contorted. So many examples have appeared already in our illustrations, as for instance on Pll. xlix, lvii, 2, and especially lxv, etc., that we must be contented here to give the notable creature among the melan- choly relics of the once strikingly beautiful Aldborough cross, with his neck stretched down between his two forepaws. The shaft of this Aldborough cross must have been abun- dantly yet not over-heavily charged with sculpture of the best Anglian quality. It belonged to the lords of the manor, the Lawson family, and it is said that one of these squires, stepping down from the Hall one morning, saw workmen breaking up one of the shaft sections into fragments suitable for road mending ! PI. lxix gives the piece.
The place is near Boroughbridge in the West Riding, and in the churchyard of Roecliffe, not far off, there stands a monument to Squire Lawson in the form of a shaft, entirely covered on its four sides with careful copies not only of the Aldborough fragments but of a more extensive series kept in the neighbouring church of Cundal, but belonging to the Aldborough monument as has now been proved. The monu- ment is instructive. It looks rather flat and of course is lacking in that nameless charm that only antiquity can give. PL lxx, 1, shows it as it stands, while the other piece, no. 2, is the best portion of the Cundal cross, preserved in an adjunct to that church. There is or was a scheme for putting the Aldborough and Cundal pieces together so as to form again a single monument, it is to be hoped without ' restorations.'
In the case of both animals and foliage, a reference back to the two great crosses is for a special reason necessary. We
208 ANIMALS AND FOLIAGE [part n.
can never really get away from the question, more difficult to handle, one can say, than any other which at the moment vexes the antiquary's mind, the question of the provenance of this decorative art destined to so interesting a development. A study of the animals and the foliage on Ruthwell and Bew- castle brings us in face of another of those difficulties which have been here characterized as stumbling blocks. The initial models for the foliage we may accept as Syrian, but it is intriguing to discover with how small a degree of regard the models are treated. The Bewcastle foliage is most remark- able, like nothing that any one of us has seen in nature, but highly original and effective, while all the time to accord with orthodox theory it should have been true to vine detail as well as to vine character. The five-lobed vine leaf however did not appeal to the carver or carvers of the two crosses, and the bunch of grapes which could be varied from the rounded to the pointed form was preferred.
Now the curious fact emerges that the bold and original Bewcastle foliage marks the beginning of the Anglian artistic output, while somewhat later, say at Nunnykirk, we find a return to sobriety in the less interesting conventional vine forms. Furthermore, the same thing, mutatis mutandis, occurs in the animal domain. We shall find that both on Ruthwell and on Bewcastle several of the quadrupeds present their foreparts only to view, and go off below into a fanciful coil with nothing animal about it. Later on, as we have just seen to be the case with the foliage, the ' Anglian beast ' re- establishes its anatomy and puts away fanciful things. It should of course have begun with naturalism, and produced these fanciful anatomical details when the scheme of evolu- tion had progressed some way on barbaric lines.
If we put aside these quasi-antinomies,and take the Anglo- Saxon scrolls at their aesthetic value, we find in them evidence of a marked taste in composition, that is, in the tactful dis- tribution of forms over a surface so as to give delight to the
PLATE LXXI HEVERSHAM
[p. 208]
chap. x.J AESTHETIC OF FOLIAGE SCROLLS 209
eye trained to balance one form against another in position, size and shape, while all together they produce the effect of harmony and of unity. The ' die ' that has been chosen for a Frontispiece is, as was explained, an outstanding example of this good composition in line and mass, with other effects ignored. Admirable foliage, distantly affiliated to the vine prototypes, occurs in Scotland on the Firth of Forth, where the early Anglian monastic settlement at Abercorn near Edinburgh must have exercised a most salutary aesthetic influence in its own region. It is remarkable that the further north we go in search of good Anglian art the better is the art that we find, and even apart from Ruthwell, there is accomplished Anglian work dating probably to VIII, in what is now north of the border, at Hoddam, Thornhill, Jed- burgh, Abercorn, Morham (in East Lothian), Aberlady, Closeburn, sites that have produced or at any rate exhibit work of considerable excellence. It is one of the many puzzling ' kinks ' in the story of English Anglian art, that while we may accept the almost universal opinion of the critics that it was an imported art of external origin, it makes in truth little or no show in the regions of England most accessible to the foreigner, and becomes more abundant and more artistically pleasing the further we go from the parts of the country where accomplished foreigners (given a supply of these !) would be most likely to become visitors or colonists.
As we are dealing now with foliage, a subject which, as the last few paragraphs will probably have shown, is a more subtle and hence a more difficult study than that of the animals, an aesthetic question may be asked. How far is the expression of floral character in the softness of the blossom, or in the sap-fed pliability of the twig, an aim that is in the carver aesthetically justified ? The luscious fulness of the open flower is its perfection — the quality of its own proper material and structure, but the decorative blossom is of stone and it may be a question whether the new lithic character
210 ANIMALS AND FOLIAGE [part n.
imparted to the piece under the strokes of the sculptor's chisel should eliminate all qualities of the material save petrine ones. In the same way should not the pliability of the twig give place to the stiffness of the rod that is bent and keeps its shape ? Such a twig is made sometimes to oppose its stiffness to a weight such as that of a bunch of grapes, and a proper stone character must be imparted to it. In dealing with Easby a comment was offered on the comparative dryness of the foliage stems which were said to lack ' a little of the lusciousness and soft floral character that delight us at Bew- castle.' For these qualities to be exaggerated would be an obvious mistake, but they may be present while at the same time the whole scheme of the scroll, especially the main stem, may be stiffened and to some considerable extent, so to say, petrified, to keep it in character with the material of the monument of which it forms a part. This is, of course, a matter for the artistic judgement of the sculptor, not for any hard and fast rule.
This practical throwing over of the vine, its dethronement from its position as the premiere decorative plant in favour of irregular motives some invented for the purpose, creates one of those stones of stumbling referred to in previous pages, while another, perhaps more serious, presents itself in con- nection with what has just been said. We meet it in a careful analysis of the treatment of the animal in the scrolls upon the two crosses. Naturalism is the principle we are bound to start with here, as we started in the case of the vine, and the 1 Anglian beast ' in the early sculpture generally is rightly praised for the practical completeness of his anatomical outfit. This praise is deserved by the specimens which occur a little way on in the line of development but are not in the earliest category. If we follow the course of the three centuries from 675 to 975, the period during which the motive ran out its life course, we find the best examples of the ' Anglian beast ' not at the beginning but some way along in work like that at
chap, x.] THE ' ANGLIAN BEAST ' 211
Aldborough, Heversham (PI. lxxi), or Cundal, where we give kindly greetings to creatures that are complete behind as before, with two-toed hind feet, and illustrate the best that is here said about this form of Saxon Art. At this point however we come up against another of our too frequent impedimenta, because the facts, if we face them, show us that on the two crosses the animals that present themselves in front as quad- rupeds often run off at the back into a single decorative flourish in stone. This makes us stumble if not fall at the outset when we are ready to take up the trail of these elusive foreign experts, who as Aristophanes might have said, ' are there and yet not there.'
CHAPTER XI
A DIGRESSION ON THE SOCIAL SETTING OF THE
MONUMENTS
It has been forced in upon the mind of the writer that the interest taken by the educated English public in these remains of Anglo-Saxon antiquity with which we are occupied, is not by any means an intimate interest. They are regarded as in the domain of the archaeologist, where they are catalogued, grouped, examined, measured, figured, dated, and technically analysed, the results being duly registered but not accorded a place in any educational curricula.
There are two questions or groups of questions to which we should like to obtain full and satisfactory answers. One group deals with material problems, the other is concerned with the domain of feeling. In the case of the first we want to know the material conditions that ruled, first in the pro- vision of a suitable stone, and then of its manipulation to its destined artistic shape, with a corollary concerning its later fortunes when destruction in many forms was its almost inevitable fate. The quarrying of stone seems to have been a craft fairly well understood, and possibly to some extent Roman traditions had survived. It may be said, however, that no Romans, and no ancient Egyptians trained in obelisk cutting and moving, could have done better in the case of the Gosforth Cross, than did the Cumbro-Norse stone-cutters. The stone meant for a fellow cross to that at Bewcastle, and still on Langbar Common, has been cut out and squared in a workmanlike fashion (Vol. v, p. 103-4). Stones in local
quarries, which would naturally be used where it was possible, 212
chap, xi.] METHOD OF CARVING 213
would no doubt be roughly blocked out to shape according to the prospective design, but where all the rest of the work would be done might be a question. It is an untoward fact that half-finished monuments, which would be so instructive, have not come down to us except in the case of small pieces on which some design, such as an entrelac pattern, has been sketched by the pick or chisel but not carried out. Mr Collingwood gives references to several examples in the large book as well as in the Yorkshire papers. In Ireland there have been preserved a number of pieces of bone, on the smoothed surfaces of which have been carefully incised com- plete interlacing or animal designs. These may have been used by craftsmen in search of a 'job ' as specimens of their skill. Other rougher bits of bone are obviously trial pieces showing the work of one who is still a learner. The Guildhall Museum, London, and that at York have good specimens.
In the unfinished monuments Ireland does us essential service, for in the beautiful churchyard of Kells, Meath, in that country there is an unfinished cross of the first rank exhibiting different stages of progress, the processes of work being displayed in the clearest fashion.1 This work was being carried on in situ, the actual churchyard serving as chantier. Of course it does not necessarily follow that pro- cesses used in one part of the British Isles were universally employed, but the likelihood is undoubtedly great in favour of practical uniformity in the domain of tectonics and tech- nique. Among the numerous fragments, some of very fine crosses, preserved at Ilkley Church and Ilkley Museum, there are several apparently unfinished pieces, the best being one in the Museum with the design completely carried out, but only in incised technique. That one side only of a four-sided cross shaft should be treated in incised work, while the other three sides show carving in relief, suggests an unfinished
1 The reader is referred here to Professor Macalister's Archaeology of Ireland, London, 1928, p. 328 f., for further details about these remarkable pieces.
2i4 THE SOCIAL SETTING [part ii.
piece, but some may regard it as deliberate, and think that the aim is to gain variety. The tools employed were almost certainly essentially the same, the principal ones being the pick and the chisel, each of course of different kinds and sizes. In many of Mr Collingwood's Yorkshire papers we find valuable notes on the use of these various tools, as evid- enced by the marks thus left upon the stones. The pick was the rougher implement and would practically always be the first employed, the chisel dominating the later processes and those of finish. Colour as an aid to this must be assumed as common though not universal, for there is so much evidence for its use among all ancient and mediaeval peoples that we cannot in reason exclude it from the particular work in which we are specially interested. Collingwood notices here and there traces of this finish, but very little is really to be seen. Perhaps the best evidence for the use of colour on stone is to be found among the Reculver fragments. Sir Charles Peers in his Archaeologia paper mentions more than once remains of red paint on the stones of the backgrounds of the figures. The writer's own notes report ' a good deal of colour,' green as well as red.
We must assume that the churchyard, or some other spot within the village bounds, or in the domain of the lord, if it were there where the monument was destined ultimately to stand, would be the place where the actual artistic work was carried out. The idea brought forward upon an earlier page (p. 95 f.) that monuments were carried out profession- ally by bodies of regularly organized artistic craftsmen in comparatively few local centres, has been noticed only to put it aside. If there were no other reason at work, the im- possibility of safe transport for a finished monument along early Saxon country lanes, is sufficient to rule this alternative out of court. The alternative of home production is the only one possible, and this, as we shall see presently, carries with it some interesting consequences.
chap, xi.] SIGNED MONUMENTS 215
Before we deal with these, it is necessary to confess that we are in almost complete ignorance as to the personalities of the master craftsmen who created the schemes of enrich- ment and supervised the work of materializing their intent. Some names of these master craftsmen have come down to us. Apart from the well-known Manxman, Gaut (p. 237 f.), we are fortunate in possessing a Notts stone on which the artist has inscribed his name in mixed capitals and minuscules —
RAdVLF
VSmeFe
' Radulfus me fe'(cit). It is on a cross shaft preserved with other fragments in the church at Rolleston near Newark-on- Trent. The artist claims the work as his ; and no doubt in every case there would be an independent professional artist responsible for the design and execution, though journeymen carvers of practised skill could be brought in as required. A signature on a stone of lesser importance is to be found in the church of Kirk Heaton near Huddersfield, while a fine cross at the Museum in Alnwick Castle is claimed as the work of a carver named Myredeh. Other signatures could no doubt easily be found, but the imported Syrian carvers have remained anonymous. Mr Collingwood thinks that the carvers were not monks nor clerks but ' smiths,' and imagines them, no doubt quite correctly, as travelled men who followed the demands of their craft into any region where their services might be required. Our Cumbrian expert follows the tempting example of Professor Shetelig in Man (p. 238), and creates artistic personalities from indications derived from apparent similarities in works from a particular district of the country. Such similarities may certainly present themselves, but the differences, which are equally obvious, seem to indicate either astonishingly large numbers of these peripatetic master designers each with his own proper individuality, or else masters fewer in number
216 THE SOCIAL SETTING [part n.
but with minds teeming with ideas, as fertile in creative fancies as the older designers of the sceatta coins.
At any rate, delineate them with what lines we may- choose, they existed, and formed groups represented in most parts of the country. What, we may ask, was the after history of the work they carried out ?
We have counted up about fifteen hundred pieces (p. 102) which furnish evidence for the previous existence of about the same number of complete monuments. Why have these monuments only come down to us in fragments ? The answer is that they were for the most part broken up to serve as building material. This was perhaps only a final process. They may have been beaten to the ground, as suggested in the case of the beautiful Ham cross (p. 272), or the shaft may have been badly fixed in its base and fallen out. Here now would lie in the open a shaft, perhaps whole or fractured once, beside a cross-head quite possibly shattered to pieces. No inscription indicates the nature of the monument, whether it was a private memorial, or one of a more general interest — and what is to be done with it ? An altogether new monu- ment is contemplated, let us say, perhaps as a memorial to a local worthy who had in life laid himself out for the benefit of ' quality ' or of his humbler fellow villagers. What impiety is there in the use of the old stones for a new purpose that will give them as it were a fresh lease of life ? What is here meant is that we must not be too ready to cry ' vandalism,' when a monument that has had its day comes into other hands to be made to serve a new pious purpose. This does not however imply that no such thing as ' vandalism ' existed in mediaeval village circles, but only warns us that distinctions have sometimes to be drawn.
Let us examine three prominent cases generally stig- matized as cases of vandalism, and see whether distinctions are not indicated. One is the famous procedure of the Normans in their early occupation of Durham Cathedral
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chap, xi.] THE DURHAM FRAGMENTS 217
precincts. They had fixed upon a portion of the Saxon monkish cemetery as the site for their new Chapter House. In that older cemetery there were standing at least four free-armed crosses of full size and elaborate workmanship that had only been raised some half-century earlier and were of course in perfect condition. What happened in regard to these was the following. No trace of the square cross shafts came to light, and it was clear that they had been cut up for building stones. The elaborate though crudely carved cross- heads were partly broken up and then buried away out of sight. One, the best preserved, is shown on PI. lxxii, and it will be seen that it would be comparatively useless for building purposes. The Norman masons had no hesitation in demolishing these religious monuments of the dispossessed Christians whose seats they were preparing for their own occupation. This has given the now unpopular Normans a bad name for this sort of impiety, and in the Catalogue 1 of the stones in the Durham Cathedral Library it is remarked 1 It may appear an almost impossible thing that a religious body should have shown such disregard of the monuments of their predecessors as to have used them for building purposes.' On the other side, however, must we not re- member that these were monuments to members of a monastic body of an unreformed, the Normans would have said dis- reputable, order, amongst whom marriage was admitted, and other things were tolerated which to the severer among the newcomers were anathema ? The Normans regarded the monuments as besmirched by these irregularities, and if they treated them with scorn they may be, from their own point of view, to a considerable extent excused.
Here was deliberate breaking-up of stones in quite good condition, and there are other examples where no excuse comes in. A case occurred at St Andrew's, Bishop Auckland,
1 Durham, Caldcleugh, 1899, p. 91.
218 THE SOCIAL SETTING [part n.
Co. Durham,1 that is reported by the late Charles Clement Hodges, a practical architect and at the same time noted for his expert knowledge of the archaeology of the carved monu- ments. Mr Hodges writes in the first Durham volume of the Victoria History that the stones of the Bishop Auckland Cross, a very notable monument,2 were ' taken out of the walls of the south transept at the time it was rebuilt in 1881. The existence of these stones in the walls of this part of the church (St Andrew's, South Church) is a fact of some interest, as the transept was an extension of an earlier building, and was built upon a portion of the ancient burial-ground on the south of the older church. The crosses, therefore, were probably in situ when the extension was made, and were broken up and used in the walls as building material.'
Those who remember the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral before the end of the last century have a lively recollection of the aspect of the base of its east wall composed apparently of carved stones in the form of long squared shafts, or cross- slabs, or other symbolically ornamented pieces. The late Dr Hay Fleming in his recent excellent work on St Andrews Cathedral Museum v/rites in his Introduction : ' When the slabs were taken out of the base of the Cathedral, in February 1909, Dr Joseph Anderson said that it was the most important discovery of Celtic stones ever found in this country. St Andrews was by no means the only place in Scotland where the mediaeval builders remorselessly utilized earlier monu- ments in their churches. Nor was Scotland the only country where such vandalism was perpetrated.'
It may be worth while to pause for a moment and ask what this often employed word ' vandalism ' means in a passage of this kind. The history of the word, which is interesting, need not detain us, but we may take it in its
1 Bp. Auckland, V.C.E., Durham, I, p. 217.
2 The fragments of this fine cross have now been put together and mounted, and the whole piece will be seen on PI. lxi, p. 196.
chap, xi.] THE ST ANDREWS STONES 219
common use as implying ruthless destruction of objects of beauty and interest for utilitarian reasons not of a cogent kind. Now what was the situation ? Near mid XII a building of Cathedral rank was planned and about to be built on a site already connected with religion through a long period of years. During those years the national Scottish habit of carving and setting up enriched free-standing crosses or cross-slabs had been exercised in freedom, and when in late XII operations at the Cathedral site were beginning, the builders must have been confronted with funereal and other monuments in ample numbers and in every variety of con- dition, from newly finished examples to others that must have borne the sea breezes for a century or more, and were correspondingly dilapidated. What was to be done with them ? It was impossible to ' restore ' them, and they cumbered the ground so as to impede building operations. The XII builders had something else to do than to evince their piety by active solicitude for the safe custody of these often damaged monuments, and it was really a very happy solution of a problem of great difficulty when some one suggested that the pieces would furnish several courses of good solid stone-work as a base for the east wall of the new metropolitan church, and the hearts of their original builders, could they be there, would warm with pride at the honourable post assigned to them. At any rate, if this be extravagant, it is just as sensible as to talk about a ' remorseless utilization ' of earlier monuments or about the ' perpetration of vandal- ism,' when the new builders were really doing the best for the stones as well as for themselves. Two papers in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland1 give evidence showing that some of these stones were broken up apparently uselessly, but it would be unfair to ignore the fact that the pieces of the earlier monuments were very commonly
1 Vol. xxvi, p. 21 5 f., and Vol. xliii, p. 398 f.
220 THE SOCIAL SETTING [part n.
not broken up but built in bodily, so that they now make a fine appearance in Dr Hay Fleming's newly established St Andrews Cathedral Museum. The way in which square shafts can take an effective place in walling can be seen in PL lxxiii, which shows such a piece built in at the top of the nave wall of Wroxeter Church, Salop. It was quite good building to employ complete square cross shafts as building stones without breaking them up. The procedure at Easby, on the other hand, so far as we can judge of it by the present condition of the fragments, certainly looks as if the ' pictured shaft ' had been purposely broken into convenient building pieces.
Instances of what Dr Hay Fleming has stigmatized as vandalism could be multiplied almost ad infinitum^ though they were not universal, and it may be laid down as a general rule which applies to later times as well as to our special periods that indifference or destructiveness has marked habitually the dealings of every successive set of Christians with the movable religious monuments of their predecessors. As a fact, the conviction seems forced upon us that the only people we have met with in Europe, that have shown the piety so generally lacking, are the Turks, who in oblivion of Koranic teaching behaved to the sculptures of the Parthenon like the gentlemen they are said to be, and preserved to all future time some of the finest works of art in the world, though similar works, probably still more august in their severe loveliness, had been destroyed or suffered to perish by the early believers, who in V turned the Parthenon into a Christian church.
The foregoing has been written conscientiously, so as to make it clear that mere sentiment is not guiding the pen. There are considerations on the other side, the side of pre- servation, not to be neglected. We have been assuming that the village population was homogeneous and composed of
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chap. xi.J A STORY FROM BEDE 221
the day labourer class about which such bitter and con- temptuous things were said by their betters. We may, however, derive from the perusal of one of Bede's valuable miracle stories the conviction that there was more than one couche sociale in the Anglian village, and that then as now there was an upper class, not of course of ' quality,' but of substantial farmers or master smiths, carpenters, or stone- masons, who had intelligence and means, and held themselves somewhat above the ordinary ' villeins.' Bede's story 1 introduces us into the interior of a comparatively good-sized wooden house, wherein are gathered together for enjoying a substantial supper, at which the pitcher of mead would circulate ultimately too rapidly, the sort of company which to this day gathers in the evening in the bar-room of the principal village public-house. These men then as now would come to talk as well as to consume their food and drink, and conversations would go on, to outward seeming after the manner described by modern writers like George Eliot or Anthony Trollope. Bede now introduces among them a stranger in search of food and lodging, as might happen in any village of to-day. ' Still continuing his march, the traveller ' (writes Bede) ' comes at evening to a certain village and enters into a house wherein the villagers ' (a various reading gives instead of ' vicani '=' villagers,' ' vicini ' = ' the neighbouring folk ') were feasting at supper ; and received by the masters of the house,2 he sits down himself also with them at the feast, hanging to a post of the timber wall the precious packet he carried containing miracle- working earth soaked in the blood of St Oswald. When the guests had feasted for a long time and given way to drink, a great fire, kindled as was the custom of the time in
1 Historia Ecclesiastica, Lib. m, Cap. xi.
2 Who were these ' domini domus ' ? A syndicate for running this place for evening meetings and meals in common ? or just a superior peasant who, with his wife, had taken on him the role of mine host ?
VI P
222 THE SOCIAL SETTING [part n.
the middle of the house, set light to the thatched roof, and the scene promptly changes.
All that concerns us is the original gathering — surely of the self-same order of upper class villagers, that we can meet in a good village bar-room to-day — a gathering which, constituted for social jollity, accepts with readiness a new- comer, who would bring word of what is going on in the parts from which he has travelled, or interest himself in some local happening such as the design and the making of a carved monument, perhaps in memory of some one known in church or world beyond the limits of the manor.
In this way we can with some plausibility bring the travelling craftsmen, the cross carvers, with their experience and their ideas into touch with the superior class of the village population, but we may be answered that we have ignored altogether the lower couche sociale^ the real proletariate. Perhaps this little bit of history may make amends. Bede tells us that the indefatigable missionary monk, St Chad or Ceadda, who died Bishop of the Mercians, found his way up the wild northern valleys that give access to the Yorkshire moors, and set himself there to his Christian propaganda. He was an Angle by race, but together with his three brothers was brought up under Celtic influences, to which they entirely surrendered themselves. These Irish monks, such as those under whom the four brothers studied, must have been some of the finest men the Christian Church ever produced, men in whom the spirit of Aidan of Lindisfarne remained a creative force. The region chosen by Chad Bede describes x as 1 among rocky and remote mountains, more like haunts of robbers and lairs of wild beasts than the dwellings of men,' but he goes on, with remembrance of Isaiah, to quote the prophecy 2 that ' in the habitations of dragons shall grow up grass and rushes,' that is to say the fruit of good works shall
1 Hist. Eccl., in, 23. 2 Isaiah, xxxv, 7.
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PLATE I.XXIV
MIDDLESMOOR CROSS
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chap. xi.J THE TEACHING OF ST CHAD 223
there be brought to life, where dwelt formerly only beasts, or men that were wont to live the lives of animals.
Now for the justification of the optimism of Bede. Lasting- ham lies at the head of one of those valleys of which he draws so gloomy a picture, and the propaganda was opened by the setting up of a little monkish cell on this site where now is a handsome church. The point of interest for us is the admissi- bility of the idea that the name and fame of the original missioner, and the recognition of the work he carried out through a period of time during which he ruled the nascent monastery as Abbot, impressed profoundly the minds of the people who in such a region must have largely represented the ' couche basse ' among the rural population. It must be borne in mind that we have here to deal not with a reading population but with a remembering one, and that the youth of each generation would learn from the elders all about this wonderful Ceadda who had brought religion into the valleys and had taught the people, even the humblest of them, the way which was open to all — the way of salvation.
Ceadda's teaching was certainly not confined to the superior class among the peasantry but was intensely and nobly democratic. Had it, however, we may ask, such penetrating power, such a lasting hold on the minds of the country folk that three or four centuries after his apostolate the feeling for him would still be strong enough to inspire a project for setting up in the place of his work a memorial cross in his honour ? This is the idea the admissibility of which was made a question in the last few paragraphs, because any one who visits to-day the Yorkshire church of Middlesmoor can see a much weathered memorial cross on which are several lines of an inscription the reading of which would probably lead to differences of opinion among antiquaries.
St Chad's supposed memorial cross is in part figured on PI. lxxiv. The photograph shows the lower half of a sort of double cross, for, joined by a now broken necking to the
224 THE SOCIAL SETTING [part ii.
lower part, there is a cross-head of remarkable form, one of three or four similar pieces in the North, about which there is the advantage that it can be dated with practical certainty to late X or early XI. The extraordinary shape of the upper part is known as a hammer head.
On the lower division of the monument the broad flat surface is seamed with five deeply incised lines marking out four plain fields within three of which are to be recognized the letters of an inscription. The photograph must be looked at from the dexter side, for the lines of the inscription do not run across the field horizontally when the monument is in the normal upright position, but are carried up and down in the direction of the main axis of the shaft. Hence the reading must be from the side of the stone and the direction of it must follow the indications given by the arrows. The lowest field where there is an initial cross must be ignored as there are no intelligible characters upon it. The lettering on the three other fields was read by Mr Collingwood for one of his Yorkshire Journal articles 1 and is substantially what is given in Fig. 2 1 . The writer carefully examined the original stone and used the rubbing process so far as the badly weathered condition of the stone surfaces made this practicable. The Collingwood reading of the second lowest field, with the exclusion of the unintelligible M at the end, sus- tains itself under criticism and gives us the characters CROS. This is a form of the word Cross recognized as a late north- country form in the initial paragraph of the long article on the word in the Oxford English dictionary. For the curious R Mr Collingwood quotes a precedent. In the next field, the one nearest the top, CE seem clear and are the first two letters of the name CEADA. The other characters probably gave some form of the word ' Saint.' The top line is read ADA which would complete the formula CROS (St) CEADA.
1 In Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol. xxm, 191 5.
chap, xi.] THE MIDDLESMOOR CROSS 225
Here the D, the penultimate letter, is of primary importance as it is in a form specially English which came into use in this island in X. What is distinctive is a short horizontal stroke cutting the bow of the letter. The writer convinced
Fig. 2i. — Inscription on the Middlesmoor Cross.
himself from the original that the D had this form, and its appearance here in all certainty is specially significant as it is the characteristic letter of St Chad's name.
It must be, of course, reserved to the epigraphists, if any take an interest in the remarkable inscription, to analyse and estimate the various possibilities of the readings. A few
226 THE SOCIAL SETTING [part ii.
words about the monument from a general point of view is all that can be attempted here.1
It will thus be seen that the evidence of the palaeography of the inscription corresponds to that of the shape of the monumental stone with its hammer head. In both cases the chronology indicates the date of late X or early XL
1 At this point the MS. came to an end. The concluding paragraph is part of an earlier version of this part of the chapter. — [Ed.]
CHAPTER XII
CHARACTER OF THE SCANDINAVIAN DECORATIVE WORK
CROSSES IN MAN
No contrast can be greater than that between the shapely Anglian creatures of the first period with which we have become acquainted, and the repellent monsters, which provide the characteristic fauna of the second period, and that came to us in the suite of the successive Viking raids that became an act of conquest in the capture of York in 867 a.d. The initial question, Who were these Viking raiders, to what section of the Scandinavian peoples did they belong ? has already been before us. It was the men of Norway, largely from the western part of their portion of the peninsula, who really led the way in the serious raids which made them practically masters of a large part of Ireland, from which land in a sort of rebound or reaction they occupied parts of Scotland, with Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Hebrides with the Isle of Man, and parts of north-western England where evidence of their former presence is very apparent. After the Norsemen came the Danes as a more organized military power, and in the Midlands and the South it was with Danes that the English had to deal. In the north of England there was a mixture, or rather successive waves in action and reaction of Norsemen and Danes that have left traces not always easy to distinguish. One difference is that some of the characters in the runic inscriptions found, say, in Cumberland or North Lancashire and expressed in the Scandinavian script, vary according to whether the calli- graphist was a Dane or a Norseman. The letters are the
227
228 SCANDINAVIAN DECORATIVE WORK [part n.
same, but the Norsemen use simplified or abbreviated forms of them. This criterion however is not implicitly to be trusted for English work.1
The new element which destroys the purely Anglo-Classic character of the art with which we have been dealing is a type of animal generically related to the Norwegian ' gripping beast,' but presenting a very different aspect from that of the creature characterized by Professor Shetelig in words that have been already quoted (p. 159). The new animal has no solidity but is quite as flat as the migration beast of Salin's ' style III * that he was to supersede, and though well furnished with menacing tusks and claws he does not keep up his character by any effective use of them. An important feature in his equipment is the ' livery ' consisting in those marks of which there was question in Chapter vn, p. 154, those contour lines and lappets and spirals at junctions of limbs and bodies, and diapering 2 of geometrical patterns over trunks, which are so laboriously and neatly wrought. The carved stone in a church, Haughton-le-Skerne, near Darlington given on PL lxxv, i, presents to us four such creatures, with only, it is true, some and not all of the livery marks, but with an aspect so extraordinary and so repellent that they serve as complete foils to the ' pettable ' Anglian beasts, as Mr Collingwood has so happily called them. We must perforce
1 The inscriptions on the English monuments generally make use of the so-called Anglo-Frisian alphabet, or rather ' futhork,' but in western Cumber- land and north-west Lancashire the half-dozen or so of runic inscriptions which are at present known are in the Scandinavian form of runic writing, that presents a more difficult study than the Anglo-Frisian, for which see (Vol. v, p. 182 f.). These few Anglo-Scandinavian inscriptions have no interest for the present volume.
2 The diapering in question is a feature in late Celtic decorative art, but was not taken over into the general post-Christian work of the classic period which is to us Irish art par excellence. The bodies of the famous Irish animals on the crosses and in the MSS. are not so marked but are kept plain. On the other hand the Norwegians took in with avidity the diapering and use it in all their Oseberg decoration.
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PLATE LXXV i, SLAB AT HAUGHTON-LE-SKERNE 2. TOMBSTONE AT LEVISHAM
[P- 229]
chap, xii.] VIKING IMPORTATIONS 229
fix our attention on the slab so far as to note the form of the snout of the creature at the dexter end of the slab, for this passes as a distinctly Irish feature. The lappet, developed from the ear (Vol. v, p. 364), is in evidence, there are the contour lines, and indications of diaper patterns on the bodies.
As we have seen (p. 157) these entirely un Anglian features, that make now a sudden appearance, are a Scandinavian contribution to the art of our stones. We have noticed the opportunities that the common use of the sea gave to the Irish to get into touch with the men of the North, while the hostility between the Celtic and Roman sections of our insular church would rather keep the Irish and the Saxons apart. Hence we must perforce decide that these new elements are of Viking importation, though doubtless largely of Irish origin, and this will explain any characteristics of the gripping-beast that the new animals may show. There is no special reason why direct Irish artistic influence should be brought to bear on the Anglo-Saxon decoration of the carved crosses at the latter part of IX, whereas that is just the time when the Vikings make a determined effort to turn raiding into conquest. They certainly brought with them their own natural feeling for artistic decoration which had shown itself at home so highly developed in the work on the Oseberg ship. The particular form of artistic work which was practised in England on the crosses and funereal stones was of course quite unknown to them, and as newcomers they would need some little time to make themselves familiar with it, a process which would naturally be connected with their conversion to Christianity, which seems to have proceeded quite regularly and with fair speed, though some survivals of the old faith might linger in the background of the converts' minds. How soon after the capture of York in 867 (a useful date to be borne in mind) which brought the victors into a new relation with the Anglian population, would there be any idea of the
230 SCANDINAVIAN DECORATIVE WORK [part n.
addition of contributions from the pagan repertory to the decoration of Christian funereal stones we cannot of course say, and perhaps it would be only a doubtfully converted raider whose sepulchral monument would be in this way adorned with the eminently unchristian dragon that the Vikings seem at this time to have loved. The operation of carving a figure human or animal in relief on a flat stone would present no great difficulty to a Norseman or a Dane at the close of IX. Apart from the evidence of the figured Gotland slabs, some of which are claimed as prior to IX, there existed a far earlier tradition going back to the bronze age and beyond it of carving upon natural stone faces, and Sophus Muller is strongly of the opinion that pre-historic traditions of this kind do not die out but always remain ready to influence the later practice of historical times.1
A carving such as that shown on PI. lxxvi, reminds us that the artistic atmosphere is suffering a change. The stone is a small cross shaft, 27 in. high, carrying a wheel cross-head which gives it about nine more inches. It is built into the inner face of the southern wall of the tower of Middleton Church in the N. Riding, and the cross-head is still buried in the masonry. The dragon-like creature figured upon it is supplied with the contour lines and apparently a lappet, but has a limbless body, with at one end a head that is all eye and tusked jaws, and at the other end, where the tail should come, a huge claw.
With less of the monstrosity about it than the Haughton- le-Skerne or Middleton pieces, but thoroughly characteristic is PI. lxxv, 2, the forepart of a Scandinavian beast on part of a Yorkshire tombstone at the moorland church of Levisham near Pickering. The contour line and the spirals are very much in evidence, and so apparently is the lappet, but of very few of the lines is the intention clear. Its tongue seems
1 Nordische Altertumskunde, Deutsche Ausgabe, Strassburg, 1898, Zweiter Band, Kap. xm, p. 263.
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chap, xn.] DRAGON ORNAMENT 231
to be issuing from the creature's mouth. We have to try and get an idea not of the best work only, but of all kinds. And while some of this dragon ornament is well planned and carefully executed, there is a great deal that makes no appeal either through its idea or its execution.
It is a somewhat extraordinary fact that motives of this sort are used with the same insouciance as the entrelacs or the foliage scrolls. The two latter have a purely artistic purpose at their back, whereas the dragon-like creatures represent something, and something that is neither beautiful nor otherwise attractive except incidentally through excellence in design and technique. Attempts have often been made to read religious symbolism into these monstrous forms, and in favour of this view the magnificent cast bronze candelabra of XIII and XIV may be quoted, the feet of which are formed of dragons supposed to represent spirits of evil pressed down and kept in subjection by the sacred lights above them. But we must be careful not to read the elaborate symbolism worked out by mediaeval writers into the designs of Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon carvers of more primitive times. These gripping-beasts and other such creatures were not evil spirits either to their Viking creators or the English who took them in, but were ex- pressions of artistic feeling which satisfied the conditions of the time (IX-XI) and were put on to the cross shafts because these were ready to receive the most attractive embellish- ment available.
Of more interest to the reader than the monsters will be the appearance on these stones after about 900 a.d. of scenes and figures from northern mythology. These we sought for with small result in the earlier period of the Franks Casket (Vol. vi, p. 46 f.), but they present themselves in some abundance in X and XI and in a region that must be reckoned English, though in its art it was largely under Celtic and Norse influence. The reference is to the Isle
232 SCANDINAVIAN DECORATIVE WORK [part ii.
of Man, the monuments of which are carefully surveyed and preserved and have been published in an exemplary form by Mr Kermode.1 Largely as the myths of the Aesir figure on the Manx stones, they are not exclusively there to be sought, for Yorkshire and Cumberland provide in- teresting specimens, and one of the best is at Halton in Lancashire, on the Lune where we have already found some good figure work (p. 187). The Halton cross, PL lxxvii, stands particularly well. The upper part with the cross-head is mostly modern, but the lowest four feet or so of the shaft is mortised into a remarkable pedestal of three steps all cut out of a single block, and so secured against the usual fate of built-up pedestals, which is to fall to pieces. This original lower part of the shaft has on the west side Christian subjects, but on the north and east sides scenes from the story of Sigurd the Teutonic hero. On the present eastern face the lowest panel, PI. lxxviii, exhibits the hero, seated at the anvil below which are the double bellows, and forging the magic sword. In the field above, under the arch which with its piers encloses the scene, we can discern the finished sword, a set of spare tools, and the bodies of his treacherous associates — Fafni the dragon writhing in agony and below him the headless body of the arch-conspirator, Regin the Smith. Two further scenes of the story are figured in two smaller panels above. The lower shows Sigurd toasting the dragon's heart above the flames of a fire, and, when his fingers were scorched by touching the roast, putting them to his mouth to ease the smart. This taste of the monster's flesh and blood had the magical effect of giving him understanding of the voices of birds, and in the topmost panel there are represented trees from which come the now intelligible notes of warning and advice. On one of the other three sides of the shaft appears Sigurd's famous steed Grani whose acquaintance we made in connection with the Franks Casket (Vol. vi, p. 49). Of 1 Manx Crosses, by P. M. C. Kermode, London, Bemrose, 1907.
[p. 232]
PLATE LXXVII THE HALTON CROSS
PLATE IAWIX LEEDS CROSS
PLATE LXXVIII SIGURD PANELS AT HALTON
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chap, xii.] MYTHOLOGICAL FIGURES 233
the two other sides of the shaft, that on the south is filled with two panels of ornament, while the western one has Christian subjects in two panels, the lower one having two figures with a cross between them.
The Halton pieces are in the fulness of their content and their clearness in delineation the best things in this kind that England can show, but the most important single monu- ment is no doubt the large cross that after a very chequered history has found, it is to be hoped, a permanent position of honour at the east end of the important parish church of Leeds, PL lxxix.
The monument has been put together from a number of fragments into which it had been dismembered, and which came to light surprisingly about 1880 at Rottingdean near Brighton. The topmost section of the shaft is modern, as are also some other pieces used in the make-up of the upright, and there is some doubt whether the head, which is ancient, really belongs to the cross. The interpretation of many of the figured panels is uncertain, but there is no doubt that Scandinavian subjects occur. Although so muti- lated the monument is of remarkable interest, as well as imposing in aspect with its twelve feet of height. At the bottom of the south side, as the cross now stands, there is a panel with part of the story of Wieland the Smith, PI. lxxx, i. s^ He is reaching up with his two arms and seizing by the hair and the skirt the princess, whom we have already seen on the Franks Casket as his ' Geliebte.' An injury to the stone has led to the obliteration of his head, but his body is seen, winged, in memory of his famous flight (Vol. vi, p. 29). The group of smith's tools in the sinister bottom corner identifies him still more certainly. On the north face shown on the PI. lxxx, 2, the bottom panel holds a stumpy huddled-up figure with a sword in his right hand and on his left shoulder a bird. This is probably Sigurd, sword in hand, listening to the voice of the bird. Odin would have
234 SCANDINAVIAN DECORATIVE WORK [part ii.
a spear and not a sword, and a Christian Saint would not appear so aggressively warlike. Collingwood dated the cross early X in his Yorkshire papers, but agrees now with Brondsted that on the evidence of certain details it must be put nearer the year iooo. He interprets the pointed forms below the sword-arm on PL lxxx, 2, as a kind of knot-work.
At Staveley in the W. Riding of Yorkshire there occurs a notable example of the intrusion, on a Christian cross, probably with a largely developed head, of figures from the pagan mythology of the North. It is a cross shaft, nearly 3 ft. high with a spreading neck which seems like the lowest part of the big cross-head. The surface nearest the reader's eye is one of the sides of the shaft, and that to his left is the face which has upon it a pattern that is useful evidence for dating, which would agree with that of Collingham as early X. The nearest surface has on it figure work, but this is so indistinct that while the piece stood out in the churchyard, which was the case till recent years, no one seems ever to have noticed it. In the more concentrated light in the interior, if it can be made to fall laterally, some- thing of interest can be singled out. The writer was fortunate when he took the photograph reproduced on PI. lxxxi. What is most conspicuous is a pair of legs about in the middle of the field, and another pair comes at the bottom of the visibly worked portion. The latter belong to a warrior in a sort of kirtle, who wears a pointed Viking helmet, and holds upright a spear with a broad head that comes up to the feet of the figure above. This upper one can be seen, though not in the photograph, to be blowing a horn. On the sinister side of the surface, there are three animals connected with the figures. A quadruped, rampant, turns its back on the spearman, and we can see without difficulty in the group, Fenri the wolf, and Odin with his spear. The horn be- tokens Heimdall, the warden of Bifrost, and two birds, one
PLATE LXXXI THE STAVELEY CROSS SHAFT
[P- 234]
chap, xii.] CROSSES IN MAN 235
above his head and the other, as Mr Collingwood makes out, in front of him, would be the orthodox two ravens.
The crosses in the Isle of Man have been already referred to as presenting the most numerous if not the best examples of this rendering of Asgard subjects in relief sculpture. We have to deal here with a remarkable phenomenon which is worthy of attention in connection with the ethnology of the various peoples who had dealings with this form of art. Keeping only to historical times, we find that in the days when the Anglo-Saxon conquest of all Britain except the west was a fait accompli, the western lands were in the occupation of the Strathclyde Welsh, among whom the cross form was of special sanctity and of a potency almost magical. Crosses of the primitive Irish kind that were to lead on to the developed forms must have made their appearance in Celtic Man at a fairly early date, for later on the crosses of Man were both numerous and in their own way excellent.1 The style of these early crosses was of course Celtic, and the intimate study that Professor Shetelig has given to the Manx monuments enables him to say that the subsequent Scandinavian influx into Man was from the north and ethnologically Norse. It was from the Norwegian colonies in Scotland and in the Hebrides 2 that Man received her Viking population, not from Ireland nor from Denmark. It was by the same movement of return waves of invasion
1 It may be noticed that the Manx sculptured stones are excellently cared for. A large proportion of them are to be seen in or about the churches which mark the old-established ecclesiastical sites, but on one of these sites, Maughold near Ramsey, see p. 245 f., there is a large collection of them brought from different places, as is the case at Durham. They are numbered, but in the book (i.e. Kermode's Manx Crosses, see footnote on p. 232 — Ed.) with the number is given the name of the place where the particular monument is to be found.
2 Manx Crosses relating to Great Britain and Norway, reprinted from the Saga Book of the Viking Society, London, Burlington House, W. 1 ; 1925.
236 CROSSES IN MAN [part 11.
that Cumberland and North Yorkshire obtained their Norse immigrants. Now the event that we have ventured already to term ' phenomenal ' was the procedure of these immigrants in connection with the carved crosses of Celtic type, which they found in considerable numbers in the island where they settled. As we shall see, they added to the number of these till as Mr Kermode, justly no doubt, remarks, ' there is no district of so small an area that can boast so great a number of monuments of this class.' 1 This as he notes is in part due to the lengthy period during which this artistic productiveness prevailed. He gives it six centuries and carries it down to the beginning of XIII, after which it is superseded by Gothic. This excludes a Norman period, but it is really only in England proper that the Norman Conquest marks a definite stage in British artistic history. In Ireland the great period of the ' High Crosses ' does not begin till about X, more than two centuries later than our finest Northumbrian crosses, and the remarkable monuments in Kent and at Glastonbury. Irish native art, if finally killed by the Norman obsession of the land at the end of XII, had flourished for a hundred years and more after Hastings. In the western isles of Scotland that were not Normanized the cross tradition lasted on till about XVI or even XVII.
In the Irish churchyard at Kells there is an unfinished cross which was being carried forward on the noblest lines. The stoppage of work upon it is attributed by a competent Kells authority to the coming of a Norman noble with his head full of a scheme for building a new Norman abbey. This meant a break-up of the old Irish religious establish- ment at Kells, and that destruction of native artistic traditions so bitterly deplored by Macalister.2
The area of the Isle of Man including the little ' Calf of Man ' islet is only 227 square miles, and the number of
1 Manx Crosses, London, Bemrose, 1907, p. 7.
2 Archaeology of Ireland, p. 344 f.
GAUT'S CROSS, MICHAEL
237
CHAP. XII.]
worked, that is sculptured or inscribed, stones noted and figured in the book (by Kermode — Ed.) is one hundred and seventeen. This would roughly speaking give a cross to every two square miles. The point of importance and interest here is the fact that while two-thirds of the crosses thus enumerated are ornamented in the Celtic style, the rest of them, forty-five in num- ber, exhibit distinct Scandinavian elements in their decoration, though their shape and general style remain Celtic. Their carvers copy the established Celtic motives but introduce ornamental elements and patterns of their own, such as are known to belong to the Norse repertory. That these carvers were or might be Scan- dinavians is proved by the remarkable incident that one of them has signed his name twice on cross-slabs in Norse runic characters. The most important cross is numbered Michael, 74, and the inscrip- tion runs as follows in the recognized interpretation given by Kermode, MAEL BRIGDE, SON OF ATHAKAN, THE SMITH, ERECTED THIS CROSS FOR HIS OWN SOUL [and that of] HIS BROTHER'S WIFE GAUT MADE THIS AND ALL IN MAN. The illustration Fig. 22 is a line engraving of the pattern on the stone which has been kindly furnished by Professor Haakon Shetelig. Some comment on it will come later. This is the only occasion on which the student of these stones not only meets with the name of the actual artist who formed and enriched them, but is introduced to him personally under interesting conditions. Gaut was no doubt a trained vi o,
Fig. 22. Gaut's Cross, Michael.
238 CROSSES IN MAN [part n.
stone-worker, for we can read the personal satisfaction of the good craftsman proud of his skill in the phrase ' made this and all in Man,' which last words are not very clear or convincing. He was also an ornamentalist, for besides using Norse motives such as the ' ring chain ' (p. 243) not employed in the Celtic crosses, he is credited with having devised a fanciful but quite graceful treatment of interlacing bands on cross-heads, of which the top of Fig. 22 shows a specimen. Gaut was by way of being an artist. Haakon Shetelig has analysed intensively his style in the paper referred to in a note at the foot of p. 235 and fixed the date of his appearance on the slabs he carved and on others in his style if not from his hand, to about 930 to 950. The Bergen expert has also kept alive the personal interest introduced with Gaut's signature, by an extension of the process in which he had practised himself through his long and fruitful labours on the Oseberg ship — the process, that is, of creating the form of an artist of distinct individuality by a penetrating analysis of the special qualities in work in which such an individuality can be discerned. By this process he has given to Gaut one or two followers, and also independent workers who had drawn their first inspiration from him, so that all these may be considered to form his school. For example, he notes that while on Gaut's own crosses there is only orna- ment but no animals nor human figures, there was another almost contemporary master who laid special stress on the imitation of the style of the figure side of Scottish art. Whereas Gaut's style is broad and a little primitive, that of the other is elegant and accurate, and even rather academic, exhibiting a faithful follower of his models. He is rather younger than Gaut, and his style can be seen in the figure designs on the two faces of a mutilated cross, Andreas, 102, where an obviously Christian subject shown on the back balances a scene from Ragnarok on the front.1
1 It will be noted and will be explained later on, (p. 242), that the form of these Manx stones differs from the Anglian form we have had in most cases before us.
chap, xii.] CROSSES IN SCANDINAVIA 239
Now why did this little set of, perhaps semi -pagan, artificers, primarily hucksters and farmers and spearmen and not artists, give themselves as strangers to carry on this particular form of religious art which belonged to the people of the land ? Work of the same kind, only far better and more attractive, had been brought under the notice in England of visiting ecclesiastics from Gaul and from Mediterranean and nearer Eastern lands, but no idea of using these beautiful Northumbrian monuments as models or taking a hint or an inspiration from them seems to have entered the minds of these fairly numerous continental visitors. Upon the Norse- men the effect of our work was quite other, and they seem to have been taken with the decorative treatment of the Celtic cross-slabs in Man and also, another point of interest, to have found something that appealed to them in the form of simple early unadorned crosses, of the type of the earliest Irish crosses, many of which they may have seen in Ireland and about which no doubt tales of wonder-working powers were told to them when knowledge of the language allowed. In any case, whatever may have been the reason, it was the fact that Scandinavia is the one Christian province which shows in any part of it the distinct influence on its own monuments of the cross-form as found in the British Isles. Our survey in an earlier part of this volume (p. i25f.)of the older Christian provinces failed to find either any prototypes or any imitations of the British free-standing enriched cross of stone, but there always remained Scandinavia. The chronology of Scandi- navian religious history makes it impossible that this late- converted region should have supplied prototypes, but as a matter of fact imitations, not of the cross in an advanced artistic form, but in its primitive simplicity, as we know it existed in Ireland and also in early cemeteries in Gaul, do present themselves in the lands across the North Sea.
An antiquarian traveller who explores Norway with a view to noting the connections between Norse monuments
240 CROSSES IN MAN [part n.
and British, may in certain parts come upon a number of plain stone crosses of differing sizes, but running at times to ten or twelve feet in height, that are to be found in substantial numbers in parts of the northern kingdoms. There are fifty along the western coast of Norway — the part of these king- doms most closely in touch in the oldest times with the British Isles.1 In recent days the northern antiquaries have rather neglected this special group of artifacts, and the writer could hardly get information about them, till he suddenly came on the typical example in the garden of the Museum at Stavanger, of which a sketch is given in Fig. 23. It stands eight feet high and is roughly hewn into shape from a slab of a sort of conglomerate about six inches thick. The small cross incised on the centre of the face and the triangular extension of the cross-head down on to the shaft are to be noticed, as they bring the piece into the category of works of art, as well as presenting a detail distinctly borrowed from Yorkshire.
These crosses formed the subject of two papers, one by W. Christie, ' Om Stenkors ' published in Fortidsjorentngens Aarbog in 1 895, and a later one, published in Oldtiden, Bind 11, 1 9 12, p. 75, by B. E. Bendixen, entitled ' Stenkors i Bergens- amterne.' This gives twelve illustrations of crosses on the west coast of Norway, with descriptions and a general intro- duction noticing the various occasions on which it is known that crosses of the kind were set up and the purposes they were meant to serve. These notices make it clear that the great majority of the monuments are of the later kind — churchyard crosses, crosses marking a processional path for church pageants, crosses to repel evil spirits, or to mark a place as sacred in connection with some holy personage or some event of religious importance. A cross to signalize a spot tainted by a murder or a sudden death was common enough in the
1 The Swedish islands of Oland and Gotland exhibit the same kind of cruciform monuments.
chap, xii.] THE ST AV ANGER CROSS 241
wild Viking days. Boundary crosses and crosses to mark a route or for secular purposes of the kind, are often men- tioned, and it is evident that we have to do rather with the crosses of the later, mediaeval, kind than with the Early Christian examples which are characteristic of the British provinces. It is however quite possible, as is admitted by leading Norse archaeologists of to-day, that some of these simple crosses which resemble what the earliest Irish ones must have been like may go back to the earliest Christian period in Norway. The Stavanger cross shown in Fig. 23 has a history that is only partly known. In the last century it stood in the open on the ridge which overlooks from the east the railway station of Stavanger, and there is no evidence connecting it with a churchyard at any previous time. It may accordingly for aught we know be a monument of the earliest Christianity in this region at the close of the Viking age. The fact that Ben- dixen is able to refer to legends connecting some of these
Fig. 23. — Stavanger Cross.
242 CROSSES IN MAN [part n.
plain Norwegian crosses with the earliest days of Christianity in the country is not without a certain significance. Of one specimen that stands five feet high out of the earth, the story goes that it was here that St Olaf held an assembly and introduced Christianity, the cross commemorating the event. Other similar legends are recorded, and may be taken with something less than whole-hearted scepticism. There are three crosses at the Museum in Bergen. The largest is about seven feet high and affects the cross-paty form. The pointed extension downwards from the bottom line of the transom occurs also in the Stavanger cross, Fig. 23, and is to be carefully noted as it is a form that is found on a certain number of Yorkshire stones, whence, as may be concluded, it has been borrowed. Examples of these triangular exten- sions downwards of the enrichment on the face of a cross are to be seen at Stanwick, Gilling, Brompton, High Hawsker, and other Yorkshire sites, and the detail seems to be especially a Yorkshire one. The Stanwick example will be found photographed at the dexter side of PI. lxxxvii.
The crosses in Man of Celtic provenance which inspired the efforts of Gaut and his fellows should strictly speaking be called cross-slabs, because the chief object was not a free- standing monument like the fine Anglian pieces, but a cross carved in relief against a flat background. The cause of this was not so much a want of ambition or of skill in the carvers as a necessary limitation due to the nature of the stone available. Local stone here as elsewhere was, for obvious economic reasons, always used wherever possible, and in Man a kind of slate was as a rule the most available material. This split easily into flat slabs only a few inches thick, and the face lent itself readily to the display of a cross carved in relief, and treated on the flat with geometric ornament. On the flat background ornamentation in low relief of any desired kind would find a suitable place. On the earliest Manx cross- slabs the enrichment was confined to the face, the back being
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CROSS AT DEARHAM, CUMBERLAND
CAST IX THE VICTORIA AXD ALBERT MUSEUM OF A SAXDSTOXE FONT FOR- MERLY IN GALLSTAD CHURCH, NOW IN THE STOCKHOLM MUSEUM
[P- -4>]
chap, xii.] THE ' RING CHAIN ' PATTERN 243
left plain, but when the work became more advanced the back was also made the vehicle of artistic display. Quite early in his operations Gaut introduced a form of geometric ornament which had not been known to the Irish or the Anglian carvers but was of Scandinavian use. The reference is to the pattern known as the ' ring chain,' an example of which, from a cast of a Swedish font, is shown on PI. lxxxii, 2. The pattern is not, like the guilloche, taken from the observation of concrete objects such as a plait, for it could not be actually made up without prodigious labour and must have been worked out by drawing on the flat. Its origin and history have been a good deal discussed.1 It has been traced far back in the East, even to China, and was in use in Moslem decoration. It was at home at Byzantium, and it is the view of Dr Lexow that it was from there that it found its way to Scandinavia and was brought over in the Viking age to the British Isles, where it became pretty common in the districts where northern influence was and has remained most powerful. Fig. 2 2 shows this pattern used by Gaut — for this is the signed cross already spoken of (p. 237) — to cover the surface of the shaft of the cross worked in relief on the rectangular slab. As is commonly the case, the edge of the slate slab, some two to three inches thick, is used for the inscription, cut of course in Scandinavian runes. Gaut's personal remark is inscribed on either side of the head of the cross in Fig. 22 and ends with the St Andrew's cross.
These remarks upon the Manx crosses started from the place where the representations from Norse mythology were offering themselves for treatment, and we must return and illustrate a couple of the more striking examples from the heroic cycle, before we finish with the special form of the art of the crosses that we find in Man.
1 An interesting paper called ' Ringkjeden ' appeared in the year-book of Bergen Museum of 1917-18, by Einar Lexow, of that Museum, who is an expert in the intricacies of these geometrical patterns such as entrelacs.
244 CROSSES IN MAN [part n.
On PL lxxxiii there are three subjects. PL lxxxiii, i, gives a good specimen of a representation almost purely Scandinavian both in subject and execution. The carving here is indescribably crude though it gives evidence of a chisel wielded by a vigorous hand. At the bottom of I the three pointed forms stand for flames over which Sigurd is roasting the dragon's heart, appearing as three rings. In his left hand the hero holds a rod over which they are strung, while he puts his right hand to his mouth. His helmet is of the conical form. Above appears the head of Grani, and one of the birds is putting in an appearance at the back. The other two pieces, the front and the back of a comparatively small slab broken away from a larger cross-slab, are the two surfaces which exhibit the work of the precise and academic carver brought into view by Haakon Shetelig in connection with his study of Gaut. They are nos. 2 and 3 on PL lxxxiii. On what passes for the face of the stone, no. 2, there is a scene from Ragnarok in which the nude form of Odin is contending with the wolf Fenri foredestined to be his bane. A raven is perched upon his shoulder, the head of the bird coming just over that of the god. The Allfather holds in his right hand a spear directed against the wolf that is rearing up against him. The god has his right foot on the lower mandible of the monster that has opened his jaws widely against his divine foe who threatens to rend him asunder.1 Convoluted serpents fill up spaces.
On the other surface or back of the slab a bold contrast is presented by a Christian representation. Here in a field where convoluted snakes are in full evidence is a nude figure girt round the waist with a belt, that is proclaimed as a Christ by the cross which He holds in His left hand while the right is occupied with a book. Lest there should be a mistake
1 Others make the nude figure Vidar ; but the spear and raven seem decisive for Odin. As a fact, the artist may have slightly confused the two divine heroes.
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PLATE LXXXIV MAUGHOLD, 66, CROSS-SLAB
LP- 245l
chap, xii.] CHRISTIAN AND ASGARD SUBJECTS 245
the symbolic Fish is represented in the field on a large scale. It is noteworthy that the Christian subject takes a secondary place on the monument, and is tamely rendered in com- parison with the vigour displayed in the Ragnarok piece. Shetelig's criticism is best illustrated by the Christ subject which is carefully wrought.
There is nothing attractive from the aesthetic point of view in these Asgard pieces, but the Manx artists, Celtic and Scandinavian, had ideas and could carry them out grace- fully enough. A few examples of their general style are here added.
66, Maughold ' may be taken,' Mr Kermode tells his readers, ' as a typical example of Celtic work. The geo- metrical patterns are well drawn, the animal figures fairly correct and spirited, and the figure of the ecclesiastic very good.' As most of the Manx monuments are sepulchral, we may reasonably conjecture that it was the tombstone of the priest, whose well-proportioned and graceful form occupies the space on the dexter side of the cross carved in relief on the slab, which measures 5 ft. 4 in. in height. The photo- graph on PI. lxxxiv shows the monument in two lengths, the piece on the sinister side joining on below the other. The form of the cross-head with the ring connecting the arms is Celtic, and is almost universal in the Island where the free-standing cross-form cut in three dimensions in the round is of the greatest rarity, while in England it is normal, the ring being a recognized form sparingly employed. The slab of 66 has been mutilated along the sinister side where it has lost several inches. This was to fit it for serving as a lintel in Maughold church. The face of the cross is filled in with a carefully wrought entrelac, bordered by a moulding that at the bottom of the shaft (see the photo of the lower portion) is curled up into a volute. The human figure is quite successful and the head really beautifully felt. The lower part of the slab is occupied with a hunt, a fairly common
246 CROSSES IN MAN [part n.
subject on the slabs. A stag is uppermost, just under the volute. Below, a hound has fastened on its quarry, and at the bottom' comes the mounted hunter, not at all a bad figure.
If 66 Maughold be Celtic, Maughold 72 is placed by Kermode at the head of his second class of cross-slabs — which he characterizes as Scandinavian. PL lxxxv gives the front and back of a slab on which the form of the cross seems to have been influenced by the numerous crosses incised on the small recumbent tombstones so numerous at the great Irish cemetery site of Clonmacnois (Vol. v, Ch. 111). The work on both faces strikes us as very careful and finished, though, apart from the crosses displayed in relief, with their graceful Clonmacnois forms, there is only a crowded mass of decorative motives in which no design is apparent. There are certain Scandinavian devices such as the two birds in low relief on the horizontal arms of the cross on the face of the monument on the dexter side in the illustration. The two small figures in low relief on the vertical limb of the same cross, are inter- preted, the uppermost one being recognized conjecturally by Kermode as that of the first Scandinavian bishop in Man of about 1060 a.d., the whole monument being carved and set up to honour his grave, which contemporary records place at Maughold.
Braddan, 109, has upon the edge, the usual position for the Manx inscriptions, a runic inscription which has occupied the Norse runologists with the endeavour to read into it the name of another Scandinavian sculptor to set beside that of Gaut. Names occur in these Norse inscriptions with some frequency but are of course not necessarily those of artists; they are most commonly those of the deceased whom the stone commemorates. The monument is interesting to us as pointing the way towards the evolution of the free-standing cross in the round, as an advance on the usual cross-slab. One or two monuments at Braddan do show the complete Anglian form of shaft and cross-head, and the piece represented on
MAUGHOLD, 72.
MAU©H0LD,7f ;
PLATE LXXXV MAUGHOLD, 72, CROSS-SLAB
[p. z46]
PLATE LXXXVI BRADDAN, 109, CROSS SHAFT
[P- -47l
chap, xii.] FREE-STANDING CROSSES IN MAN 247
PL lxxxvi exhibits at any rate the tapering shaft, now 4 ft. high, with a width below of 12 in., which is rapidly reduced to somewhere about half. The head would be of the Celtic pattern. The enrichment on the face of the shaft shown in the photograph consists in convoluted dragons, with contour lines, spirals at joints, and above all body diapers much in evidence. These appearances we shall meet again remarkably developed in some English crosses in the western counties, in relation to which the question Celtic or Scandinavian forces itself on the attention.
The last few examples have been regarded rather from the aesthetic and the human points of view than from that of archaeology pure and simple, and we may continue this treat- ment but may now pass from the Manx area to consider examples of general interest drawn from other parts of the English field. Chronology will however be kept in view, and the period to which we will in the meantime adhere is that in which, after 867, a Scandinavian element makes its appearance, without however dominating the older Anglian tradition.
CHAPTER XIII A STUDY ON CROFTON
An accomplished piece of work on a small scale made quite a little artistic centre of the West Riding village of Crofton, not far from Wakefield. Crofton had an early church, but the site of it was evidently moved, for a part of the land at a distance from the present edifice of XV is still known as ' The Church Field/ According to a notice by the antiquary James Fowler,1 afterwards Canon Fowler, there had been found some time early in XIX, ' in the foundations of a wall ' (a common mediaeval receptacle for possessions of the kind), two carved fragments of a Saxon cross, which having been thus published were placed in the present church where they are now kept. The photographs, PI. lxxxvii, give both sides of fragments of what must have been an exceptionally well-designed and well-wrought free-standing cross.2 The two pieces in front are the two sides of a portion of a cross- head, the three behind are the face and back and one side of the lowest portion of a shaft, but shaft and head may be parts of different monuments as they are not cut in the same kind of stone. There are examples of the use of two different kinds of stone in a single monument. The shaft is more than 6 in. thick, and the two sides carry conventional foliage scrolls similar to, but not so good as, the narrow scrolls at Carlowrie (p. 205). The bottom of the face of the tapering shaft,
1 In Proc. Soc. Ant. Lond. 2nd Series, iv, p. 33.
2 The reader will of course note that in cases of all photographs of this kind, the front and the back, or the two sides, of a fragment are taken separately, but the original is only a single piece.
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chap, xiii.] CROFTON DETAILS 249
13 in. broad, no. 1, is enriched with a panel with two con- fronted Anglian beasts of a giraf7e-like species which show the beginning of the use of contour lines, a part of that livery of the Hiberno-Scandinavian beast on which something has already been said (Vol. vi, p. 74). Here the foreign elements are of slight importance and the beasts are of good Anglian style. On the back of this shaft at the bottom there is a panel, no. 2, displaying a really artistically designed and rendered scroll where the two convoluted bands begin and end each in the head and tail of a serpent, a detail which perhaps betokens a somewhat advanced period in the develop- ment of the entrelac, and may help to date the piece to about 900 a.d. It is conceivable that though in quite a different material the portion of a cross-head with the two heads on it may have been fitted on to this shaft, for the sizes would agree, as may be seen by comparing nos. 2 and 3, the two stones having been taken together. The horned head upside down, no. 5, Mr Collingwood suggests may be that of the arch-enemy of mankind trodden under the feet of Christ, which are possibly just visible above. It would make this the principal face of the cross-head, and relegate the human portrait to the reverse side. It is this portrait however which is for us the chief element of interest in the graceful monu- ment. The hand holding the cross compares favourably in its rendering with other hands we have figured, and the artist with the crudest possible attempt at features has managed to get expression into the face, so that we should like to know who the subject was. There is no mention of Crofton as the seat of a religious establishment in either Dugdale or the Victoria History. Had it been a bishop's see it would have been mentioned in records, and we may take it that it was nothing more than one of hundreds of Saxon villages scattered over the country. The bust however must surely be that of a bishop, as he shows by holding an official cross and wearing an episcopal headdress. This is worn also, it will be
250 CROFTON [part ii.
remembered, by the ecclesiastic under the pointed arch on the face of the curious shaft in the cemetery of Thrybergh near Rotherham (p. 143 f.), and reference was made in this connec- tion to Father Braun's standard work on liturgical vestments. If we date the Crofton monument at about 900 this will bring the use of this embryonic form of the episcopal mitre to a much earlier date than the Jesuit scholar would admit for its employment. Ecclesiastical erudition may therefore win something in the future from a study of our Anglo-Saxon sculptured fragments.
The connection of a bishop with Crofton may be due to the fact that it was, possibly, his native place, and became later his place of residence and ultimately of burial. To keep his memory green may have been the purpose of this monument. Here again, as more than once before in these chapters, may the writer be forgiven if he give rein to his fancy, and try to call up before his readers' minds a picture of something more interesting than these casual fragments that too often have alone to represent the art so praised by modern critics. Let us assume that animal panels, some as strikingly original as the ' giraffe ' panel that is still extant, were continued up the shaft and balanced by panels of inter- lacing work of the character of the one that remains,1 while the cross-head had work on the face and back, though not, to judge from the fragments, on the sides — this would give us a monument of a moderate size very lavishly furnished with enrichment of an artistic quality quite above the average. Under what conditions did this work of art come into being ? Was it a local product, wrought of course by skilled craftsmen summoned from a distance, but of local stone, if the north- country grits and freestones offered a suitable outcrop, and
1 In Mr Collingwood's drawing in the Yorkshire Journal of Archaeology, Vol. xxni, 191 5, ' Crofton,' the scrolls on the narrow sides of the shaft, no. 4, are indicated as continuing beyond the place where the stone is broken off. This implies that the work on all four sides was continuous.
chap, xni.] VARIETY A PRINCIPLE 251
with local unskilled labour freely commandeered ? If the remembrance of their bishop lived in the people's thoughts, with what interest would they watch the rude stone masses grow under the strokes of pick and chisel into intelligible shapes, and even into the similitude of their beloved Father in God. Is it not better to think that the tradition of local independence, which seems indicated by the original avoidance on the part of the Teutonic settlers of the Roman roads (Vol. i2, p. 58 f.), was carried out in this remarkable form of industry, than that application for a monument would be sent to some recognized centre of artistic production — perhaps in the case of Crofton the ten miles distant Dewsbury (p. 185) — whence would come in the fulness of time the completed work ? Difficulties of transport would in most cases preclude this last alternative, which is also made extremely unlikely by the fact that in this kind of work all over the country what we may call standardization can hardly be detected. The watchword everywhere in the choice of ornamental motives is — variety, and the strange giraffe-like beasts at Crofton seem made to sound it abroad.
On the theory that the work was carried out locally, the suggestion has been hazarded above that the villagers would take interest in watching its progress. Now the artistic sense must have been alive in the general designer and in those who planned and carried out the different parts of the work in detail. It is clear too that considerable thought and a corresponding amount of painstaking labour must have been expended in the execution — a material task which kept the carvers employed for many a busy week. If the minds of the designers and executants were fixed upon their varied and engrossing tasks can we reasonably refuse to credit the people who stood round and watched progress with some inkling of the ideas which were materializing under their eyes ? They did not of course in the least realize or understand these ideas, but surely they must have permeated, though in homoeopathic
252 CROFTON [part n.
dilution, the intellectual atmosphere of Saxon rural society. It is no answer to this to point out that, whatever were thought of these works of art at the time of their making, the genera- tions that followed showed themselves indifferent to their beauties. The first Viking raiders who were still pagans smashed up a certain number of these Christian symbols, but when converted they increased rather than curtailed the number of them. One stone cross that they broke was mended by its owners, the monks of Lindisfarne, by running it with lead, which exhibits due care for one of these artistic treasures.1 The Normans certainly had no great respect for the movable religious monuments of the Saxons, and there is plenty of evidence that in the succeeding Gothic era the remains of the earlier Saxon religious sculpture were treated habitually as building material, though we cannot tell whether this only happened in the case of fragments, or whether monuments which, though possibly imperfect, still presented the appearance of intelligible and even beautiful works of art, would be further broken up just for a utilitarian purpose. It is to be feared that from our modern point of view we should have to deplore the impiety shown habitually by every successive set of Christians towards the monuments of its predecessors. In fact, as has been said, the conviction seems forced upon us that the only people that have shown the piety so generally lacking are the Turks, who in oblivion of Koranic teaching behaved to the sculptures of the Parthenon like the gentlemen that they are, and preserved to all future time some of the finest works of art of the world, though similar works, probably still more august in their loveliness, had been destroyed or suffered to perish by the early believers who turned the Parthenon into a Christian church.
What is here said must not be pressed into service to prove that this extraordinary efflorescence of art and beauty
1 Symeon of Durham, Rolls Series 75, Hist. Dunelm. Eccl., bk. i, ch. 12. There are other instances known of this traditional use of lead. One is at Easby.
chap, xiii.] THE LECHMERE STONE 253
in the centres not of official but of rural and homely Saxondom, was a thing of the surface only not in any way penetrating the heart of the people. Let us remember how Theseus in the play scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream answers Hippolyta, who like many fine ladies is contemptuous of all outside her own narrow world, with words expressive of that infinite all-pervading human charity that is almost divine. Let us, if we will, look upon all these painstaking efforts to create something new of interest and beauty for some ideal aim outside the circle of daily occupations, as vain efforts to make a Saxon boor a poet and an artist, but let us on the other side bethink ourselves of that most wonderful phrase, one of the noblest in thought that even Shakespeare could conceive, with which Hippolyta's contempt for the boorish players is met by the Duke's ' The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.' If imagination amend them — let our imagination play upon our theme till out of the broken fragments and the merely suggested forms it create the far-off piece that was once for the people of the place so clean and clear, so finished, and so appealing to their cherished memories of the departed. Comparatively little ' amending ' by the imagination will be necessary in the case of another composite piece now to be described, that may be called ' The Lechmere Stone.' It is a funereal monument that for an unknown number of years has been kept in the house of Sir Edmund Lechmere, Bart., an ancient seat of his family known as Severn End, near Hanley Castle, Worcestershire. So housed, it has escaped many of the ills that carved Saxon stones are heirs to, and, as the photographs on PL lxxxviii will show, is in a singularly good state of preservation. Its material is the local oolite, so much used in the neighbouring Saxon church of Deerhurst, with which it has some artistic affinities, and it is not only a local product but is attested as of Saxon origin by its general character and details.
VI r
254 THE LECHMERE STONE [part ii.
The general form is a little like an antefix from a Greek stone temple, having a vertical face as its front that bears the principal decorative motive ; it measures i ft. 8 in. in height by a width of about 1 1 in. This motive is an interesting stand- ing figure of Christ holding a book, shown on PI. lxxxviii, i, from a photograph by the writer. Against a cruciferous nimbus is relieved the full-faced head of the Saviour, with a pointed beard and a thick roll of hair framing the upper part of the face, the features on which are worn away. This is the case too with the details of the hands, which are holding the book. The upper hand does not indicate the act of blessing as is so often the case. The figure shows a slight bend towards the sinister side which obviates any look of stiffness, and it is robed in an under and an upper dress, about which it is difficult to be sure how far ecclesiastical correctness has been aimed at by the sculptor. The under dress certainly seems to give the form of the alb when it was taken over by the Church and supplied with tight-fitting sleeves to the wrist ; but the upper garment is not so clear.
The thickness of the stone from front to back is in the upper part three or four inches, the space being utilized for the display of a rather graceful foliage scroll, not of vine character (PI. lxxxviii, 2). In order that the stone shall stand steadily upright the thickness from front to back is increased in the lower part to about eight inches, and the surface of the bottom plane of the monument is carefully dressed smooth. On the back (PI. lxxxviii, 3) there is carved a cross-head enclosed in a circle and supported on a shaft made up of a succession of balusters. On each side of this composite shaft, the Saxon character of which is obvious, there is a foliage scroll that is similar to that carved round the edge of the stone in the space provided by its thickness.
It has been pointed out that in its general shape and arrangement the stone bears some resemblance to the in-
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chap, xiii.] THE WHITCHURCH MONUMENT 255
scribed Saxon funereal monument preserved in the church of Whitchurch, Hants, that was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in the summer of 1930. The two pieces are at first sight not much like each other, for the Hampshire stone is much wider in the front, measuring 1 ft. 9 in. against 11 in., with a height of 2 ft., — 4 in. more than that of the Lechmere piece, and it is also nearly twice as thick and gives room in its 7 in. for a two-lined Anglo-Saxon funereal in- scription,1 which runs, after an initial cross,
+ HIC CORPUS FRIDBURGAE REQUI ESCIT IN PACEM SEPULTUM.
The Hants monument is thus heavier and more massive, while the bust of the beardless Christ is very rudely carved, though it resembles that on the other stone in holding in the left hand a book. The inscription takes the place of the scroll of ornament, but there is graceful incised ornament on the upper part of the back of the stone which quite counter- acts the impression of rudeness conveyed by the bust of Christ (see PI. lxxxix). This is worth a special word of notice. Figure sculpture, as was noticed on p. 122, was on the down grade all through the Saxon period, but it does not follow that all carving was barbaric, because decorative sculpture is a form of art which in the recently expressed views of Strzygowski, van Scheltema, and others, belongs as naturally to the North, as representative and especially figure sculpture belongs as an art to Mediterranean lands.
Of the aesthetic merit of the Lechmere piece a good idea can be derived from the photographs, and it is at least sufficiently in evidence to make some antiquaries locate the work in XII. Such an attempt is, however, predoomed to failure because there is not a feature or detail in it that cannot be found in Saxondom, while it exhibits charac-
1 The fourth letter of the name, though given as D, is not incontrovertible. -[Ed.]
256 THE LECHMERE STONE [part n.
teristics that are not found in post-Saxon days. The fashion of the cross-head is as likely as not to tempt lovers of the beautiful XIII and XIV foliated crosses on the coped tomb- stones to gather it into the same fold. As a fact, however, it is the selfsame form that has been given to the exquisitely worked cross in silver repousse in the centre of the plate that was made to cover the wooden slab that seems to have been the real portable altar of St Cuthbert.1 This silver cross is sadly mutilated, but enough detail remains to justify as accurate the drawing of the scheme of the cross given in a previous volume of the work as noticed below.2 It will there be seen that the little round, that on the Lechmere cross terminates the ends of the arms of the cross patee, occurred in the same position in the silver cross of St Cuthbert's altar, which is certainly of Saxon date.3 The stem of the Lechmere cross is made up of a succession of baluster-like forms which are distinctly Saxon and would not occur in a mediaeval carving. The decorative scroll-work round the outside and on the back beside the shaft of the cross is a very interesting feature, and emphasizes the fact that all through the Saxon period there existed a tradition of foliage ornament quite independent either of the vine tradition pre-eminently important in the early days of Saxon art, or of the acanthus tradition which came in from Caro- lingian sources and affected the art of southern England in later Saxon times. It might be called the pointed leaf style, for this foliage form, single and flat or deeply hollowed, or set trefoil fashion three on a stem, occurs occasionally in rather casual appearances throughout the Saxon period from the time of the sceattas downwards. Here on the Lechmere
1 Vol. vi, p. 12 f. 2 Vol. v, PI. xxv, 6.
3 A similar bronze cross with the little rounds, from Canterbury, is figured in V.C.E., Kent, i, p. 382.
The Lechmere stone, with its absolutely assured Anglo-Saxon origin, can be seen to be of special chronological value if it be kept in reserve as a warning against the tendency to ascribe every bit of good early mediaeval work to that convenient twelfth century.
chap, xiii.] THE POINTED LEAF STYLE 257
stone it presents itself with great boldness and brings the pointed trefoil leaf into prominence while it takes care to show the distinctively Saxon sheath at the junction of a branch with the main stem. (See sinister side of baluster stem in no. 3 on the Plate.) It may be compared with the foliage scroll that appears above and below on the bowl of the Deer- hurst font. There are differences as well as resemblances, for the ornament on the font may be called a vine scroll from the appearance of rosettes, which are conventionalized bunches of grapes, but trefoil leafage is also much in evidence, and the two scrolls agree in their general treatment and might be contemporary. If a date be suggested here for the monument, we should probably not be far wrong in connecting it with Deerhurst Church, which, together with its font, may be set down as the earlier half or the middle of the tenth century.
CHAPTER XIV
NUNBURNHOLME
This may be a suitable place to introduce a notice of a monu- ment which of all in the country seems to have crowded into it the largest amount of what we may call ' subject,' and in consequence to offer to the critic an exceptional number of problems of interpretation. It certainly has not been singled out by the present writer because he possesses answers to these problems, but because the number and variety of the representations on the stone give a most striking proof of the readiness of the artists of the time to extemporize motives and to present them with a quite remarkable abundance of details which, one would think, must all have had their meaning alike for the designer and for the public he addressed. To many the name ' Nunburnholme ' will have occurred, and to Nunburnholme, an ancient site in the E. Riding between York and Beverley, our attention must now be turned ; and let it be said at the outset that very much has been owed to the kind interest taken in this fresh study of the ancient memorial by the Rector of Nunburnholme and his kind and hospitable lady, as well as by the Rev. M. C. F. Morris, who was the chief authority upon Nunburnholme and its cross. The monument consists of two portions of a shaft that were taken out of the fabric of the church in 1873 and cemented together when the whole was set up at the west of the church, where it stands now on a plain modern stone for a base. The breakage of the shaft was most unfortunate, but it was done no doubt on purpose to obtain convenient blocks for building material, and this process of fracture must
258
chap, xiv.] METHOD OF CUTTING THE SHAFT 259
have been general throughout the country, for the shafts have so commonly come down to us in sections. How the cutting was done is an interesting question, the solution of which depends on an examination of the present fractured surfaces in the light of what we know about Roman and earlier Egyptian technical processes of quarrying and masonry. The modern process would be to split the stone by the driving of wedges into grooves previously cut, and the Egyptian processes which travellers find a fascinating subject of study in the granite quarries at Assouan (Syene) have no doubt been in operation since the time of the pyramids. The Romans transmitted them to the middle ages and to the more modern times in which the cleavage of stone by the use of wedges is a flourishing industry. In the cutting up of our Saxon stone shafts the process must have been of a rough and ready kind. We constantly find a gap sometimes of several inches between surfaces of blocks that ought to come together, and the effort to smooth away irregularities by rough chiselling is at times apparent. The break in the even line of tapering betrays the loss. The joining up of the pieces in our own time is sometimes fairly close, but too often the work is faulty, as for example here at Nunburnholme, where a noticeable portion seems to have been lost and where the cement is in parts smeared over the surface of the stone. As it stands, the mended shaft is 5 ft. high and seems to be substantially complete. In section it is more nearly square than is usual. The breadth on the east side below is 15 in. and is reduced by tapering to 1 1 in., the measurements of the west side being about the same. The thickness of the north and south sides is about 12 in. tapering above to about 10 in. The loss of material where the junction comes confuses the measurements which can only be approximate. The material seems, as far as one can see, to be a local sandstone, and it has been care- fully worked with the chisel, the details, with the exception of the human features, being clear and sharp. The stone in
26o NUNBURNHOLME [part ii.
parts has of course been a good deal weathered, and when the writer began to work on it some years ago it was so encrusted with vegetable growths that in parts details were totally- obscured. The surface was almost covered with silvery grey lichen. This is thin and closely set and moreover is credited with a preservative action on stone.1 It was therefore let alone, but (with kind expert aid) there was a great removal of the thick soft moss and of accidental patches of vegetable colour that confused photographic reproduction, and negatives were obtained of such parts of the sculpture as could be with any assurance made out.2
The photograph, PI. xc, shows the piece in its general aspect in the sylvan surroundings of the beautiful churchyard, a most characteristic specimen of the art with which we are con- cerned. Turning from the ensemble to the details, we find the object of primary interest at the upper part of the east side, where is a seated male figure that can be recognized from its position as well as from its dress and equipment as that of a Viking Chief, PL xci. We are probably right in saying ' Chief ' because he sits there on a cushioned stool slightly tilted for- ward in very quiet but confident fashion, holding a sheathed sword by his side with a hilt the pommel of which is of a recognizable Viking form and may be sought among the very numerous pictures of sword hilts in Jan Petersen's De Norske Vikingsverd? The exact shape does not appear there, but there are shapes sufficiently near which with other indications guide Dr Brondsted to a date of about the middle of X. He is not an actively militant chief but has been long enough in
1 No support is given to this empirical doctrine in the new (1929) edition of the Ency. Brit. On the contrary it is said there (Vol. 14, p. 33) of the lichens, ' by their delicate filaments they cling to the rock surfaces which they gradually penetrate and disintegrate.' This is confirmed by the Director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.
2 The illustrations show the shaft in its present (1935) condition. — [Ed.]
3 Oslo, Dybwad, 191 9.
PLATE XC
NUNBURNHOLME CROSS SHAFT WEST SIDE
[p. 260]
PLATE XCI
NUNBURNHOLME CROSS SHAFT EAST SIDE
[p. 261]
chap. xiv.J DETAILS OF THE CARVING 261
the country to have settled down as a local laird administering a substantial estate. We may assume this to be his funeral monument, and the east side to be the face of the cross.
From the point of view of subject, we should be inclined, on the hypothesis in the last sentence, to look for some con- nection among the various representations that fill the avail- able spaces on the shaft. If the cross-head were worked on the scale and in the style of the shaft, this would mean a notable increase of the representational element, and we should naturally suppose that the position and probable beliefs and tastes of the lord of the monument would be considered. There is however no proof of this, the different themes being to all appearance so far as we can see quite independent. The figures and other representations are carved in sunk panels mostly bordered with plain margins arched above, and an obviously Scandinavian ornamental motive occurs at the top of the shaft on three of its sides. Here from the two upper corners of each of these panels a human arm fully sleeved is stretched down and the hand holds firmly the moulding of the arch at the top of the panel. Between the arms ornament is introduced, motived it would seem by the classical cornucopia. The origin and significance of this decorative motive were explained by the learned Dr Hilde- brand in somewhat elaborate fashion,1 but it seems simpler to derive it as a survival from the ' gripping beast ' motive of IX. The motive makes its appearance on bronze brooches, a good example of which of that century is Rygh 673.
Taking the shaft as a whole, we can search for elements of uniformity underlying which there may be a single scheme, and that this is the case is rather the opinion of Mr Colling- wood, who described the monument critically in his Yorkshire papers but passes it over lightly in his recent book. Starting then with the (assumed) portrait of the deceased laird, quite,
1 See The Reliquary for 1901. The explanation goes back to the days of the Romans.
262 NUNBURNHOLME [part n.
be it admitted, hypothetical — but how can a monument like this be interpreted except hypothetically ? — we take next a figure on the upper part of the north face adjacent to the jarl, PI. xcn, as well worked out and apparently as important, and find it female, representing a lady obviously of rank in the religious world, perhaps a prioress, who wears a hood with long streamers ending in knobs or tassels. The arms are sleeved to the wrists, on each of which there seems to be carried a sort of pouch or purse. Outside the hood there is a band round the head, to the ends of which as they fall down over the bosom there is attached a rectangular frame set with fifteen small round objects (jewels ?). It is explained as a book-satchel, an object of familiar use in Irish ecclesiastical circles, and a token of Celtic influence when it appears on the breasts of figures of churchpeople in other parts of the British Isles. The aspect of it as we have it here and elsewhere seems copied from the breastplate of the Jewish High Priest to which is sometimes applied the enigmatical term ' ephod.' It is noticeable that while there is so much careful and on the whole good work on the figures the rendering of the features is not even attempted. Exceptionally in the case of the eye of the jarl there is modelling, while drilled holes serve for eyes and a slit for the mouth on the face of the lady and the other figures on the cross.
Between these two principal figures no connection can be suggested, but some parallelism may seem to exist between the representations on the lower parts of the two adjacent east and north sides below the two figures which have been described. It is much to be deplored that owing to the breakage and the crudely managed junction in the middle of the shaft the upper parts of the figures of the lower series have suffered damage. Returning to PI. xci, we find below the Viking Chief a curious representation which can be better made out on the larger scale of PI. xcn, though on this part of the shaft vegetable growths have had it
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NUNBURNHOLME CROSS SHAFT NORTH-EAST CORNER
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NUNBURNHOLME CROSS SHAFT LOWER SUBJECT ON NORTH SIDE
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chap. xiv.J DETAILS OF THE CARVING 263
all their own way. The principal object is a tall long- robed figure in the central position. Though he has un- fortunately lost his head he shows a sleeved right arm the hand of which is laid upon, or rather round, the head of a much smaller standing (?) figure who for his part is grasping with his two hands a long fold of the central figure's robe. On the top of this central figure's arm or on his shoulder is perched a bird, whose head has been obliterated by cement. All this is exactly repeated on the other or sinister side, and we seem to see two votaries in adoration before a Saint who lays his hands 1 in blessing on their heads. The two birds on the saintly shoulders have their parallels, though they accompany also as attributes Asgardian heroes, and it is important that they should not always be reckoned Asgardian.
The lower subject on side N. has on the upper part a half figure of an ecclesiastic, PI. xcm, wearing a book-satchel and holding in his right hand a chalice, while his left hand rests easily on the folds of a cloak thrown over his left shoulder. The upper part of the head is lost, but the figure is one of the best on the shaft, though it is difficult to photograph. It is cut sharply off below the waist at the dark line, and the space below is occupied by two small seated figures of a fantastic kind, the one on the sinister side having an animal's head. These may be regarded as furnishing parallels or contrasts to the two small figures on side E.
The western side introduces a new element in the form of fantastic animals two of which replace the two gripping hands. The upper subject is a group of the Madonna and Child in which the Child must be nearly as tall as His mother. The lower subjects are, PI. xc, above, a scantily draped male figure seated with a sort of frame on his knee in whom David with his harp has been recognized, and, below, a female centaur with a baby on her back. Her hair is dressed
1 They are certainly hands and not a bird's claws ; the fingers show modelling.
264 NUNBURNHOLME [part ii.
like that of a Roman empress, and this is evidence of some classical study. On the south side, under the gripping hands, comes a fairly executed beast with head turned back in the style of the sceattas, and below that, under an en- riched arch, is a well posed half-length of an ecclesiastic with the usual book-satchel. The lower part of the panel is occupied with crudely designed convoluted beasts, the complete ring striking a Scandinavian note. This is not figured in the illustrations.
For the interpretation of this somewhat elaborate piece Collingwood takes the view that some general idea runs through the various representations. ' The whole monu- ment,' he says in his Yorkshire paper, ' seems intended to represent the deceased jarl with his patron saint in benediction, the abbess with her martyred patron, the Madonna with doves, centaur and evangelist, and a Saint with the lamb above him, and the dragons below.' 1 All these motives certainly occur on the cross, but if we take a dispassionate view we cannot really see any connection among them. The only part which seems really to suggest a connection through contrast between two panels is the lower part of the two sides which have, above, the seated chief (E. side) and the abbess (?) on the north. The lower subject on the E. face is explained in connection with PI. xcn. It is possible that there is a contrast on the lower north side underneath the Abbess, where two figures, one with an animal's head, seem to be engaged in some machinations of a diabolical kind. There is no indication that the Abbess has anything to do with these, and on the whole these supposed connections are not convincing.
Assuming on the contrary that the representations are
independent of any general idea, we should rather expect them
to reproduce standard subjects from a repertory open to all
designers. The anticipation is, however, not fulfilled, for the
1 Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol. xxi, p. 267.
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PLATE XCIV
i, BAUTA STONE.. OBVERSE
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VIKING AXE-HEAD
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chap, xiv.] A BAUTA STONE 265
re-appearance again and again of stock subjects is distinctly not a phenomenon that meets us in this artistic field, and Collingwood remarks on ' the great variety of ornament and treatment in these North Riding monuments.'
In connection with these, in great part Scandinavian, monuments, a notice may be introduced of what is possibly a specimen of a characteristic rude stone monument not carved but often inscribed that is characteristically boreal but has never yet been signalized as an importation from Scandinavia into these islands. The reference is to the so-called ' Bauta ' stones — the word according to Sophus Muller is Icelandic, and he describes them 1 as unhewn stones set up in connection with burials as early as the Bronze Age, but becoming more numerous later on and abounding especially in Viking times when with or without funereal inscriptions they were reared to the memory of departed worthies.
The object shown in PL xciv, 1, is an unworked stone, a boulder from the boulder clay, 2 ft. 2 in. in length by 1 ft. 3 in. in height, with an extreme thickness of about 9 in. The surface shown, on which appears an inscription in Scandinavian runes, is of a slightly swelling rounded form, while the corresponding surface at the back, PI. xciv, 2, is flat or hollowed. At the sinister end a portion of the stone has been broken away, and on this the inscription may have been continued. A small stroke just at the edge may possibly be part of a runic letter, and the same has been suggested in the case of some markings on the back of the stone, shown in PI. xciv, 2. It must be said at once however that the stone was so rudely treated after its discovery that accidental marks were scored upon it that must be ignored by the epigraphist. This is the case with a conspicuous mark on the front running
1 Nordiscke Altertumskunde, Strassburg, 1897, German Edition, 1, p. 161, 11, p. 260 f.
266 A BAUTA STONE [part n.
diagonally below the two last runic characters, which is cer- tainly accidental, for on the earliest photograph taken of the stone when it was first discovered no such mark appears. The inscription therefore consists in the four letters seen in PL xciv, i, with a possible continuation on the part broken away, other marks being negligible. Of the characters visible, the first, at the dexter end of the stone, is a short 1 S,' the vertical stroke ending below quite definitely with a terminal dot. Next comes a ' U ' turned the wrong way, the short stroke which ought to come on the other side of the long vertical ending like the ' S ' with a decided dot. The last two characters are obviously ' N ' and ' A,' and it is to be remarked that the former with the lateral not carried through the vertical is a form suggestive of a Norse origin, whereas the same letter with its lateral carried through would rather be Danish. These points have some significance, as will be seen further on when something has been said of the location, the character, and the date, of the stone, with the incidents of its discovery.
The suggestion which the readers of this description are asked to consider is that we have here to deal with an example of the Scandinavian ' Bauta ' stone, that may date early in X. If this be the case it would be a unique example of a monu- ment of this kind in England and one accordingly of great interest. It came to light at a place known as Scargill about six miles south-west of Harrogate in Yorkshire. It is well known, especially since the publication of Dr Brondsted's valuable study of English ornament, that there is a sudden intrusion of Scandinavian ornamental motives on Yorkshire carved stones somewhere about the year 900 a.d., connected historically with the capture of York by a Danish army in 867, and also with a strong Norse infusion, starting as an overflow from Ireland, which spread into northern Yorkshire from Cumberland at a somewhat later date. This would make a Scandinavian monument like the one under review historically
chap. xiv.J « PIPPIN CASTLE ' TUMULI 267
quite possible, but the ' Bauta ' stone is funereal in character, and it must be emphasized that there is some likelihood that our stone was connected with a Viking burial.
On the site of the discovery were two pre-historic barrows, a ' long ' barrow measuring about ninety feet by fifty, and close to it a round ' barrow about fifteen feet in diameter and also in height. The local appellation of the place was 'Pippin Castle.' About the year 1901 the Corporation of Harrogate set on foot some works connected with the town water-supply, which involved the removal of the tumuli. Before this was done local antiquaries set themselves to explore the contents of the mounds, and Mr Walter Kaye, F.S.A., with Mr Leslie Armstrong, F.S.A., and other helpers, thoroughly overhauled the smaller tumulus, finding at the base of it a cremation burial, probably of the Bronze Age, but no signs of later intrusive interments. On the side of the tumulus however was found the inscribed stone, lying in a position it might have come into by falling from the top of it, where a slight sinking was in evidence. A projected exploration of the long barrow was cut short by the action of the Corporation, who destroyed the whole mound by dynamite. Before this happened, a partial investigation brought to light a somewhat miscellaneous collection of objects of various kinds and dates, but no clear evidence of either primary or secondary interments. By far the most important of these objects was a Viking axe-head shown in PI. xciv, 3. This when first discovered in 1901 and for some years after pre- served its original form as is seen in PL xciv, 3, from a photo- graph kindly lent by Mrs Kaye. It exhibits the curious feature of a sort of projection or shoulder about the middle of the under edge of the blade which marks it as belonging to a district type or sub-type, examples of which, of IX or perhaps early X, are common along the west coast of Norway and are specially well represented in the Museum at Stavanger. Eight or nine examples have been found in the British Isles,
268 A BAUTA STONE [part n.
and they are of special value in that they are distinctively and unquestionably Viking.
The axe-head, which measured about eight inches in extreme length but is now sadly disintegrated and has lost its form, may be held to furnish evidence of an intrusive Viking burial in the long barrow, and of a connection with the inscribed stone. It was dug up in a part of this long tumulus just opposite to the place at the foot of the round barrow where the inscribed stone was found lying, and as Scandinavian Bauta stones were not as a rule placed on, but only near, the actual place of interment, the connection above suggested may be taken as more than possible.
Into the epigraphy of the inscription no attempt is made to enter. Inscriptions of the kind are fairly common in the Scandinavian countries, and the comparative method can be applied to their elucidation. In England the present example appears to stand alone, but, if its character as a Bauta stone can be vindicated, other examples of the same kind of monu- ment may come to be recognized, if not in England proper, yet in other parts of the British Isles where Viking influence is of greater strength. The stone, it may be added, was notified by the discoverer of it, Mr Walter Kaye, F.S.A., in a communication to the Society of Antiquaries of London, reported, though without an illustration, in the Society's Proceedings, N.S., Vol. xix, pp. 55, 56, and Mr Kaye has kindly furnished the details regarding the discovery, which have here been given in a condensed form.
PLATE XCV
IRTON CROSS
WEST SIDE
[p. 269]
CHAPTER XV
ANALYSIS OF THE PARTS OF A CROSS
It will be necessary presently to adopt again the historical point of view and follow in our monuments the changes in form and detail through which they pass in the second of our two periods. Before this however it will be well to run over the chief different types of monument and give a glance at all their parts so as to get to know as far as possible the various features of interest they present.
We begin with the free-armed cross which we will assume to possess all the parts and details possible. No cross is more complete and more carefully chiselled than that at Irton in Cumberland, of which there is a cast in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is figured on PI. xcv, and is a monolith with the head cut out of the same piece of stone, a red sandstone, as the shaft, which with the head rises to the height of 10 ft. It is planted in a plain socket-stone measuring c. 3 ft. by 2 ft. 6 in., wedged up all round by other stones above which it rises about 6 in., though this is concealed by the undergrowth.
Similar plain socket-stones, sunk in the ground as at Bewcastle, or else rising above and perhaps finished with a moulding, have come down to us from Saxon times, and it is interesting to note that they sometimes show sinkings for more than one cross shaft in juxtaposition. This is the case at Ecclesfield near Sheffield, PI. xcvi, where the socket-stone now brought into the church measures 4 ft. 9 in. along the front. One shaft, with devices in rather a scribbling style, stands in one of the sinkings. An indication of a second shaft is clearly to be seen less than a foot away, and as the socket- vi s 269
270 THE PARTS OF A CROSS [part ii.
stone is broken away at its dexter end a third has been sug- gested. A similar duplication of shafts in a single socket occurs elsewhere, as in the churchyard of Whalley in Lancashire, but it is not common.
It is not so common as we might expect to find our cross shaft planted in a stone socket that makes a show above ground including carved ornament. This introduces the question of the size of these memorial or funerary monu- ments, for there exist one or two Anglian stone sockets that are not only elaborately enriched but are themselves imposing productions. The pas must be allowed to the base or socket known as Walton Cross, to be located, not without a little trouble, by going to Cleckheaton a few miles S.W. from Leeds and inquiring for Hartshead Church, \ mile W. of which is the artifact at which we are aiming. It stands, a solid-looking black mass slightly pyramidal, surrounded by a railing, in the poultry yard of Walton Cross farm. It is just across the road and up a field from a cigar shop kept (1930) by Mrs Shakelton.
The piece is characteristically Saxon, in that while monu- mental in aspect and covered all over with elaborate enrichment cut in the hard grit of the stone, the work was never properly measured out, and there is no true square or upright line in any part of it as the photograph, PI. xcvn, shows. Immense and elaborately enriched it stands on a plain stone more than four feet square, and has a sinking on the top 11 in. deep and 15 in. by 10^ in. in aperture. The height of the stone above its plain base is at the highest 58 in. at the lowest 55 in. A good idea of the scale is given by the figure standing alongside, a fairly tall man. The extreme breadth below is 40 in. and above 29 in. The minimum width on one of the sides is 30 in. by 25 in. The reader may guess the im- posing appearance of the completed monument, if completed it ever was, on the scale given by the socket. The carved ornament in which figure Anglian beasts, birds in foliage,
3
PLATE XCVI ECCLESFIELD BASE AND SHAFT
[p. 270]
.-iiiu
PLATE XCVIII LEEK CROSS SOUTH SIDE
PLATE XCV1I WALTON CROSS
p
* t~
»*i
v * WIS' !
PLATE XCIX THE BECKERMET SHAFTS
[P- 27i]
chap, xv.] THE SOCKET-STONE 271
and entrelacs, is set off by a handsome display of mouldings. Lest there should seem something freakish about the huge mass it may be noticed that at Hornby in Lancashire there is a socket the extreme height of which, with the other dimensions, equal these at Walton Cross. It is very plain in its ornamentation. There are three or four more bases that would be worth notice did space allow, but the enriched socket, it may be said, is by no means common in England as it is in Ireland, where it is an almost universal feature of the later High Crosses of X to XII. The colour of the stone is an inky black, and the stranger would be disposed to lay all the blame for this on the smoke of the factories which in this region are omnipresent. This would be a hazardous in- ference however, for it is said to be the nature of these mill- stone grits to weather black even in a comparatively pure atmosphere. An accidental abrasion of their surface reveals their natural colour as a lightish grey.
Fitted into the sinking and run with lead, as one can see to-day at the Bewcastle Cross (Vol. v, p. 103), will stand the shaft. The shape of this at the bottom, square, rectangular, oval, or circular, with perhaps a projecting tenon, has given that of the sinking, and this may repeat the external shape of the socket. The shaft and its ornamental treatment we have already got to know, though not in all its forms. There is a type that belongs specially to Mercia, and is best represented at Ham and Leek in Staffordshire, and Macclesfield in Cheshire. The special character of this is well seen in the monument which stands on a modern base in the churchyard at Leek, PI. xcvin. We note that it is round in the lower part like a tree trunk, but beyond a projecting fillet it is worked off into a square form and tapers rapidly upwards to a comparatively small cross-head. In practically all the examples, which run north into the Cumbrian regions with specimens such as those at Beckermet in Cumberland (PI. xcix), this cross-head has been almost completely broken away
272 THE PARTS OF A CROSS [part ii.
and the form of it was difficult to visualize, but one of the examples in the churchyard at Ham, shown in PI. c, has preserved enough to show the hollows under the projecting arms, the central boss and the start from this of the arms and the head, the shape of which is not indicated. Ham church- yard also holds the very handsome shaft, differing in design and enriched with carving from the ground upwards, shown in PL ci. The shaft does not begin as a cylinder but exhibits from the first the square form in which it runs up in a graceful taper on all four sides without any break into the, now muti- lated, cross-head. It has been broken, possibly by a single heavy Viking blow, and in falling suffered another breakage above. At Macclesfield three crosses of the type of Leek already examined stand in the public park, but though picturesque features they do not bring to us anything new. Others are in the noble park attached to Lyme Hall.
Cylindrical shafts displaying figures under arches or sunk in niches we have got to know as early forms, and they make their appearance at all periods presenting some of the best carved work that comes into view. One piece stands out as by far the most ambitious in this kind, and one of the chefs-d'oeuvre of the school, complimented, as every Saxon piece of out-of-the-way merit is sure to be, by an attribution to XII. This is the Wolverhampton pillar, best known from the fact that there is a cast of it in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is a monument of the same general form as the enriched pillars that we have met with so early at Glastonbury and Reculver, and which we find later at Masham in Yorkshire and at other places especially in Mercia. Wolverhampton is called from Wulfruna, sister of Ethelred II, who founded a college here in 996. The present fine church of St Peter occupies the site of the religious buildings connected with this foundation, and the enriched pillar may be reasonably claimed as an actual survival of these. It is about 12 ft. high and its circumference in the lower part is 8 ft., while it tapers
PLATE C CROSS AT ILAM WITH SHAFT CYLINDRICAL IN LOWER PART
[p. 272]
PLATE CI CROSS AT ILAM WITH RECTANGULAR SHAFT
PLATE CI I
THE ENRICHMENT OX THE WOLVERHAMPTON PILLAR (Reproduced from an ' Extended ' Drawing)
[P- 273J
chap, xv.] THE SHAFT 273
till the upper diameter is little more than half the lower one. This tapering is very Saxon and does not suggest XII. The enrichment is in a style which in the case of most of it has a certain affinity with the work we have already got to know at Breedon-on-the-Hill and Fletton by Peterborough. Here are lively animals on a small scale disporting themselves amidst the stems and leaves of a foliage that in general effect resembles that on the base of the panel at Hovingham as well as some of the Breedon work. The animals turn back their heads in a manner that is very marked and characteristic of the Saxon period. A date of the late X would suit it well enough. The one reason (besides its artistic excellence) for putting the monument as late as this is the appearance on it of the acanthus ornament in the form of stiff upright leaves that encircle it. as well as in that of scrolls and flourishes. It is true that the acanthus makes no appearance in Saxon decorative stone-work in general, till we come to the curious Thrybergh stone, but it is freely used in other forms of art in Saxon times and can quite easily be accepted here. It must be noted that this Wolverhampton acanthus is of a type which resembles the Norman version of the motive, and does not suggest the crude and tentative handling which we found at Thrybergh. Some years ago Professor Lethaby secured a competent lady draughtsman to execute the drawings of the enrichment which were published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Vol. xxv, which the writer is enabled through the kindness of the Society of Antiquaries to place before the reader in PI. en. The original monument is very much blackened by weathering, and this gives a special value to the reproduction in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The pillar will come before us again in connection with the enriched shafts and pillars at Sandbach and Stapleford (Notts). All these monuments may be regarded as Mercian specialties.
The enrichment of cross shafts takes a special form in Lancashire, where we find a treatment applied to the shaft as
274 THE PARTS OF A CROSS [part ii.
a whole and embracing sometimes the head, to which we shall presently have to turn. The most complete example is in the church at Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, shown in PL cm, I. Here is a square plinth, which has six inches of plain stone below sunk in the modern base. The front and back and the two sides are covered with ornament of a rather rough and inelegant kind that is continued on the head. It will be noticed that the square type of shaft is given up, and it is drawn in in a sort of neck to prepare for the head, the lower part of which is modern.
The important traditional religious site of Whalley in Lancashire, the original parish of which Henry Taylor tells us covered four hundred square miles, has three large crosses in its noble churchyard, decorated after the same style as the Bolton piece but with more care, the conventional foliage exciting the admiration of Bishop G. F. Browne. One of the three crosses, numbered A in Henry Taylor's book,1 has human figure and animal motives in its decoration. Monu- ment B, opposite the middle of the south side of the church, is shown in PI. cm, 2, where it will be seen that it has lost a section at the top of the shaft. It was originally nine or ten feet high when the shattered cross-head was complete, and the section measurements at the base are 21 in. by 10 in. The third cross, C, has only a mutilated shaft left, but this stands in a somewhat elaborate socket.
In spite of the admiration expressed by the Bishop for the carved foliage we cannot see much feeling in the elaborate enrichment, but as a tribute to the spirit of variety testified in the art generally we must accord it all due value.
It will be noted that in the examples just shown there is an effort made to connect shaft and cross-head by the spreading from one to the other of the decorative motives. This gives
1 The Ancient Crosses and Holy Wells of Lancashire, by Henry Taylor, F.S.A., Manchester, 1906, p. 75.
-*. 'Jim. §? *V£
PLATE CI 1 1
TWO LANCASHIRE CROSSES
i, BOLTON-LE-MOORS 2, WHALLEV
[P- ^74]
PLATE CIV CROSS IX MIDDLETON CHURCH
[P- 275]
chap, xv.] CONSTRUCTIVE MODIFICATIONS 275
a suitable opportunity for the consideration of constructive modifications of the original simple shaft-form some of which we have observed in passing, and which culminate in the Bolton and Whalley examples. The explanation of the projections like shoulders on the upper part of shafts as substitutes for cross-arms, will not hold, for as at Stanground (p. iiof.), they occur on shafts that are fully supplied with cross-arms. Such projections are also quite commonly carried out all round the shaft and not only on the sides. In dealing with them we must perforce quite clearly, as has been previously noted, start with Nunnykirk (p. 209), and we must undoubtedly regard them entirely from the artistic point of view as the expression of a certain architectural feeling in the designer, who was striving to complete a composition embracing in one scheme shaft and cross-head which would be brought together by the tactful handling of the projection. The innovation of Nunnykirk may have become known, and have excited interest and even admiration, so that the new idea may have been worked out to various effective results, and one would have liked to see what the artist of the Staveley cross (p. 234 f.) would have made out of the rather elaborate projection at the top of the shaft with the Asgard heroes. (Mr Collingwood makes it the ' lower part of a big penannular head.'1) Stanground we know (p. iiof.). There are two interesting stones which show the projection dividing the height of the shaft into two. One which is complete with plain square socket, shaft with grotesque animals and entrelacs, and wheel cross-head, stands in the churchyard of Sproxton in Leicestershire the stones in which county have been carefully surveyed and illustrated by Mr Paul Dare. The other is in the church at Middleton in Yorkshire and is the more simple of the two. It is shown on PI. civ, and though the entrelacs are unsystematic and rather clumsy the general effect of the
1 W. G. Collingwood, Anglian . . . sculpture in the West Riding, in Torks. Arch. Jour, xxiii, p. 241.
276 THE PARTS OF A CROSS [part ii.
piece is excellent and the proportions are quite good. The parts below the projecting fillet are left plain — quite a tasteful example of architectural reticence in the use of ornament.
The other cross shaft, with the projecting fillet round its middle height at Sproxton, betrays the hand of an uncertain carver who has obtained his projection but does not quite know what to do with it. One narrow side is enriched with a single vine scroll, but this is stopped when it comes to the fillet and goes on again above it as if nothing had happened. The face which is turned to the west uses the fillet to mark out two panels, one below it and one above. Each panel is occupied by a poorly designed Anglian beast that with the action of a slug seems to be crawling up the stone. The lower animal, that is the larger, seems to go off in its lower parts into interlacing bands which fill up the bottom part of the panel. In the plate, PI. cv, the panel with the animal is the face, while on the adjoining side the fillet seen above has been cut away. On the whole it is the Stanground artist who really uses the projections, which he has worked into a sort of framework for his incised ornament.
Sufficient has been said about the shaft and its artistic treatment, and we may turn now to the last and most important of the elements which make up the free-standing cross, the cross-head in some of its varying forms.
The cross-heads have suffered more than the shafts because the latter were valuable as building material, while the heads were too irregular in their shapes to be of much use. Cross-heads are of two types, those with free arms, and the wheel-crosses, in which the ring of stone, the origin of which is noticed on p. 103, is connected in different ways with the originally free arms. There is really no reason for enumerat- ing or classifying these different varieties as there is no principle of design involved, though the fundamental prin- ciple of variety is allowed the freest possible expression.
PLATE CV THE SPROXTON CROSS
[p. z7G]
PLATE CVI CROSS-HEAD AT CROPTHORNE, WORCS.
[P- -77]
chap, xv.] THE CROSS-HEAD 277
On the cross-heads that have been preserved the enrich- ment employs commonly, but by no means universally, motives of a sacred order. That is to say, cross-heads are in the main in accord with what was said on p. 165 f., that the sculptured forms of the details of the crosses are not cut into significant shapes in accordance with the projected ultimate use of the finished monument. If the Crucifixion be the chosen motive as often as not it will appear as an enrichment of the shaft and not on the cross-head at all. Examples at Nassington in Northants and Harmston close to Lincoln occur at once to the mind. There must always be remembered the shrewd remark of the numismatist Lelewel, about the remnants of paganism which always remained at the bottom of the Saxon craftsman's mind and would sometimes affect his work (see Vol. 111, pp. 58, 102). No mistake could be greater than that of trying to find some symbolical, or indeed religious, meaning in all his motives and details. It is rather noteworthy that the best preserved of all the extant cross- heads is the most completely secular in its ornamentation. The reference is to the free-armed cross-head, preserved in the vestry of the church of Cropthorne in the vale of Evesham, and shown in front and back views in PI. cvi. The face of the cross-head is indicated in PI. cvi, 1, by the circular recess in the middle of it which evidently carried a decorative or significant boss of some kind. On both faces the ornamental motive used everywhere is the animal, still in possession of a properly articulated skeleton, and so far still essentially Anglian, but equipped with contour lines and with very pronounced diapering on the body, a distinctive Scandina- vian motive. A foliage scroll fills up the spaces, and this has exchanged the normal debased vine leaves and bunches of grapes for a marked trefoil leaf, which may be brought in as explained earlier on p. 256. The balancing of Anglian and Scandinavian motives may indicate a date early in X.
As a pleasant contrast to this display of paganism we may
278 THE PARTS OF A CROSS [part 11.
take a free-armed cross-head at Hoddam in Dumfriesshire, a site artistically quite Anglian that exhibits good early VIII work. PL cvii, 1, gives the face, no. 2 the back view, in both of which in a large round appears the form of Christ, on the face as a bust with the hands upon a book, on the back as a full-face seated figure, the legs encroaching on the back- ground. Nimbed busts are carved on the arms which have the same form as at Cropthorne. Animals of a fanciful type fill in spaces and are quite Anglian. The motives are dis- played in masterly fashion, and we are reminded that Ruthwell is only a few miles away. See for good Anglian art in the far North p. 209.
In the matter of sacred representations generally the Crucifixion occurs fairly often, but we may doubt whether any presentation of the supreme scene of the Christian tragedy would exhibit the grandeur which we seem able to discern in the slightly preserved design of the subject on the lowest part of the Ruthwell cross. Two figures often appear on the two sides of the Cross, and are sometimes John and Mary and more often the two soldiers with the spear and the sponge. It is a detail that seems to have pleased the designers to give these executioners the heads of animals. For anything really dramatic in the visualization of the scene we must go to Derbyshire, where on the picturesque site of Bradbourne we find some rather mutilated work from the chisel of an artist who had clearly been gifted with a touch of genius. The Crucifixion appears on the lower part of the face of the broken shaft that has here a width of 1 ft. 9 in. Christ on the Cross, with Sol and Luna flanking the cross-head, and two soldiers below, is what we see, and the soldiers, especially the spear- bearer, exhibit excellent action and expression. There is far more life in the representation than in the case of any other of the fairly numerous renderings of the scene. The example at the Spital at Hexham on the face of the shaft which carries on the back and sides such beautiful conventional
.
A.
|
— . V* ■-r- v. |
||
A
PLATE CVII HODDAM CROSS FRAGMENTS
[p. 278]
PLATE CVIII CROSS AT THE SPITAL, HEXHAM
[P- -79]
chap, xv.] THE CRUCIFIXION SUBJECT 279
foliage, PI. cvm, is stiffer and more formal, but is a good rendering.
The last cross-head for which there is space is figured on PL lxxii. It is the best preserved of the four to which attention has already been called in connection with the drastic pro- ceedings of the Normans in the matter of the Durham monastic cemetery (p. 216).
CHAPTER XVI
TRANSFER OF INTEREST TO NON-ANGLIAN PIECES
The phenomena of changing fashions in motives of decora- tion have already occupied our attention (p. i^of.), and we have seen how, first, the Migration style of about V onwards with its varied interest seems drawn mysteriously out of the ' illimitable inane ' of the East ; and how, next, through the maritime activity of the men of Erin and of Norway, the Irish ornamental style became impressed upon the decorative art of Scandinavia. The changes in this latter art in early IX, and in later IX the importation of it into the British Isles through the then systematic Viking raids, have been noticed, and we have seen that the Anglian decorative and repre- sentative art, coming into being in late VII, handed on its fine tradition through VIII and early IX, and maintained its established character even when a distinct Scandinavian element had made itself manifest, as was the case at Nunburn- holme in early X, in the ' gripping beast ' arms and hands (p. 261), and other motives.
In the work we are now to examine the pure Anglian art is no longer the chief element, but its animal forms and vine foliage are pushed into the background by more fantastic and even monstrous creatures and varied forms of geometrical motives.
For a starting point we must abandon the North and betake ourselves to south-western England, where, having ascended north of Box the steep downs that overlook the Bath valley, we find ourselves on the height of Colerne. Here in the church are two carved slabs set side by side and shown in the photograph PI. cix. That on the dexter side is more
280
C/3
h
u 1
h «
m
o
u
h
[p. 28:]
chap, xvr.] COLERNE AND WEST CAMEL 281
or less square, and shows above and on the two sides remains or traces of plain flat margins about 1 in. wide which give it the character of a decorative panel. The same character though not so pronounced attaches to the sinister piece which shows a margin on the dexter flank and probably- one below. The measuring-tape gives a little over 13 in. in breadth to each, but the condition of the slabs renders it impossible to decide whether the panels tapered. In height no. 1 (dexter position) is now about 15 in. but has no definite lower boundary, while no. 2 with a doubtful lower margin rises to about 18 \ in. These appearances and measurements on the pieces make it most probable that they were parts of the faces or backs of cross shafts with zoomorphic enrichment not continuous but divided into panels. What is peculiar about them is their thinness which is only about a couple of inches. They were discovered in the usual way built into the walls of the church, when it was being restored some years ago, and if they were as thin then as they are now they could hardly have been used as building material. They must surely have been built in as solid blocks and cut down by a modern saw. The stone is of course the excellent material of the country.
This cutting down, if it took place, is so abnormal that it must be considered in connection with a fellow piece, still more to the south-west, at a place called West Camel, north of Yeovil in Somerset. Here is preserved a comparatively large section of a cross shaft, 2 ft. 6 in. high, and in section square, each side having the same breadth, a feature that is quite abnormal. It was apparently not, as is usual, a monolith, and the mortise for fixing the block that came above is clearly seen and the surface is carefully dressed down. It is very rare to find a shaft in sections,1 though this was the case with the Reculver pillar.
1 That is in original sections, which differ from the broken-up sections we usually find with faces of junction irregular and smashed at the edges. At Camel the work is professionally clean and clear.
282 NON-ANGLIAN PIECES [part n.
The enrichment of the stones is naturally what concerns us most nearly, and this is of a kind that is most remarkable. It has been brought here into sequence with the beautiful Anglian carving of the pre- Viking period as another striking proof of the variety that prevails in all this work.
The stones at Colerne and West Camel present in the most pronounced form a style of treatment of which the carvings of the post-Viking age present innumerable specimens. It is the element of fancy, of disorder, and of monstrosity, to take three degrees of the element inimical to the purity of Anglian design. It is noteworthy that the fantastic element is more pronounced in the animals of the two great crosses than in later examples such as Aldborough, Nunnykirk, Easby, York (Hospitium no. 2), Heversham, etc., which are all pure Anglian. It soon, however, assumes such a position on the stones that the purely Anglian beast disappears, and is replaced by an animal of composite character, not contorted like a graceful poseur but inelegantly misshapen, and commonly with its head turned back. Examples on stones at Norwich Museum (PL cxix), at the Museum at Derby, and pre-eminently at Gloucester Museum, give good instances of the Scandi- navianized creature which still keeps a respectable vesture of its anatomy about it. Dr Brondsted makes a great point of this creature which is according to him derived from what is known in Denmark as the ' Jellinge ' style that is generally regarded as of Irish extraction. After being imported into England by the Vikings this style continues to develop on our English stones, especially in Yorkshire, in what may be called a dragonesque direction, limbs gradually disappearing and bodies becoming reduced to sinuous bands. It is in this stage of disintegration that the fantastic motive meets us at Colerne, and also at other places besides West Camel, which it must be noticed all belong to the south-west of the country. Besides the two mentioned there is Glastonbury to be added, and a site, Rowberrow, on the Mendip Hills.
chap, xvi.] RAMSBURY 283
But the metropolis of this province of dragonesque imagery is Ramsbury, a few miles east of Marlborough. Ramsbury was in 909 made the seat of the bishopric of that region. It may have been before this date a church of some importance and have attracted to itself works of art, but what is found there now is reckoned locally as posterior to the date just given. The peculiar Colerne-Camel work is not repre- sented on the site, but enrichment composed of dragons in flat convolutions with their bodies marked with incised geometrical patterns is much in evidence. Ramsbury in truth holds the position for this part of England that belongs in the North to Durham Cathedral Library, and contains work other than the fine Anglian of the larger collection. Before however we ask what Ramsbury has specially to offer to us, we must conclude the treatment of the Colerne pieces.
Dr Brondsted writes of these : — ' The smallest of these especially is an exceptionally good representative in the refined austere style of the classical period in Ireland, VII- VIII.' Whether or not the style is duly described as ' refined and austere,' the work is certainly very forcible and con- scientiously carried out in detail. It is so much the best in point of execution of any of the ' monstrosity ' pieces that we shall see or have had already before us that it will be worth while to analyse the forms and features with a minuteness we shall not need to use again. The animals then are almost reduced to mere bands and have their bodies bounded by definite edgings, with a central strip from which oblique markings run down to the margins. Spirals are used where the heads join the bodies. These are not wholly destitute of quadrupedal character, because it will be noted in no. 1 that the body of the dexter dragon swells out when it gets more than half down the panel and gives off two long but very spare forelegs which end with their paws up against the sinister margin of the panel. Those portions of their anatomy which pass through their open jaws and unite above their
284 NON-ANGLIAN PIECES [part 11.
two heads in a kind of triquetra knot are pronounced by Romilly Allen to be their tails. No. 2, whose body is more elaborately ornamented than was that of no. 1, shows the giving off of one foreleg very plainly, though without a spiral, and has a very distinct claw. ' The interlaced work in the background,' writes Romilly Allen, ' is formed by the tails of the dragons, which are narrowed down to bands of the same width throughout.' Other details of these remarkable creatures have a chronological and ethnographical interest. They are partly Irish but also in great part Scandinavian, and this is the cardinal fact connected with this class of work. It is useless to ask about it the question ' Irish or Scandi- navian ' because it is made up of elements drawn from both sources. How this came about we came to know in Chapter VII, on ' The Scandinavian Infusion,' and the facts there given explain the difficulty of assigning authorship to a piece of this kind. Friends both in Norway and from Ireland when shown these photographs have each repudiated authorship for their own people, and it all depends upon where we look. One most prominent detail is the surface treatment of the flattened beast with its central rib and sloping lines from it on each side. This of course, as the Oseberg wood-carving shows in PI. xliv, i, is intensely Scandinavian, but we do not find it on the animals of the classical period of Irish decorative art. This means one point for the backers of the Northmen. If we look at the sinister edge of no. 1 on PL cix we see the extended forelegs of the beast whose head comes above, and these feet have distinctly three toes, which is reckoned an Irish not a Teutonic characteristic — one all. The turned-up snout of the beast in the upper dexter corner of no. 1 may be Irish, but the heads as a whole, though in flat relief, bear a most striking general resemblance to the cast or carved heads in Norwegian Oseberg art — two to the North. Finally the matter is really decided beyond all possibility of cavil by the existence on no. 2 at its sinister
[p. 284]
PLATE CX WOODEN OBJECT FROM JELLINGE
NOW IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, COPENHAGEN
PLATE CXI STONE IN GLOUCESTER MUSEUM
[P- 285]
chap, xvi.] THE SCANDINAVIAN RING 285
edge of one of those complete rings that are always fastened upon by the ornamentalists as an infallible sign of Scandi- navian work and moreover of a date in X, and not in VII or VIII.1 The fact that of the four or five pieces, all in the south-west, that show this particular style of carving with its forcible quality, one, and perhaps a second, comes from Glastonbury the home of Celtic traditions, might suggest an Irish attribution, but it would be an uncertain one, whereas when a critic is caught in one of these Scandinavian X rings it is hard for him to get free from it.
The Colerne slabs have introduced us to an immense number of pieces that are zoomorphic in character but show the animal form in all sorts of conditions from a mere band to a shape that presents some far-off resemblance to an Anglian quadruped. We do not meet with them as a rule in the north, but rather in the Midlands at sites such as Norwich in the east, the central Derby, the western Gloucester, and Ramsbury in the south. Foliage has almost disappeared. The Scandi- navian elements in this phase of work are said to be derived from the style of ornament represented on the inscribed stones in the famous composite monument at Jellinge near Veile in Jutland, erected by Harold Blue-Tooth to his parents King Gorm and Queen Thyra about 980. Certain objects in wood-carving found in these tumuli at Jellinge show what seem to be the first datable specimens of the open ring and may date about the middle of X. Gaut's cross in Man (p. 237) shows it at about the same period. The wooden object from the Jellinge tumulus shown on PI. ex gives what Dr Brondsted considers the earliest example of the motive that is known.
1 On this loose ring Dr Brondsted writes : — ' The reference is to a loose circle which is inset in the interlaced work without any organic connection with the pattern. . . . This circle ... is a well-known and frequently occurring Scandinavian motive from X. . . . That is one of the means avail- able for a dating.' Early English Ornament, pp. 226-7.
VI T
286 NON-ANGLIAN PIECES [part h.
It will conduce to clearness if we examine some of the work of our second period (p. 152 f.) to which Colerne has introduced us. The convoluted dragon is very much in evidence especially at first, and for a time seems to hold possession of the field. It is however of great importance to note that Anglian elements, though to a great extent at the outset submerged, keep their own character and life, and will be found to reassert themselves at times quite effectively, so that Dr Brondsted admits (op. cit., p. 219) that 1 the national " Anglian Beast " even in this period after the Viking invasion can be found in an almost pure, unaffected shape, ... or even in a perfectly pure shape,' and he quotes as an example the Crofton stone described above (p. 248 f.). One of the stones in the Gloucester Museum is exceptional in that it gives a flattened dragonesque beast with body markings as bold as the Colerne ones, but with a head seen from above presenting two huge eyes with caruncles set Irish fashion, PI. cxi. It is another vindication of the principle of variety in these decorative designs.
For the extreme form of flat linear delineation at the opposite pole to Colerne rigour, the two differing as the earlier gripping beast differed from the thin anaemic animal of Salin's ' style III,' we may take the chief device on the foot of the great cross shaft at Ramsbury shown on PL cxn.1
1 The MS. of this chapter comes to an end at this point. — Ed.
t ***** .1
PLATE CXII
GREAT CROSS SHAFT AT RAMSBURY
(LOWER PART)
[p. 286]
CHAPTER XVII
OTHER TYPES OF MONUMENTS COPED TOMBSTONES
The monuments hitherto discussed have been in the main of the upright character — free-standing crosses, or, as in Manx- land, erect slabs presenting carved enrichment on the face or on the face and back. As was said at the outset, this decorative art took other forms but our treatment of these must in the interests of space be rather severely compressed.
We are fortunate in possessing an excellent starting point in phrases of the Ecclesiastical History in which Bede writes of the form of tomb that received the mortal remains of the beloved St Chad, who died at Lichfield about 670 a.d. ' The place of his burial,' writes Bede,1 'was a tomb (tumba) of wood made after the fashion of a little house and furnished with a roof. It had in its side wall an opening through which those who go thither for devotion are accustomed to put in their hand and take up some of the dust ' which was credited with miraculous healing virtue. This notice, which shows that the broad-minded Bede had an interest in monuments not shared by his distinguished modern editor,2 is of extraordinary value, mainly because it makes it impossible to pretend that any of our later coped tombstones 3 borrowed their configura- tion from an ugly animal. The ' tumba ' of Chad is really
1 Hist. EccL, Lib. iv, Cap. 3.
2 The notice is of such extreme archaeological interest that it really deserved some mention in the voluminous indices of the great Plummer edition of the Ecclesiastical History.
3 Commonly called ' Hogbacks.'
2ft7
288 OTHER TYPES OF MONUMENTS [part ii.
the parent of all those varied funereal monuments which make such a brave show above ground and guard beneath solid stone-work the bones of the dead. The wooden structure must before long have been given up, as the eager hands of the miracle enthusiasts would probably soon have pulled it to pieces, and there was plenty of stone and a good force of craftsmen to work it, in the country as a whole. This fact comes out in the case of a monument that we may notice next in order to the shrine of St Chad. It is in no way cruciform but is at the same time of pronounced funereal character. It is the well-known ' Hedda ' stone in Peterborough Cathedral, sometimes erroneously called a shrine, which it cannot be as it has no ' innards ' but is a solid stone elaborately enriched on the exterior. It is like a ' little house,' and possesses a sloping roof ending in two gables, the gable ends of the piece being left in the rough. The dimensions are 3 ft. $\ in. by 13 in. by 2 ft. 5 in. in height. Both sides of the stone are enriched with carving ; on each in a shallow arcade there stand six figures well carved in low relief representing Christ and eleven disciples, Judas being omitted. Both faces of the sloping roof exhibit, in squared panels, knot-work patterns of some elaboration similar to those on the famous ' Brunswick Casket,' the work on both monuments being a form of animal ornament in which very little of the structure of each beast has survived, and the most of him has been spun out into a thin thread which forms a sort of web over the free spaces of the panel. Among the figures one, near the middle of one of the sides, shows the hair standing out around the head, and Professor Hamilton Thompson has suggested a possible Mithraic influence. We might call this figure a Christ but on the other side there is a figure similarly placed that wears a cruciferous nimbus, a sure indication of the Master.
The piece may have been placed so as to form a monument, or part of one, over or near royal or princely tombs. Its connection with a historical Hedda is probably imaginary, and
[p. 289J
chap, xvii.] THE HEDDA STONE 289
its date has as a matter of course been carried down to XII. The recent careful examination by Mr Clapham of the decora- tive carvings at Breedon and Fletton (antea, p. 192 f.) has vindicated as pre-Scandinavian work by Anglian artists all this carving and its connections, and the Hedda stone comes into line with the rest as dating about the early part of IX. The work on the stone is much weathered but the proportions of the figures are good, and there is variety in the turn of the heads. Not long ago, in 1928, in the course of some repairs in Castor church there was found under the pavement of the XII chancel a fragment of a monument closely resembling the Hedda stone, but with deeper cutting and more pro- nounced forms in the arcading. The feet of the figure are rather in the Breedon-Fletton style (p. 193 f.) but the features and the forms of the drapery show an advance. It is a very valuable fragment as it comes in to clinch all Mr Clapham's arguments with one which is quite uncontrovertible.
This Hedda stone (PI. cxiii) might have served as a model for the mediaeval shrine or sarcophagus which would take over from it the figures under an arcade, the form, more like that of a chapel than of a house, and the sloping roof with its tiles. In these later examples the solid stone would of course be hollowed out and the lid made to rise. Saxon examples of these more advanced forms are sadly to seek, but simply treated solid stone pieces, with the characteristics of the Hedda monument without its enrichment, may be found here and there, as in the big collection of miscellaneous Saxonic fragments in the undercroft of the Yorkshire church of Lythe near Whitby. We should perhaps hardly have considered this a Saxon type had not Bede made it a matter of conscience to tell us about the tomb of Ceadda, and pricked us with a stimulus to see what we could say about it.
As distinct from the Shrine or the Sarcophagus we may now take the Coped Tombstone, a heading that covers a number of sub-divisions. The word ' coped ' is kindred to
290 COPED TOMBSTONES [part ii.
1 capped ' and means ' covered,' and in the case of the tomb- stone it implies one that rises above ground and covers the parts below where is the actual burial. It differs therefore from the flat tombstone, a type that makes its appearance in several different forms, and both types gave the carver his opportunity for the display of enrichment of various kinds, especially flatly delineated crosses and interlacing patterns.
Ramsbury presents us with some beautiful coped examples shown in PL cxiv, i, 2, 3. There is something very attractive about no. 1 though we have to lament the loss of more than half its length. There is a plain slab of stone 2 or 3 in. thick, which would be visible above ground and covering the burial formed a base for the coping. This takes the form of a stone originally no doubt some 5 or 6 ft. long but of which only a length of a little over 3 ft. is preserved, that has in section a semicircular form and is at the base about 1 8 in. wide tapering to 17 in. just below the rounded end. The type of this and its companion stone no. 2, seems not to be known elsewhere in this region. What interests us specially is the ornamentation. There is something particularly pleasing in this, which consists in two parallel scrolls running the full length of the piece that interpenetrate along the median line and go off in circular volutes to the sides. Foliage character has been almost entirely lost and the curling bands end in barbed points like those of darts or perhaps in pointed animals' heads. The designer was not a master in the handling of his scrolls, and the work may date well on in X when accuracy in this form of the original Anglian scroll-work had been lost. He was however an artist, and disposes of his motive with a sort of playful grace. The companion stone seems also to be of his handiwork, and the rounded end shown clearly in the photograph exhibits a median rib carved in relief and bifurcated when near the rounded end of the coping. Each half of the rib ends in a pointed animal's head that puts out a long tongue which joins with the companion
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tongue to form a so-called Stafford-knot. The two sides of the rounded coping display, mixed with some interlacing, animals' heads of a fantastic type with bodies to match that are obviously late but are still mainly Anglian.
The third piece, PI. cxiv, 3, is one of extraordinary inter- est, for it was evidently when new one mass of enrichment embracing almost all the motives, human figures, animals, foliage, that we have got to know in the course of our survey. The stone measures about 2 ft. 2 in. in length by a width of some 14 in. and bears upon it a plain Latin cross that stands out some inches above the background, and has all its arrises worked into roll mouldings. Within, the whole of the surfaces, the face of the cross and its arms and all the spaces of the background are worked into ornamental forms, and though nothing can be made out on the photograph and very little upon the stone itself, the piece is of value even in its present condition as evidence of the exuberant desire for self- expression which filled the mind of the designer.
Among the various forms that the coped tombstone has taken, by far the most important is that which has acquired for itself the unfortunate appellation of ' Hogback.' This will generally be explained by the form of the monument, which is something like the shape of an animal of elongated build with rounded sides and a marked curvature of the spine. The want of fitting terminations at the two ends is made up by making the two extremities grasped by the paws and other foreparts of bears represented in many cases as muzzled. The lower parts of the two long sides offer themselves as suitable fields for the display of figure or animal ornamentation or foliage or geometric patterns. The upper part of these sides and the back generally in very many cases exhibit motives that come under no one of these headings but carry with them a historical significance that puts out of court at once all these animal notions. The motive is the roofing tile. With the roofing tile in our hand we can go back to
292 COPED TOMBSTONES [part ii.
the ' little house ' where the saintly Mercian bishop took his last rest and see in it the true origin of this most important form of the coped tombstone. The hogback is really a house — the house of the dead, and the abundant use in it of roofing tiles reveals the truth of what without this would be a very puzzling archaeological imbroglio — almost indeed a scandal, for the idea of an animal origin for the form of an object possessing in the eyes of good people such inherent sacredness is revolting.
The hogback forms the subject of an interesting and valuable chapter in Mr Collingwood's large book, in which he brings forward a great number of examples including some instructive fragments. The metropolis, so to say, of the hogback-making industry in its later developments, when the bears were part of the equipment, was Brompton near Northallerton, where no fewer than ten examples were ex- tracted from the foundations of the church walls when the building was restored in 1867. Five of these are in the Durham collection. Of the ten Collingwood writes in a strain recalling what was said about variety on earlier pages. ' They are different from each other in the sense of being separately designed, not repeating the same model.' 1 The Brompton pieces are hardly so interesting as others scattered about the North and Midlands. One at Abercorn on the Forth, the furthest boreal site where Anglian art is fully displayed, is of peculiar interest as giving convincing proof that the house and not the animal is the inspiration of this type of monument. PI. cxv gives a view of it and shows that roofing tiles, its one motive of decoration, almost com- pletely cover it. Another point here emerges. We have seen (p. 239 f.) that the sea-farers from the S.W. parts of Norway carried the form of the Anglian cross in its simplest aspect back to their own land and reproduced its shape in many different connections, using sundry details which were 1 W. G. Collingwood, Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age, p. 168.
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chap, xvii.] THE HEYSHAM ' HOGBACK ' 293
certainly of Anglian origin. The chief of these is the sugges- tion of a decorative triangle marked out on the face of the shaft as a reminiscence of some carved enrichment that may- have been remembered on the Yorkshire cross that had served as a model. Now the church of Norderhov some distance inland from Oslo in Norway, preserves a small funereal stone with an oblong body like a house and a sloping roof that is entirely covered with roof-tiles that resemble closely those used at Abercorn. The writer's attention was directed to it by Dr Anders Bugge of the Riksantikvariat at Oslo, who has published the piece as a child's burial chest — Barneliksten. It is shown in PI. cxvi, and is 2 ft. 1 in. long by an extreme width of 12 in. The height at the highest or head end is 9 in., at the foot end 8 in.
Another important specimen of the type lies in the open in the churchyard at Heysham in Lancashire at the southern end of Morecambe Bay. PI. cxvn gives a view of it. Here the tiles make no show though the chevrons just below the ridge may be intended to indicate them. The lower parts of the sides show a number of rudely designed human figures and animals which suggest hunting scenes, but have been inter- preted the one as Ragnarok and the other as the Christian scene of The Last Judgment. At the two ends of the stone which is about 6 ft. long and 2 ft. thick we find very crude attempts at the rendering of the foreparts of two bears. This with other indications bring the piece to a date late in X.
This representation of the foreparts of bears presents one of the most curious problems offered by this whole phase of art to the investigator. ' When we think,' writes W. G. Collingwood, ' of the stylized Anglian and still more stylized Jellinge animals this sudden outburst of straight- forward representation is most surprising.' It is just one of those instances of a new departure which we noted in the case of Italian ornament at Venice, when orthodox procedure
294 COPED TOMBSTONES [part n.
is broken in upon by the installation of a new motive. This as a rule fits well enough into the existing scheme, which it may gracefully enliven as the campanula bells supply a fresh charm to the beautiful ornament on the shaft at Simon- burn in Northumberland (p. 206). It is always in principle the same thing, though the aesthetic result may be very different when the new motive is in itself unpleasing. It is essential that it accommodate itself to the general com- position of the piece on which it makes its appearance, but intrinsically it may be just what its author pleases.
It must have been some curious accident or combination of circumstances that brought about the first attachment of this familiar but by no means beautiful object to the gable end of that particular kind of funereal stone. It may be that the stone block itself that had just been won out of the quarry was formed accidentally at one end into something like an animal's head. It was natural to think of a bear, because bear-baiting must have been a familiar sport handed down with other animal games from Roman times. Not a few English antiquaries have thought that there was a Scandi- navian influence at work, and the notion is a very natural one, because of the architectural use of projecting heads, the Greek irpoKpoacroi^ in buildings such as Deerhurst where continental influence must have been present. Our Scandinavian cousins may acknowledge some responsibility for these features because they have them on their own Stavkyrker at home, but this responsibility certainly does not cover their use on the ends of ' hogbacks,' and inquiries at Oslo and Stockholm put out of the question a Scandi- navian origin for this use. Some one who knew the aspect of a muzzled and tethered ' Sackerson ' 1 in real life, and had seen him in stone as he appears in the carved head in the Museum at Gloucester, PI. cxviii, conceived the idea of this use of him together with his two forepaws as a finish for this
1 Merry Wives of Windsor,
PLATE CXVIII BEAR HEAD IN GLOUCESTER MUSEUM
[P- -94]
PLATE CXIX STONE IN NORWICH MUSEUM
[See page 2S2)
[P- 295]
chap, xvn.] THE BEAR MOTIVE 295
shape of tombstone, and the aesthetic solecism once com- mitted became like other such incongruities something that tickled the fancy of the populace.
We are faced by a still more difficult problem when we ask not only how the motive can have originated but how it came to be so widely distributed over the English field of art.1
1 The MS. ends at this point. — Ed.
INDEX
The present index differs in two respects from those in the preceding volumes of this work, in that names of all writers to whom the author refers are included and reference is made to pertinent illustrations under a number of the headings. In compiling it, the editor has consistently given the county for sites in England and Scotland to avoid confusion between places of the same name, and as an aid to readers unfamiliar with the geography of the British Isles.
Aarboger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, see ' Brondsted, Dr J.'
Abecedaire, Architecture Religieuse, see ' de Caumont.'
Abercorn on the Forth, nr. Edinburgh : cross shaft, 206, fig. 20, 209; hogback, 292 f., PI. cxv.
Aberlady, E. Lothian, 209; cross from, see ' Carlowrie Castle cross shaft.'
Abyssinia, metal cross-heads from, 127.
Acanthus, 140, 142, 144 f., 149, 159, 273, PI. xxxviii, 1, 2, 3 ; tradition, 256.
Acca cross from Hexham, n8f., 135, 169.
Achaemenids, 200.
Acre, Syria, decorated pillars from, now in Venice, 126, 130.
Acta of the Academy of Abo in Fin- land for 1923, see ' Strzygowski, Prof. Josef.'
Aesir myths, 231-235, 243 ff.
Aesthetic merit of Lechmere stone, 255.
Aesthetic of foliage scrolls, 208 ff.
Aesthetic of the introduction of a new motive into an art, 294.
Aesthetic view of Manx carvings, 245, 247.
Africa, North, early ornament on Chris- tian remains in, 126.
Agnus Dei on crosses, 143 f., PI. XXXVIII, I, LXXII.
Ahenny, spiral pattern at, 181.
Aidan of Lindisfarne, 222.
Alb, 254.
Alcfrith, King, 136.
Aldborough cross, W. Yorks, 122, 207, PI. LXIX, 211, 282.
Aldhelm, St, 168.
Alexander, 200.
Allen, Mr J. Romilly, 95, 134, 138, 156,
179, 284. Alnwick Castle Museum cross, 215. Altar, portable, of St Cuthbert, 256. Altchristliche und Byzantinische Kunst, see
' Wulff, Prof. Dr Oskar.' Die Altgermanische Thierornamentik, see
' Salin, Riks-Antiqvar Bernhard.' American Journal of Archaeology, paper
in Art Studies, Vol. II, 1928, an extra
number of the, see ' Hovey, Mr W. R.' Anatolia, 123: craftsmen of, 128; no
evidence for the free-standing cross as
a form of art in, 130. The Ancient Crosses and Holy Wells of
Lancashire, see ' Taylor, Henry.' The Ancient Stone Crosses of Dartmoor and
its Borderland, see ' Crossing, Mr
William.' Anderson, Dr Joseph, 218. Anderson, Sir Rowand, 183. Andreas, Isle of Man : 95 cross-slab,
244, PI. LXXXIII, 1 ; 102 cross-slab,
238, 244, PI. lxxxiii, 2, 3. Andrew, St : in mosaic, 202 ; in sculp- ture, 202, PI. LXIV, 1. Angel Gabriel, the, in sculpture, 189. Angels in sculpture, 174, 188 f., 192, 196,
201. Angles, 222. 'Anglian beast,' 152, 154, 157, 206 ff.,
210 f., 227 f., 249 ff., 270, 273, 276 ff.,
282, 285 f., 291; dating, 210 f. Anglian form of free-standing cross in
Isle of Man, 246. Anglian influence in Scandinavia, 125,
239-242, 292 f.
297
29«
INDEX
Anglian style, 157, 184; dating, 184;
motives, 278, 285 f. ; art, 280, 282 f.,
289 f., 292 f. Anglo-Frisian runic alphabet, 228. Anglo-Saxon carvers, 231, 243. Anglo-Saxon church in the south, 164. Anglo-Saxon realms, 177, 182. Anglo-Saxons, 132, 160, 164, 166. Animal-headed figures, 263 f., PL xcm,
279. Animal motives in Norman compared
with Saxon carving, 139. Animal ornament: Germanic, 163;
Irish, 162. Animals, 136, 143, 150-160, 162 f., 175,
182, 184 f., 189, 191 f., 196, 199 ff.,
203 f., 206-211, 213, 227-231, 234,
238, 245 f., 249 ff., 263 f., 273, 275-
278, 280, 282-286, 288, 291-293; in
vine foliage, 175, 182, PI. XLIX, L;
Irish, 162, 228 f. ; Scandinavian, 227-
231. Animals' heads, 290 f., 294. Annunciation in sculpture, 175, 189,
200. Antefix, Greek form of, 254. Antiquity for Dec. 1931 (Vol. V, no. 20,
p. 438), article in, by G. Baldwin
Brown, 139. Apostles : in mosaic, 202 ; in sculpture,
169, 173, 201 f., PI. lxiv, 1, 2; on
Bisley Cross, 153; on Collingham
Cross, no. 1, 153. ' Apostles ' shaft at Collingham, W.
Yorks., 143. (See also ' Collingham.') Arcades in sculpture, 173, 186, 189, 192,
PL LIII, LVI, LVIII, 288 f. Archaeologia, papers in, see ' Clapham,
Mr A. W.' and ' Peers, Sir Charles R.' Archaeologia Aeliana, contributions to,
see ' Collingwood, Mr W. G.' Archaeological Journal, paper in, see
' Davies, Rev. D. Steadman.' The Archaeology of Ireland, see ' Mac-
alister, Prof. R. A. S.' Arched tops to panels and niches, 108 f.,
153, 201, 261, 272, PL XXX, LXIV.
(See also ' Arcades.') Archer in sculpture, 196. Arches, pointed, 143 ff, PL XXXVIII, 1,
250. Architectural feeling in design, 275 f. Architectural ornamentation in Norman
carving, 139 f.
Architecture in Italy, see ' Cattaneo, Raf- faele.'
Archives Photographiques of Paris, 107.
Ardagh chalice, 161.
Aristophanes, 211.
Armenia : bases for shafts or pilasters in, 129; craftsmen of, 128; use of cross- form in funereal art of, 127-130.
Armstrong, Mr Leslie, 267.
Arrises: chamfered, 143-148, PL xxxviii, 153; marked by cable mouldings, 186, 195, by twisted shafts, 201 ; worked into roll mouldings, 291.
Artist-designers, 204, 215. (See also ' Designers.')
L'Art Merovingien et Carolingien, see ' Coutil, M. Leon.'
Art Studies, Vol. 11, 1928, paper in, see * Hovey, Mr W. R.'
Ascension on Irish cross-heads, 166.
Asgard subjects, 231-235, 243 ff., 263, 276.
Asia Minor, no evidence for the free- standing cross as a form of art in, 130.
Assouan (Syene), 259.
Augustine, St, 164.
Aurona, in Milan, decorative sculptures from the demolished church of the, 126 f.
Axe-head, Viking, 267 f., PL xciv, 3.
Axe-heads: Norwegian, 267; Viking, in British Isles, 267 f.
Aycliffe, nr. Darlington, Co. Durham : cross, 191.
Baalbec : door jambs, 151 f., PL XLII, 1 ;
Temple of Bacchus, 151 f., PL xli, 175. Baddeley, Mr St Clair, 108. Bakewell, Derbyshire, collection of monu- ments at, 94. Baltic lands, 153.
Balusters, Saxon, 254, 256, PL lxxxviii, 3. Bands or cups on vine foliage scrolls
where tendrils branch off, 185; use in
dating, 191 f. Bands, projecting, on cross shafts, 141,
275 f. Barking, Essex : fragment of cross shaft,
96, PL xxv, 2, 102. Barnburgh, nr. Doncaster, W. Yorks.:
cross, 146 ff., PL xxxix, 1, 3. Barneliksten, 293, PL cxvi. ' Baroque Master,' 158.
INDEX
299
Basiliques Chre'tiennes de Tunisie, see
■ Gauckler, M. Paul.' Bath, 280. Die Bauhunst der Armenier und Europa,
see ' Strzygowski, Prof. Josef.' ' Bauta ' stones, 265-268, PL xciv, 1, 2. Bear-baiting, 294. Bear head, carved stone, in Gloucester
Museum, 294, PI. cxvm. Bear motive, 291-295. Beckermet, Cumberland: crosses, 271,
PI. XCIX. Bede, 167, 177, 221 ff., 287, 289. Bendixen, B. E., 240 f. Benedict Biscop, 136, 176 f. Benediction, Greek and Latin forms of,
186, 199, 201, PL lxii, 1, lxiv, 3. Beorward, Abbot, 168. Bergen Museum, 242 f. ; crosses, 242. Bergens Museums Aarbok, 191 7-1 8, paper
in, see * Lexow, Einar'; 1924-25,
paper in, see ' Boe, Dr Johs.' Berlin : Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, n8f.,
123; Pergamon Museum, 198. Beverley, E. Yorks., 258. Bewcastle, Cumberland : cross, 100,
121 f., 132, 135 f., 147, 151, 169, 182,
191, 196, 198 ff., 203, 205, 207 f.,
210 ff., 269, 271, 282. Bexhill, Sussex, 176. Bifrost, 234. Birds, 133, 151 f., 183, PL xlix, 185,
PL LI, 199, 203, PL LXV, 206, 232 ff.,
PL LXXVII, LXXVIII, LXXIX, LXXX,
LXXXI, 244, 246, PL LXXXIII, I, 2,
LXXXV, 263 f., PL XCI, xcii, 270. Birds and animals in vine foliage of near
Eastern art, 151 f.,'Pl.XLir, 2, xliii, 175. Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham : cross,
195 ff., PL lxi, 217 f. ' Bishop-stones,' 168.
cross,
[08 f.:
Bisley, or Lypiatt, Glos.
PL xxx. Blessing, Greek and Latin forms of, 186,
199, 201, PL lxii, 1, lxiv, 3. Boe, Dr Johs., 161. Bolton-le-Moors, Lanes. : cross, 274 f.,
PL cm, 1. Bones, incised patterns on, 213. Book of Durrow, 179. Book-satchel, 262 ff. Books in sculpture, 201, 244, PL LXXXin,
3, 254, PL lxxxviii, 1, 255, PL LXXXIX,
278, PL cvn.
Boroughbridge, W. Yorks., 207.
Bosses on arrises of cross shafts, 143-148, PL xxxviii.
' Bowstones ' above Lyme Park, Che- shire, 115, PL xxxv.
Box, Wilts., 280.
Bradbourne, Derbyshire : cross shaft, 279.
Braddan, Isle of Man, 246 ; 86 cross- slab, 145 ; 109 cross shaft, 246 f., PL LXXXVI.
Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts. : church and slab, 178 f., 181, 183, PL XLVil, fig. 17.
Braun, Father Joseph, 144, 250.
Breastplate or ' ephod,' 262.
Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leics. : church and sculptures, 190-194, PL LVII, lix, 1, 273, 289.
Bregored, Abbot, 168.
Brescia, archaeological collections in, 127.
' Bretagne (Grand) ' article in Dictionnaire d'Archeologie Chretienne, see ' Cabrol, Dom. F.' and ' Leclercq, Dom. H.'
Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeo- logical Society, 109.
Britford, Wilts. : church, 177.
British Archaeological Association, Journal of the, see ' Irvine, James.'
British Association meeting at Sheffield in 1 9 10, notes for, see ' Innocent, Mr C. F.'
British Church, 164.
British Museum, London, 128, PL xxxvi, 196.
Brittany, Celtic, cross-form in, 131.
Brixworth, Northants. : church, 136, 177.
Brompton, nr. Northallerton, N. Yorks. : cross, 242 ; church and hogbacks, 292.
Brondsted, Dr J., 116-122, 124 f., 132 f., 136, 143, 157 f., 164, 182, 185, 189, 191, 206, 234, 260, 266, 282 f., 285 f.
Bronze Age, 265, 267.
Bronze brooches, 161 f., 261.
Bronze candelabra, mediaeval, 231.
Bronze chasing, Irish, 161 f., 180.
Brooches, 161 f., 261.
Browne, Bishop G. F., 134, 274 f.
Brunswick Casket, 288.
Bugge, Alexander, 153.
Bugge, Dr Anders, 293.
Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1930 exhibi- tion, 255.
Busts, human, 175, PL xlvi.
300
INDEX
Butler, Prof. Howard Crosby, fig. 14, 131. Byzantine lands, no evidence for the free- standing cross as a form of art in, 130. Byzantium, ' ring chain ' pattern in, 243.
Cable mouldings, 186, 195, PI. liv, lxi.
Cabrol, Dom. F., 112, 127, 165.
Callander, Prof. T., 130.
Calligraphy: Scandinavian, 227 f., 243, 265 f. ; Danish, 227, 266; Norse, 227 f., 237, 266. (See also ' Palaeo- graphy.')
Calverley, Rev. W. S., 134.
Cambridge school of funereal art, 95 f.
Campanula blossoms in vine foliage, 206, 294.
' Cancelli ' of marble in Italian churches, 177, 182.
Candelabra, mediaeval bronze, 231.
Canterbury, 169, 173, 175 f.
Cap : 146 ; round, indicating a bishop, 143 f., 249 f., PI. XXXVIII, 1, lxxxvii, 3.
Cappadocia, no evidence for the free- standing cross as a form of art in, 130.
Cardiff Museum, the ' Golden Grove ' stone in, 104.
Carlisle, stones in the diocese of, 134.
Carlowrie Castle, nr. Edinburgh: cross shaft, 199, PI. lxvi, 205, 248.
Carmarthen, the ' Golden Grove ' stone from near, 104.
Carolingian Renaissance, 158.
Carolingian sources of acanthus foliage tradition, 256.
' Caruncle ' in eye : of Irish animals, 156 ; of Teutonic animals, 156; set Irish fashion, 286, PI. CXI.
Carved stones in Isle of Man, see ' Manx carved stones.'
Carved stones, variation in form and en- richment of, 165. (See also ' Variety.')
Castle Hedingham, Essex : church and village, 148 j cross, 140 f., 147 ff., PI. XL, 2.
Castle Richmond, Yorks., 197.
Castor, nr. Peterborough, Northants. : church, 289; fragment of carved monument, 289.
Catacombs, wreath surrounding Chris- tian monogram, from the, 104, PI. xxvi, 1.
A Catalogue of Stones in the Cathedral Library, Durham, see ' Greenwell, Canon.'
Catalogue Raisonne of the monuments of Lincolnshire in the Archaeological Journal, see ' Davies, Rev. D. Stead- man.'
Cattaneo, Raffaele, cited, 126.
Ceadda, see ' St Chad.'
Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times, see ' Allen, Mr J. Romilly.'
Celtic Brittany, cross-form in, 131.
Celtic church in England, 229.
Celtic influence, see ' Irish influence.'
' Celtic, Late,' see ' Late-Celtic'
Celtic motives, 184. (See also ' Irish influence.')
Celtic pagan art, 180.
' A Celtic Reliquary found in a Nor- wegian Burial Mound,' paper in Det Kgl. Norske Videnskabers Selskabs Skrifter, 1909, no. 8, see ' Petersen, Th.'
Celtic stones, 218.
Celtic type of crosses mainly in Cornwall and Devon, 1 14 f., PI. xxxin, xxxiv, XXXV.
Centaur in sculpture, 191; female, with baby, 263 f., PI. xc.
Central rib with sloping lines from it, on animals, 283 f.
Centres of carving, professional workers in, queried, 214.
Chad, St, 222-225; tomb of, 287 fF., 292.
Chair of Maximian at Ravenna, 123, 151 f., PI. XLII, 2, XLIII.
Chalice in sculpture, 263.
Chares of Mitylene, 200.
Chevrons, 107, 140; on hogback at Heysham, 293, PI. cxvu.
China, ' ring chain ' pattern in, 243.
Christ and the Apostles in sculpture, 173.
Christ in mosaic, 202.
Christ in sculpture, 133, 169, 174, 186 ff., PI. LIII, liv, lv, 194, 196 f., PI. LXI, 199 ff., PI. LXII, I, LXIII, 2, LXIV, 3, 203, 244 f., PI. LXXXIII, 3, 249, 254, PL LXXXVIII, I, 255, PI. LXXXIX, 278, PI. CVII, 288.
Christ represented with moustache but
no beard, 187. Christianity, introduction of, to Ireland,
160, 163. Christian Malford, Wilts., in. Christian monogram, in. Christie, W., 240.
INDEX
3°i
Chronology, 135 f., 163, 191, 226, 239, 247, 284.
Church fittings from Italy in Early England, 177.
Ciborium, 172.
' Cimitile ' pattern, 146, PL XL, 1.
Claphatn, Mr A. W., 138, 182, 192 f., 289.
Clarity in Saxon design, 198.
Classical elements of the art, 150, 158.
Classical forms derived from Syria, 200.
Classical indications, 185 f.
Classical influence, 261, 264.
Classical learning in Early England, 170.
Classical origin of early English orna- ment, 1 1 9 f.
Classical sculpture, 172, 198.
Classical tradition in Anglo-Saxon sculp- ture, 194, 228.
Classicism, 174.
Cleckheaton, W. Yorks., 270.
Clemen, Prof. Paul, 106.
Cleopatra's Needle, 190.
Clonmacnois, 246 ; King Flann's cross, 180.
Closeburn, Dumfries, 209.
Colerne, Wilts. : slabs, 280-286, PL CIX.
Collingham, W. Yorks. : church, 153 ; cross shafts, 143, 146, PL XL, 1, 153- 157, fig. 16, 234.
Collingwood, Mr W. G., 97, 101, 116 f., 121 f., i34-i38» x4°> 146, i54> 186, 189, 194, 196, 213 ff., 224, 228, 234 f., 249 f., 261, 264 f., 276, 292 f.
Colour used on carved stones, 214.
Column, cylindrical, made up of carved drums, 172-176.
' Columnae caelatae,' 172, 176.
Compte Rendue of the archaeological con- gress at Louviers, 1928, see ' Coutil, M. Leon.'
Conglomerate used for crosses, 240.
Constantine, statue of, see ' Constanti- nople.'
Constantinople : ' great cross ' in the forum, 131 j statues of Constantine and Helena, 131.
' Contour line,' 156, 228 ff., 247, 249, PL lxxxvii, 1, 278, 283.
Conventions in treatment of human figure in Anglian sculpture, 184 f.
Coped tombstones, 144, 176, 256, 287, 289-295.
VI U
Coptic and Greek Texts of the Christian
Period, see ' Hall, H. R.' Coptic Egypt, use of cross-form in
funereal art of, 127 f., 131. Coptic free-standing sepulchral cross,
128, 131. Coptic tombstones, 127 ff., 131. (See
also ' Tomb slabs, Coptic.') Coptic use of pointed leaf motive, 1 50 f. Cornucopia ornament, 261. Cornwall, extent of crosses in, 102, 115. Coutil, M. Leon, 113 f., PL xxxn. Crawford, Mr O. G. S., 139. Creeton, nr. Corby, Lines. : principal
cross shaft, 140?., 148, PL XXXVII;
secondary cross shaft, 141. Cremation burial, 267. Cringleford, Norfolk: tombstone, 96,
PL xxv, 1. Croesus of Lydia, 176. Crofton, nr. Wakefield, W. Yorks. :
church, 248 ; cross fragments, 143,
248-251, PL lxxxvii, 286; village,
248-251. Cropthorne, Worcs. : cross-head, 278,
PL cvi. Cross: a free-standing sepulchral, from
Coptic Egypt, 128, PL xxxvi, 131;
' great cross ' at Constantinople, 131;
pectoral, 131, reliquary, 131. Cross-bases, 129, 169, 216, 232. (See
also ' Cross socket-stones.') Cross between two figures (a subject),
233-
Cross carvers, 222. (See also ' Artist- designers,' ' Designers,' and ' Master craftsmen.')
Cross-form, 235, 239; in Celtic Brittany, 131.
Cross, hand-held, in sculpture, 244, PL lxxxiii, 3, 249, PL lxxxvii, 3.
Cross-hatchings, 157.
Cross-head: a very late Saxon, 139, PL lxxii, 217, 279; Irish type of, 166.
Cross-heads, 216 f., PL lxxii, 224, 226, 238, 271 f., 277 ff.; decoration con- nected with that on shaft, 274 ff. ; free- armed, 269, 277 f. ; hammer, 224, 226 ; in a circle, 254, 256, PL lxxxviii, 3 ; pointed downward extension of, below transom, 240, 242, fig. 23, PL lxxxvii, 293; wheel, 129, 230, 233, PL lxxix, 276 f., distribution of, 245, PL lxxxiv, 247.
302
INDEX
Cross-on-hillock motive, 144 f.
Cross patv (or pat£e) form, 1 1 1, 127, 242, 256.
Cross shaft, 176, 271-277; of balusters, 254, 256, PI. lxxxviii, 3; in section square, 281 ; Saxon interest mainly in, 166; tapering, 93 f., 108, 126 f., 129 ff., 141 f., 145-148, 167, 173, 182, 188, 194, 247 f., 259, 271 ff.; types, 271-277. (See also ' Crosses, free- standing, tapering,' and ' Tapering.')
Cross shafts, 216-220, 231; arches on, 272; characteristics of, 182; cylin- drical, 169, 172, 185 f., 272; drawn in, 274 f . ; fillets, projecting, on, 271, 276 f. ; general proportions, 204; in original sections, 281 ; material of, 142, 146, 148 (see also ' Materials ' and ' Stone ') ; modifications in form of,
274 ff. ; monolithic, 148, type pre- valent in north, 204; niches on, 153, 272; projections like shoulders on,
275 f . ; rectangular rather than square,
204 f. ; round below and squared above, 271 f . ; treatment of side panels,
205 ; used for building material, 258 f., 277; with zoomorphic enrichment, 281.
Cross-slabs, carved, 218 f. ; in Isle of Man, 153, 235, 237 ff., 242-246, fig. 22, PI. lxxxiii, lxxxiv, lxxxv, charac- teristics of, 242 f., 245, extent of, 237, uses of, 245 (see also ' Manx carved stones,' and ' Manx and Scottish stones compared'); in Northumbria, 182, Jedburgh, 182 f., material, 183; Scot- tish, 104, 218 f.
Cross socket-stones, 269 if., 275 f. ; de- coration on, 196; Irish, 271; mould- ings on, 269, 271; ornamented, 270; several shafts in a, 269 f. (See also ' Cross-bases.')
Crosses carved in relief, 126 f., 129, 245 f.
Crosses, Celtic type of, mainly in Corn- wall and Devon, 1 14 f., PI. xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxv.
Crosses, foliated (an applied decorative motive), 144, 146, 256; mediaeval, 144, 256.
Crosses, free-standing carved stone, 165, 168 f., 171, 175 f., 188, 269; aesthetic character and value of, 105; Anglian, decoration of, 152, 164, 229; Anglo-
Saxon funereal, often parish monu- ments not necessarily associated with monasteries, 99; animals on, 143 (see also ' Animals ') ; a non liquet verdict in the question of origin of the art form of, 133; art of the, 162; bases of, see 'Cross-bases'; boundary, 106; cable margins on, 186, PI. LTV (see also • Cable mouldings ') ; Celtic type of, mainly in Cornwall and Devon, 1 14 f., PI. XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV; churchyard, 106 f. ; clarity in Saxon design of, 198 ; classical elements of the art of, 150, 158; date of the, 135 f., dating of, 143, 157, 210, 224, 226, period of the, 150, 184, 236, the first period of, the classical epoch, 150, 160, 162, 164, 184, the second period of, the Viking age, 152, 157, 160, 162; deictic, 106-111, of Cornwall and Devon, their date and Celtic type, ii4f., PI. xxxiii, xxxiv; distinctive character of Saxon art of the, 105, 142; distribution of, 94, 101, 166, 177; division between religious and secular, not apparent in mediaeval times, in; early Continental ceme- terial, 112 ff.; enriched, 137; enrich- ment of, 93 ; function of, 106 (see also ' uses of) ; heads of, see ' Cross-heads ' ; imitation of Anglo-Saxon, abroad, 107 ; importation of a foreign influence in the art of, suggested by Strzygowski, 128; in Gaul, 239, Germany, 107, Gotland, 240, Ireland, 180, 228, 235 f., 239, 241, 271, Isle of Man, 246 f., PI. lxxxvi (for other carvings in the Isle of Man see ' Cross-slabs, carved '), Mercia, 166, the Midlands, 166, Nor- mandy, 107, Norway, 239-242, 292 f., fig. 23, the North, 166 f., 169, 174-177, 183, 204, Oland, 240, Scandinavia, 125, 239-242, 292 f., fig. 23, the South, 166-169, 176 f., Sweden, 240; incised work on, 213 f . ; individuality and independence of the art of the, 149 ; individuality, rather than similarity or school-production, a characteristic of the, 95 f. ; influence of early types of, on Scandinavian crosses, 239, 292 f. ; inscriptions on, 93 ; knot-work on, 143 (see also ' Knot-work patterns ') ; lead used structurally in, 252, 271; market, 106 f., primarily mediaeval, 1 12 ; material of, 250 (see also 'Materials'
INDEX
3°3
Crosses — {continued) .
and 'Stone'); as memorials, 223, 250 f., 253, 258, 261, 270 (see also ' uses of,' and ' Memorials ') ; mono- lithic, 269; native home of the art of, in Northumbria or the South?, 166, 169, 176 f.; naturalism in the decora- tion of, 150 fF. ; nature or uses of, 1 14, 165, 216, 222 f., 250 f., 253, 258, 261, 270 (see also ' function of,' and ' pur- pose of ') ; no evidence of Irish influ- ence on Anglian, before the coming of the Vikings, 164; origin of, 995 painted, 169; peculiar to British Isles, 100, 105, 125, 127, 131; period of the, see ' date of the,' etc. ; pointed down- ward extension of cross-head below transom on, fig. 23, 240, 242, PI. lxxxvii, 293 ; post-Conquest Saxonic, 148; primitive, in Brittany, 113; primitive pseudo-Irish, 106, 112 fF.; principal subjects of carvings on shaft of Anglian, rather than, as in Ireland, on the cross-head, 166; place of the art of, in the life of the times, 98 ; probable extent of the whole output of, 101 ; purpose of, 93, 165, 167 (see also ' uses of) ; quality of design and work- manship of, through the period, 97; recurrence of patterns on, not neces- sarily an indication of local schools, 95 f. ; relief, high and low, in the carving of figures on the, 195; Saxon, l3%> r77> Scandinavian influence in the art of the, 150 (see also ' Scandin- avian influence ') ; scroll-work on, 143 f., 147 (see also ' Scroll-work ' and ' Scrolls ') ; shafts of, see ' Cross shafts ' ; shape and size of, 93, 270 f. ; socket- stones of, see ' Cross socket-stones ' ; subjects on, see ' Animals,' ' Human figures,' etc., as well as definite sub- jects such as ' Crucifixion ' ; Syrian scroll on, 175; tapering, 93 f., 126 f., 129 fF., 141 f., 145-148, 259, 271 f.; termination of the art of, with the Conquest, 138, 140; tools used in carving, 214; ultimate fate of the, 252; unfinished, 212 f . ; use of different materials for shaft and head, 248 f. ; uses of, see also ' function of,' ' as memorials ' (funeral monuments), ' nature or uses of,' ' purpose of,' in Norway, 240 f. ; variety in design and
VI U2
decoration of, 95 ; widespread dis- tribution of fragments of, 137; with tapered stems, a peculiarly northern type, 130 f.
Crosses, incised, 224. (See also ' St An- drew's cross, incised.')
Crosses on coped and flat tombstones, 290 f.
Crosses, stone, to mark route of a funeral procession, 168.
Crosses to mark preaching stations, 167.
Crosses, wooden, 100, 168.
Crossing, Mr William, cited, 114.
Crucifixion in sculpture, 143, 166, 169, 173, 196, 277 fF. ; on shaft, rather than on cross-head as in Ireland, 166.
Cumberland, 227 f., 232; Norse settlers in, 153, 236.
Cumbria, 271.
Cumbro-Norse stone-cutters, 212.
Cundal, N. Yorks. : fragments belonging to the Aldborough cross, 207, PI. LXX, 2, 211.
Cups or bands on vine foliage scrolls where tendrils branch off, 185; use in dating of, 191 f.
Cuthbert, St, 256.
Cylindrical drums, carved, 172-176.
Cylindrical shafts, 172-176, 271-273; tapering of, 173, 273.
Dagger in sculpture, 195, PI. lx.
Dalton, O. M., cited, 128, 131.
Danes, 152 f., 227, 230; destruction of Fletton church in 870 by the, 192; invasion of York in 867 by the, 152 fF., 157, 184, 207, 227, 229, 247, 266.
Dare, Mr Paul, 276.
Darius, 200.
Dartmoor, crosses on, 1 14 f., PI. XXXin.
Date: of the Anglian style, 184; of the early crosses, 135. (See also ' Crosses, free-standing carved stone, date of the.')
Dating : by means of bands on foliage scrolls where tendrils branch off, 191 f. (see also ' Bands or cups on vine foliage scrolls ') ; comparative, of subjects represented in the carvings, 187.
David with his harp, 263, PI. xc.
Davies, Rev. D. Steadman, 101, 141.
Dearham, Cumberland : cross (with ring chain pattern), PI. LXXXII.
de Caumont cited, 107, 113.
Decorative sculpture (ornament), 255,
304
INDEX
Dcerhurst, Glos. : church, 253, 257, 294; font, 179, 181, 257.
Denmark, 235, 282, 285.
Derby Museum stones, 282, 285.
Design, clarity in Saxon, 198.
Designers, 251, 258, 264, 275, 279, 290 f. (See also ' Artist-designers,' ' Cross carvers,' ' Master craftsmen.')
Destruction of the monuments, 216-220, 252.
de Vogue, 131.
Devon, crosses in, 1 14 f., PI. xxxiii.
Dewsbury, W. Yorks., 185, 251; cir- cular cross shaft fragments, 185 f., PL Lin ; rectangular or ' Mary ' cross shaft fragments, 186 f., PI. liv.
Diaper patterns in Scandinavian animal style, 156, 228 f., 247, 278.
Diapers in carving, 156, 158.
Dictionnaire d'Archeologie Chre'tienne, see ' Cabrol, Dom. F.' and ' Leclercq, Dom. H.'
Diehl, Prof. Charles, 124, 131.
Disciples about the figure of Christ in sculpture, 188, 197, 288.
Domesday Book, in.
Doulting, Somerset, 168.
Doyle, D., 191.
Dragons in sculpture, 230 f., 247, 264, 282-286.
Drapery, modelling of, 174, 186, 193 f., 196, 289.
Ducal Palace, Venice, 159 f.
Dugdale, Sir W., 249.
Dunstan, St, 96.
Durham: ravaged by William I in 1068, 149; Castle-Palace Chapel, carved capitals, 139; cathedral, 216; cathe- dral library, collection of monuments in, 94, PI. XXIV, 118, 139, 217, 235, 283, hogbacks in, 292, late Saxon cross- head in, 139, 217, PI. lxxii, 279; Norman chapter house, 217; Saxon cemetery, 217, 279; Saxon crosses at, 217, PI. LXXII.
Durrow, Book of, 179.
Eagles in sculpture, 203.
Early Christian communities not familiar with free-standing cross-form of art, 132.
The Early Christian Monuments of Scot- land, see Allen, Mr. J. Romilly.
The Early Christian Remains in the region of Sheffield described in notes for British Association, see ' Innocent, Mr C. F.'
Early Christian sculptors of England, 176.
Early Christian sculpture, 172.
Early English Ornament, see ' Brond- sted, Dr J.'
Early Sculptured Crosses in the Diocese of Carlisle, see ' Calverley, Rev. W. S.'
Easby, N. Yorks., 102, 220, 252 ; church, 102, 197 f. ; cross, 197 ff., 201-204, PI. LXII, LXIII, LXIV, LXV, 210, 220,
282.
East Anglia, extension of Cambridge
school into, 95 f. East, British art of the crosses not found
in Early Christian Art of the near,
105. Eastern origins, 280.
East Lexham, Norfolk: ' transenna,' 129. East to West current of general artistic
influence, 120, 128. Ecclesfield, nr. Sheffield, W. Yorks. :
multiple socket-stone and shaft, 269 f.,
PI. XCVI. Ecclesiastics in sculpture, 245 f., PI.
lxxxiv, 263 f., PI. XCIII. ' Ecclesiola ' at Bradford - on - Avon,
Wilts. {q-<v.), 178. Edgar, King, 96. Edschmiatsin Museum, slab from Os-
chakan in, 129. Edward the Confessor, King, 138. Egyptian processes of quarrying and
masonry, 259. Egyptians, 212. Eliot, George, 221. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edn.,
article ' William I,' cited, 149. England, geographical extent of, in
Saxon times, 102 f. England, later carvings in the south-west
of, 280-283. England, Norse settlers in northern, 153 ;
Vikings in north-west, 227. English Romanesque Architecture before
the Conquest, see Clapham, Mr A. W. English Viking Society for Northern
Research, 117. Enlart, Camille, cited, 113. Enrichment of Anglo-Saxon churches,
177 ff., 181 ff.
INDEX
305
Entrelacs, Saxon, 141, 175, 213, 231, 243, 245, 249 f., 271, 276. (See also ' Inter- lacing work.')
' Das Erwachen der Nordforschung in der Kunstgeschichte,' article in Acta of the Academy of Abo in Finland for 1923, see Strzygowski, Prof. Josef.
Essex stone-work, 148.
Ethelred II, King, 272.
Evangelical symbols, 189.
Evangelist in sculpture, 263 f.
Evangelists, the four, in sculpture, 189.
Eye, iris or socket of, of human figures hollowed out in Saxon carving, 175, 194.
Eye, treatment of, in sculptured animals,
Eyes, drilled holes to indicate, 262. Fafni the dragon, 232, PI. lxxvii,
LXXVIII.
Fanciful treatment of birds and animals,
152. Farnley Hall, W. Yorks., 185. Feathers possibly indicated by diaper
patterns, 156. Feet: modelling of, 174; of human
figures in Anglian sculpture, 185,
193 f., PI. lix, 1, 2, 20 r, PI. lxiv, 3,
289. Fenri the wolf, 234, PI. LXXXi, 244,
PI. lxxxiii, 2. Figure-of-eight twist, 116, 118 f., 145,
147, 151, fig. 15, 2, PI. XXXVIII, 3,
xxxix, 1. Figure sculpture (representation), 255. Figures, human, see ' Human figures.' Fillets, projecting, 271, 276 f. Fish, symbolic, in sculpture, 245, PI.
LXXXIII, 3. Five-lobed vine leaves, 151. Flann, King, 180.
Flat linear decoration, 148, 158, 286. Fleming, Dr D. Hay, 218 ff. Fletton, Hunts., nr. Peterborough :
church and sculptures, 190, 192 ff.,
PI. lviii, lix, 2, 273, 289. Flight into Egypt in sculpture, 187. Flowers in sculpture, 206, 209, 294. Foliage : Carolingian acanthus at Thry-
bergh, 142, 144 f., 149, PI. xxxvui,
1, 2, 3 j in Norman compared with
Saxon carving, 139.
Foliage motives, 150 ff., PI. xlii, xliii,
*-57> *59> i75> l83> PI- l, 184 f., 189, 191-196, 198 ff., 203, 204-210, 231, 248, 250, 254, 256 f., 270, 273-276, 278 ff., 285, 290 f. ; continental designs in, 206 ; harmonious compositions in, 209 ; ' play ' at stem junctions in, 206 ; ' Tree of Life ' scrolls in, 205, PI. XLIX ; use of one or two stems in, 205.
Fonts, 179.
Foreign artificers, the question of: in Northumbria, 120 f., 1236°., 132 f., 185, 189, 203 ; in southern England, 132, 175 f., 209.
Foreign influence : in architecture, at Deerhurst, 294 ; in the art of south- eastern England, 133.
Foreign stone used in English monu- ments, 176.
Fortidsforeningens Aarbog, 1895, paper in, see ' Christie, W.'
Fowler, Canon James, 248.
Fox, Mr Cyril, 95.
Frames around panels, 181 f.
France : foreign influence under Visi- goths in, 128 ; no evidence for the free-standing cross as a form of art in, 107, 127.
Franks Casket, 231 ff.
Free-armed cross-heads, 269, 277 f.
Freestone used for crosses, 250.
Fret, diagonal, motive, 192, PI. LVll.
Fretted stone- work, 192 f.
Friezes, 191, PI. LVll.
Funeral monuments, 93, 99, 253, 255, 261, 265, 267, 270. (See also ' Crosses, free-standing carved stone, as mem- orials.')
Funeral processions, crosses used in con- nection with, 168.
Fur possibly indicated by diaper patterns, t56.
' Futhork,' 228.
Gables, 288, 294.
Gabriel, the Angel, in sculpture, 189.
Galatia, no evidence for the free-standing
cross as a form of art in, 130. Garden of Gethsemane, 174. Gardner, Mr Arthur, cited, 121, 139. Gauckler, M. Paul, cited, fig. 14, 119,
126. Gaul, 163, 239. Gaut, 215, 237 f., 242 ff., 246.
306
INDEX
Gaut's cross, Michael 74, 237 f., fig. 22, 243, 285.
Geometric motives and patterns, 157, 175, 280, 283, 291 ; on Manx stones, 242 f., 245 ; in Scandinavian animal style, 228 ; used in Italian church decora- tion, 177.
Germanic animal ornament, 163.
Germanic tribes, 150.
Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, see ' William of Malmesbury.'
Gesta Regum, see ' William of Malmes- bury.'
Gilling, N. Yorks. : cross, 242.
Glastonbury, Somerset, 167 f., 236, 272 ; later style of animal carving at, 282, 285.
Gloucester Museum : carved stone bear- head in, 294, PI. CXVIII ; stones, 282, 285 f., PI. CXI.
'Golden Grove ' stone, 104.
Gold work : ancient, 200 ; of the Migration period, 179.
Gorm, King, 285.
Gosforth, Cumberland : cross, 97, 122, 212.
Gospels of Lindisfarne, 157, 162, 179.
Gothic architecture, 190.
Gothic art, 236.
Gothic details, 143, 149.
Gothic period, 252.
Gotland, 153; crosses in, 240 ; slabs, 230.
' Grand Bretagne ' article in Dictionnaire cT ' Arche'ologie Chretienne, see ' Cabrol, Dom. F.' and ' Leclercq, Dom. H.'
Grani, Sigurd's horse, 232, 244, PI. LXXXIII, 1.
Grape clusters, see ' Vine foliage ' and ' Rosettes.'
Greece, no evidence for the free-standing cross as a form of art in, 130.
Greek floral patterns, 180.
Green colour used on carved stones, 214.
Greenwell, Canon, 94, 120, 127.
* Gribedyrene,' 158. (See also ' Grip- ping beasts.')
'Gripping beasts,' 158 f., 228-231, 261, 280, 286.
Gripping hands, 261, 280.
Grisy, Calvados : cross, 107 ff., PL xxix.
Gritstone, Yorkshire, used for crosses, 146, 250, 270 f.
Grouping of figures on the monuments,
301.
Groups of master designers, 216. Gsell, M. S., cited, 126. Guildhall Museum, London, 213. Guilloche pattern, 243. Gulval, Cornwall, 143.
Hall, H. R., 128.
Halton, Lanes., 232 ; cross, 232 f., PL
LXXVII, LXXVIII. Hammer cross-heads, 224, 226. Hands, modelling of, 174, 196, PL lxi,
249. Hanley Castle, Worcs., 253. (See also
' Lechmere stone.') Harmston, Lines. : cross, 277. Harold Blue-Tooth, 285. Harrogate, W. Yorks., 266. Harrogate Corporation, 267. Hartshead, W. Yorks. : church, 270. Haughton-le-Skerne, nr. Darlington, Co.
Durham : carved stone, 228 ff., PL
lxxv, 1. Heads, architectural use of projecting,
294. Heavenfield, i| miles east of Chollerford,
Northumberland, wooden cross set up
by King Oswald at, 100. Hebrides, the, Vikings in, 227, 235. Hedda, Bishop, 168, 288. ' Hedda ' stone (in Peterborough Cathe- dral), 288 f., PL cxiii. Hefenfeld, see ' Heavenfield.' Heimdall, 234 f.
Helena, statue of, see ' Constantinople.' Hellenistic art, 200. Hellenistic Syria, 150. Hellenistically trained carvers possibly
in England, 132, 203. Henry VII, King, period of, 170. Henry VIII, King, 170; commission
from, 169-172 ; period of, 169. Heofonfeld, see ' Heavenfield.' Heversham, Westmorland, 211 ; cross,
PL lxxi, 282. Hexham, Northumberland, 95 f., 118 f.,
135, 176 f. ; church, 136 ; cross at the
Spital, 199, PL CVill, 279 ; recurrence
of certain patterns in design at, 95 f.
(See also ' Acca cross from Hexham.') Heysham, Lanes. : hogback, 293, PL
CXVII. Hiberno-Saxon MSS., 179 f. High Hawsker, N. Yorks. : cross, 242. Hildebrand, Dr H., 261.
INDEX
307
Hillborough, Kent : fragments from Reculver at, 172-176, PL XLV, xlvi.
Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 253.
H.M. Office of Works for Scotland, 96, 183.
Hist. Dunelm. Eccl., see ' Symeon of Durham.'
Historia Ecclesiastica, see ' Bede.'
Historical Association, 99.
History of the monuments, 216-220.
Hoddam, Dumfriesshire, 209 ; cross- heads, 132, 278, PI. evil.
Hodges, Mr Charles Clement, 196, 206, 218.
' Hogbacks,' 287, 291-295. (See also " Coped tombstones.')
Hood with streamers, 261.
Horn, hunting, in sculpture, 195, PI. LX, 234.
Hornby, Lanes. : cross-base, 129, 271 ; cross shaft showing the miracle of the loaves and fishes, 187 f., PL LV ; stones, 187 f., 197.
Horned human head, 249, PL lxxxvii, 5.
Hospitium, York, cross shaft from the, 194 f., PL LX.
Hovey, Mr W. R., 180.
Hovingham, N. Yorks. : church, 188 ff. ; panel, 188 ff., PL lvi, 273, date 189 f.
Huddersfield, W. Yorks., 215.
Human busts, 175, PL xlvi.
Human face in sculpture, 204.
Human figures, 136, 146, PL xxxix, 1, 3, 150, 157, 167, 169, 173 f., 184-189, 191-196, 198, 200 f., 204, 230, 234, 238, 245 f., 249 f., 254 f., 259-264, 272, 275, 277 ff., 288 f., 291, 293 ; grouping of, in sculpture, 201 ; variety in sculpture of, 201.
Hunting scenes, 245 f., PL lxxxiv, 293.
Iceland, 160.
Ikonographie, see ' Kunstle, Prof.'
Ham, Staffs. : crosses, 271 f., PL C, CI;
cross with cylindrical lower part, 272,
PL C ; cross with rectangular lower
part, 216, 272, PL ci. Ilkley, W. Yorks. : cross fragments in
church, 213 ; cross fragments in
museum, 213. Incised ornament, 213 f., 224, 255, PL
LXXXix, 283. (See also ' Crosses,
incised.')
Independence and individualityof Anglo- Saxon plastic art, 149.
The Industrial Arts of Scandinavia, see 4 Hildebrand, Dr H.'
' The Influence of the West on the Norse- men in Viking Times,' see ' Bugge, Alexander.'
Innocent, Mr C. F., 142, 145.
Inscriptions, 93, 132, 136, 154, 167 ff., 187, 196, 215, 223-228, fig. 2i, 237, 243, 246, PL lxxxvi, 255, 265-268 ; funereal, 136, 255, 265-268.
Interlace of elaborate form, 96 f., PL xxv, 2.
Interlacing of figures' legs with boughs characteristically Anglian, 196.
Interlacing work, 117, 147, 163, 175, 182, 196, 213, 238, 243, 249 f., 276, 284, 290 f. (See also ' Entrelacs, Saxon.')
Interpenetrations, 117 ff., 185, 290.
Intersections in ornamental design, 1 17 ff.
Iona, 100.
Ireland, 153, 160, 162 f., 168, 213, 236, 239, 266, 271, 283 f. ; sculpture in, 179 f., 196; socket-stones in, 196; Vikings in, 227 ; wheel cross-heads of, 104, 129.
Irish animal ornament, 162. (See also ' Irish motives in animal carving.')
Irish Art, 161-164, 228, 283 f. (See also ' Irish decorative art.')
Irish bronze-work, 161, PL xliv, 2.
Irish crosses, 180, 228, 235 f., 239, 241, 271.
Irish cross-head type, 166.
Irish decorative art, 179 f.
Irish influence, 160-164, 262, 283 ff. ; in the Isle of Man, 231, 235, 237, 239,
242, 245 ff. ; on St Chad, 222. Irish MSS., 179 f., 228.
Irish monuments, date and character- istics of, 103.
Irish motives in animal carving, 156, 284.
Irish provenance of certain Scandinavian motives, 157 ; their influence in Scan- dinavian art, 280, 282.
Irish, the, 160, 164, 166, 180, 222, 229,
243, 280.
Irton, Cumberland : cross, 269, PL
XCV. Irvine, Mr James, 109, 179. Isaiah, 222.
3o8 INDEX
Isle of Man, 215, 231, 236, 285 ; carved cross-slabs in, 153 (see also ' Cross- slabs, carved ') ; Norse settlers in, 153 ;
235
wheel cross-
Vikings in, 227,
heads of, 104. Isle of Thanet, 169. Italian ornament, 159 f., 293. (See also
' Venice, St Mark's.') ' Italian ' style of decoration, 159. Italy : importation of trellis pattern
from, 146 (see also ' Cimitile ' pattern) ;
no evidence for the free-standing cross
as a form of art in, 126 f. The Itinerary of John Leland, see ' Leland,
John.'
James, St, in sculpture, 169.
Jedburgh, Roxburghshire : fragments of
sculptured stones, 183, PL XLix ; slab,
182 f., PI. xlix, L, 205, 209. Jellinge, nr. Veile in Jutland, composite
monument at, 285. ' Jellinge ' style, 282, 293. Jewel work, Kentish, 179. John, St : in Crucifixion subject, 279 ;
in mosaic, 202 ; in sculpture, 133, 169,
202 f., 279. Jones, Mr W. J., 177. Journal of the British Archaeological
Association, see ' Irvine, Mr James.* Journeymen carvers, 215.
Kaiser -Friedrich Museum, Berlin,
118 f., 123. Kaye, Mr Walter, 267 f. Kells, Meath : monastery, 236 ; un- finished cross, 213, 236. Kent, carved stone monuments in, 236.
(See also ' Reculver, fragments from.') Kentish jewel-work, 179. Kentwin, King of Wessex, 168. Kermode, Mr P. M. C, 232, 235 fF.,
245 f. Keyser, Mr Charles E., 140. King Flann's cross at Clonmacnois, 180. Kirk Heaton, nr. Huddersfield, W.
Yorks. : signed stone in the church,
215. Knot-work patterns, 143, 153, 182, 188,
199, 288, 291. Det Kgl. Norske Videnskabers Se/skabs
Skrifter, 1909, No. 8, paper in, see
' Petersen, Th.'
Koptische Kunst, see ' Strzygowski, Prof.
Josef.' Kiinstle, Prof., 174.
The Laboriouse Journey and Serche of Johan Leylande for Englandes Anti- quities ... see ' Leland, John.' Lamb in sculpture, 264. (See also ' Dur- ham, cathedral library, late Saxon cross-head in.') ' Lampass ' cross at Stanground, Hunts.,
no f., PL xxxi, 1, 3, 275 ff. Lancashire, 273 ; enrichment of cross shafts in, 273 ff. ; north, 227 f., 232. Langbar, or White Lyne, Common, nr. Bewcastle, Cumberland : cut and squared stone, 212. Langdon, Mr Arthur G., cited, 102, 115. 'Lappet' defined, 156, 228 ff. Lastingham, N. Yorks. : church and
monastery, 223. Last Judgment in sculpture, 293. ' Late-Celtic ' art, 163, 180, 228. Lateran Museum, Rome, 127. ' Latran ' article in Dictionnaire d'Arche'o- logie Chretienne, see ' Cabrol, Dom. F.,' and ' Leclercq, Dom. H.' Lawson family, 207.
Lawson monument, see ' Roecliffe cross.' Lead, crosses run with, 252, 271. Leaf-form, development of the, 193. Lechmere, Sir Edmund, Bart., 253. Lechmere stone, 194, 253-257, PL
LXXXVIII. Leclercq, Dom. H., cited, 112, 127, 165. Leeds, W. Yorks.: cross in parish church,
233 f., PL LXXIX, LXXX. Leek, Staffs. : cross, 271 f., PL xcviii. Leigh ton, Lord, 190. Leland cross from Reculver, 172-176, PL XLV, XLVI ; date, 167, 172. (See also ' Reculver, fragments from.') Leland, John, 169-176. Lelewel, Joachim, 277. Lethaby, Prof., 273. Levisham, nr. Pickering, N. Yorks. :
tombstone, 230, PL LXXV, 2. Lexow, Dr Einar, 243. Lichen, action of, on stone, 260. Lichfield, 287.
Limestone used for crosses, 142, 281. Lincolnshire, the monuments of, cata- logued, 101. Lindisfarne Gospels, 157, 162, 179.
INDEX
309
Lindisfarne, Northumberland : cross, 252.
Linear patterns, flat, 148, 158, 286.
Liturgical vestments, see ' Cap, round ' and ' Mitre.'
Die Liturgiscke Gevoandung im Occident und Orient, see 'Braun, Father Joseph.'
' Livery ' defined, 154-156, 162, 228, 249.
Livett, Canon Grevile, 173.
Local schools of carving, 95 f.
Locus of the carving, 213 f., 251.
London, see ' British Museum,' ' Guild- hall Museum,' and ' Victoria and Albert Museum.'
Longthorpe, Northants. : cross, 109 f., PL xxxi, 2.
Lothian, Marquess of, 183.
Louviers, 1928, archaeological congress at, 113.
Luna in Crucifixion subject, 279.
Lune valley, Lanes., 187, 232.
Lycaonia, no evidence for the free- standing cross as a form of art in, 130.
Lyme Hall, nr. Macclesfield, Cheshire : crosses, 272.
Lyme Park, Cheshire : ' Bowstones,' overlooking the park, 115, PI. xxxv.
Lypiatt, or Bisley, Glos. : cross, 108 f., PL XXX.
Lythe, nr. Whitby, N. Yorks. : frag- ments, 289.
Macalister, Prof. R. A. S., 162, 213,
236. Macclesfield, Cheshire : crosses, 271 f. Madonna and Child, see ' Mother and
Child.' Magdalen, see ' Mary Magdalen, St.' Majestas Domini : in mosaic, 202 ; in
sculpture, 199, 201, 203, PL lxiii, 2,
lxiv, 3. Male, Emile, 135. Malmesbury, 167 f. ; ' Bishop - stone '
at, 168. Malmesbury, William of, see ' William of
Malmesbury.' Manx and Scottish stones compared, 104. Manx carved stones, 145, 231 f., 235-239,
242 f. (See also ' Cross-slabs, carved,
in Isle of Man,' ' Crosses, free-standing
carved stone, in Isle of Man,' and 'Manx
and Scottish stones compared.') Manx Crosses, see ' Kermode, Mr
p. m. c:
Manx Crosses relating to Great Britain and Norway, see ' Shetelig, Prof. Haakon.'
Man, see ' Isle of Man.'
Manual of Byzantine Art, see ' Manuel d'Art Byzantin.'
Manuel d'Archeologie Francaise, Archi- tecture Religieuse, see 'Enlart, Camille.'
Manuel d'Art Byzantin, see ' Diehl, Prof. Ch.'
MS. Cott. Claud. A nr, 144.
MS. decorative work, 181.
MS. illuminations, 194.
MSS., Hiberno-Saxon, 179 f.
MSS., Irish, 179 f., 228.
Marble fittings in Italian churches, 177.
Marlborough, Wilts., 283.
Marsland, Mr Ellis, 109.
' Mary ' cross shaft at Dewsbury, W. Yorks., 186, PL Liv.
Mary, St, in sculpture, 186 f., PL LIV, 189, PL LVi, 200, 263 f., PL XC ; in sculptured Crucifixion subject, 279.
Mary Magdalen, St, in sculpture, 133, 174, 203.
Masham, N. Yorks. : pillar, 272.
Master craftsmen, 204 f., 215, 222. (See also ' Designers.')
Materials of the monuments, 142, 146, 148, 183, 189, 240, 242, 250, 253, 259, 269, 281.
Maughold, nr. Ramsey, Isle of Man, 235 ; church, 245 ; 66 cross-slab, 245 f., PL lxxxiv ; 72 cross-slab, 246, PL lxxxv ; grave of first Scandinavian bishop in Man at, 246.
Maximian, chair of, at Ravenna, 123, 151 f., PL xlii, 2, XLIII.
Medieval Figure-Sculpture in England, An Account of, see ' Prior, Prof. Edward S.' and ' Gardner, Mr Arthur.'
Mediterranean type of foliage, 205.
Memorials, 125, 127, 258, 261, 265, 267. (See also ' Crosses, free-standing carved stone, as memorials ' and ' Funeral monuments.')
Mendip Hills, Somerset, 282.
' Merchants' Cross ' on Dartmoor, Devon, 114 ; PL xxxiii.
Mercia, crosses and pillars in, 115, 271 fF.
Mercian type of shaft, 115, 271, 273.
Mercians, Bishop of the, see ' St Chad.'
The Merry Wives of Windsor, 294.
3io
INDEX
Metal decorative work, 181.
Michael, Isle of Man : 74 cross-slab,
237 f., fig. 22, 243, 285. Middlesmoor, W. Yorks. : church, 223 ;
cross, 223-226, PI. lxxiv, fig. 21. Middleton, N. Yorks. : church, 230,
276 ; cross in masonry, 230, PI.
LXXVI ; free-standing cross, 276, PI.
CIV. Midlands and south-western England,
rather than the north, the home of
zoomorphic decoration, 280, 285. A Midsummer Night's Dream, 253. ' Migration ' period, art of the, 150, 152,
158, 163, 179, 228, 280. Milan, archaeological collections in, 126 f. Miracle of Cana in sculpture, 187, PI.
LIV, 2.
Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes in sculp- ture, 187, PI. LIV, 2, LV.
Mithraic influence, 288.
Mitre, early form of, in sculpture, 143 f., PI. xxxviii, 1, 249 f., PI. lxxxvii, 3. (See also ' Cap.')
Monkwearmouth, Co. Durham : church date, 136.
Monumentos Arquitectanicos de Espana, 125 f.
Monuments: carved, extent of, 216; making of, 222; output of, 137; ultimate fate of, 252 ; unfinished, 212 f ; uses of, 253, 255. (See also ' Memorials.')
Morecambe Bay, 293.
Morham, E. Lothian, 209.
Morris, Rev. M. C. F., 258.
Moslem decoration, ' ring chain ' pat- tern in, 243.
Mother and Child in sculpture, 186 f., PL liv, 1, 263 f., PI. xc.
Motives : acanthus, 273 ; bear, 291-295 ; cornucopia, 261 ; gripping hands, 261, 280 ; niches with arched heads, 108 f., 153, 201, PI. XXX, LVIII, LXIV ; 'ring chain,' 238, fig. 22, 243, PI. lxxxii ; roofing tiles, 289, 291 fF. ; Scandin- avian diapering, 278 (see also ' Diaper patterns ') ; Scandinavian ring, 145, 264, 285 ; sheaf, 206, fig. 20. (See also ' Animals,' ' Birds,' ' Foliage,' ' Human figures,' ' Ornamental,' ' Sea- life,' and ' Vine motives.')
Moulded frames around sculptured panels, 181 f.
Mouldings, 181 f., 269, 271 ; cable, 186, 195, PI. Liv, LXI ; roll, 147, 195, PI. lxi, 291.
Mschatta facade from Syria, vine ten- drils on, 1 18 f.
Miiller, Sophus, 230, 265.
Myredeh, 215.
Mythology, northern scenes and figures from, in sculpture, 157, 231-235, 243 fF.
Nassington, Northants. : cross, 277. Native home of the art in Northumbria
or the South, 166, 169, 176 f. Naturalism in Anglo-Saxon sculpture,
150 fF., 185, PI. li, 206, fig. 19; the
question of, 207, 209 fF. Naturalism in decorative motives in early
art, 150 fF. Nature or uses of the crosses, see ' Crosses,
free-standing carved stone, nature or
uses of.' Near East, British art of the crosses not
found in Early Christian Art of the,
105. Newark-on-Trent, Notts., 215. Niches on cross shafts, see ' Arched tops
to panels and niches ' and ' Pointed
arched niche.' Nimbed figures in sculpture, 187 f., 194,
196, 201 f., 254, PI. lxxxviii, 1, 278,
288. Nimbus, cruciferous, 254, PI. LXXXVin,
1, 288. Nith Ford cross at Thornhill, Dumfries- shire, III f., PI. xxvi, 2. Nith river and region, 112. Nola in Campagna, 146. Non liquet verdict for the origin of the
art of the crosses, 133. Norderhov, Norway : funereal stone, 293,
PI. CXVI. Nordische Altertumskunde, see ' Miiller,
Sophus.' Norman and Saxon periods in sculpture
delimited, no f. Norman architecture, 138 f., 179, 183,
190. Norman art, 136, 273. ' Norman ' cross shafts, 142. Norman detail on Saxon monuments,
140 f., PL xxxvii. Norman linear patterns, 148. Norman palmettes, 148.
INDEX
3"
Norman period excluded in Isle of Man,
236. Norman sculpture, 138 ff., 148 f. Norman Tympana and Lintels, see ' Key-
ser, Mr Charles E.' Normans, 160, 216 f., 236, 252, 279. Norse art, 157, 239-242. Norse crosses, 239-242, fig. 23. Norse influence in Isle of Man, 231, 235,
237 f., 243-247. Norse infusion from Ireland by way of
Cumberland into Yorkshire, 266. Norsemen, 152 f., 156, 160 fF, 227 f.,
230, 236, 239 ; raids on Irish sites by,
162. (See also ' Cumbro-Norse stone- cutters.') Norse wood-carving, 156 fF, PI. xliv, 1. De Norske Vikings^verd, see ' Petersen,
Jan.* Northallerton, N. Yorks., 292 ; stones,
140. Northern influence, 207, 227-235, 243.
(See also ' Scandinavian influence.') Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman
Age, see ' Collingwood, Mr W. G.' Northumbrian monuments, 169, 236,
239. Northumbrian stone-work, 148. Norway, 159, 161, 227, 239 ff., 267,
284; crosses in, 239-242, fig. 23. Norwegian art, 158, 228 f. Norwegians, 153, 227 f., 235, 280, 284,
292. Norwegian Viking axe-heads, 267 f.,
PI. xciv, 3. Norwich Museum : stones, 282, 285. Nunburnholme, E. Yorks. : church, 258 ;
cross shaft, 191, 194, 258-264, PL XC,
xci, xcn, xcin, 280. Nunburnholme, Rector of, 258. Nunnykirk, Northumberland : cross
shaft, 205, 208 f., frontispiece, PI. lxvii,
LXVIII, 275 f., 282. ' Nun's cross ' on Dartmoor, Devon, 114,
PI. XXXIII.
Odin in sculpture, 233 f., PI. lxxxi, 244,
PI. lxxxiii, 2. Olaf, St, 242. Oland, crosses in, 240. Old Cornish Crosses, see ' Langdon, Mr
Arthur G.' Oldtiden, Bind 11, 1912, paper in, see
' Bendixen, B. E.'
' Om Stenkors ' paper in Fortidsforening- ens Aarbog, 1895, see ' Christie, W.'
Oolite used for monuments, 253.
Orb in sculpture, 201.
Origin of Christian Church Art, see ' Strzygowski, Prof. Josef.'
Origin of early English art, 119 fF. ; the suggested external, 209.
Orkney, Vikings in, 227.
Ormside bowl, 122.
Ornament, see ' Decorative sculpture.'
Ornamental motives, 191 ff.
' An Ornamented Celtic Bronze Object found in a Norwegian Grave,' paper in Bergens Museums Aarbok, 1924-25, see ' Boe, Dr Johs.'
Oschakan, slab from, now at Edschmiat- sin, 129 f.
Oseberg ship, 157 f., PL XLIV, 1, 228 f., 238, 284.
Oslo, University Museum of National Antiquities at, 157.
Oswald, St, King of Northumbria, 100, 221.
Otley, W. Yorks. : church, collection of carved stones in, 185; cross shaft frag- ments, 185, 189, PL LI, Lll, 199, 203.
Overlap of Saxon and Norman art ques- tioned, 136, 138-142, 148 f. (See also ' Saxo-Norman overlap in archi- tecture.')
Oxford, 170.
Palaeography, 224 fF., fig. 21. Palimpsest use of Saxon monuments by
Norman sculptors, 141. Palmettes, see ' Norman palmettes.' Palmyra, 151, PL XLii, 3. Palmyrean tombs, 151. Panels of marble in Italian churches, 177. Panels, sunk, with arched tops, 261. Papa in Iceland, 160. Paris, 170. (See also 'Trocadero Museum
of Comparative Sculpture, Paris.') Parthenon, 220, 252. The Passion in sculpture, 169, 173 f. Paulinus, 176. Paul, St : in mosaic, 202 ; in sculpture,
169, 201 f., PL LXIV, 2. Peers, Sir Charles R., 166, 169, 172, 174 f.,
214. Pellets used in interlace, 145, 147, fig. 15,
2, PL xxxviii, 3, xxxix, 1. Pelta ornament, 192 f.
3'2
INDEX
' Penetrations,' a Scandinavian specialty,
.158.
Penmon Priory, Anglesey, cross near, 105, PI. XXVII.
Pergamon, frieze from, 198.
Pergamon Museum, Berlin, 198.
Persia of the Achaemenids, 200.
Personalities created by critics from simi- larities in carvings, 215 f.
Peter, St : in mosaic, 202 ; in sculpture, 169, 188, PI. LV, 202, PL lxii, 2, lxiv, 2.
Peterborough, Northants. : Abbey, 192 ; Cathedral, 288, 'Hedda' stone in, 288 f., PI. cxm ; the Longthorpe cross near, 109 f., PL xxxi, 2 ; the Stanground cross near, no f., PL xxxi, 1, 3, 275 ff.
Petersen, Jan, 260.
Petersen, Th., 161.
Piers used to subdivide spaces on cylin- drical columns, 173 f.
4 Pippiii Castle,' Scargill, nr. Harrogate, W. Yorks., 266 ff.
Pisidia, no evidence for the free-standing cross as a form of art in, 130.
Plait in simple form, 96, PL XXV, 1, 243.
' Play ' at points of divergence of stems in foliage, 206.
Plummer, Mr Chas., 99, 287.
Pointed arched niche, 143 ff., PL xxxvin, 1, 250.
Pointed leaf motive, 150 f., PL XLi, 193, 256 f., 278.
Pointed leaf style of foliage ornament in- dependent of vine and acanthus, 256.
Pontiff in sculpture, 167.
Portable altar of St Cuthbert, 256.
Portraits on the crosses, 194, 249.
Post-Conquest Saxonic monuments, 148.
Prehistoire de la Nor<vege, see ' Shetelig, Prof. Dr Haakon.'
Prioress or abbess figure at Nunburn- holme, 262, 264, PL xcn.
Prior, Prof. Edward S., cited 121 ff., 139.
Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, N.S., Vol. Xix, notice in, see ' Kaye, Mr Walter ' ; 2nd series, Vol. IV, notice in, see ' Fowler, Canon James ' ; 2nd series, Vol. XXV, notice in, see ' Lethaby, Prof.'
Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Vol. XXVI, Vol. xliii, papers in, see ' Fleming, Dr D. Hay.'
Professional carvers in central groups
queried, 214. Projecting bands on cross shafts, 141,
275 ff- Promenades Archiologiques aux Environs
d 'Alger, see ' Gsell, M. S.*
Provenance of the art, 208.
Psalmody, a Celtic specialty, 161.
Punch, 191.
' Pyramids ' at Glastonbury, 167.
Quality of the carving on the crosses,
121 f. Quarrying of stone, 212.
Radulfus, 215.
Ragnarok, 238, 244 f., 293.
Raids on Irish sites by Norsemen, 162.
Ramsay, Sir William, 130.
Ramsbury, Wilts., collection of monu- ments at, 94, 283, 285 ; coped tomb- stones, 290, PL cxiv ; great cross shaft, 286, PL cxii.
Ramsey, Isle of Man, 235.
Ravenna, 123, 151.
Ravens in sculpture, 235, PL lxxxi, 244, PL LXXXIII, 2.
Rawmarsh, nr. Rotherham, W. Yorks. : cross, 147 f., PL xxxix, 2.
Reculver, Kent : abbey church, 169, 172, 174; fragments from, 169, 171-176, 185 f., 272, 281, PL xlv, xlvi, colour used on the, 214 : the question of a cross-head, 176. (See also ' Leland cross from Reculver.')
Red colour used on carved stones, 214.
Regin the Smith, 232, PL lxxvii,
LXXVIII.
Regulbium, 176.
Relic of St Oswald, 221.
Relief, high and low, in the carving of figures, 195.
Reliefs of marble in Italian churches, 177.
Reliquaries, 161 f.
The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeolo- gist, 1 90 1, article in, see ' Hildebrand, Dr H.'
Representative sculpture, 255.
Revetment slabs in Saxon churches, 177-183 ; Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts., 178 f., 181, 183, fig. 17, PL XLVII ; Britford, Wilts., 177 ; Jedburgh, Rox- burghshire, 183, PL xlix, L; their pre-Conquest date, 183.
INDEX
3i3
Revetments of marble in Italian churches,
177. Revetment to an altar, 188. Rib, central, with sloping lines from it,
on animals, 283 f. Ribs, median, of coped tombstones,
290. Ricci, Signor, 151. Riegl, Alois, 159. ' Ring chain ' motive, 238, fig. 22, 243,
PI. LXXXII. ' Ringkjeden ' paper in year-book of
Bergen Museum, 1917-18, see ' Lexow,
Einar.' Ring of stone on wheel cross-heads, 103,
277- Ring, Scandinavian, see ' Scandinavian
ring.' Ripon, W. Yorks., 95, 177 ; recurrence
of certain patterns in design at, 95. Roecliffe, W. Yorks. : cross, 207,
PI. LXX, I. Rolleston, nr. Newark-on-Trent, Notts. :
church, fragments of carved stones in,
215 ; cross shaft, 215. Roll mouldings, 291 ; around panels,
195, PL LXI ; on shafts, 147. (See
also ' Mouldings.') Roman architecture in the empire, 151. Roman art, 200. Roman church in England, 229 ; monks
of the, 176. Roman Empire, settlement of Germanic
tribes in the western provinces of the,
150. Roman processes of quarrying and
masonry, 259. Roman roads, 251. Romans, 176, 212. Roman ' Samian ' ware, vine tendrils on,
117. Roman style of hairdressing, 263 f.,
PI. xc. Roman tradition in art, 120, 128. Roman type of vault, 177. Rome : Christian Museum of the
Lateran, 127 ; Early Christian mosaic
work, 202 ; Sta Pudentiana church,
202. Romilly Allen, Mr J., see ' Allen, Mr
J. Romilly.' Roofing tiles motive, 289, 291 ff. Rosettes indicating grapes in vine foliage,
257-
Rotherham, nr. Sheffield, W. Yorks., the centre of a group of cross shafts, 142, 145, 147, 150, 250.
Rottingdean, nr. Brighton, E. Sussex,
233-
Rounds at arm ends of cross patee, 256.
Rowberrow, Somerset, later style of animal carving at, 282.
Royal Commissioners on Historical Manuscripts, 170.
Royal Commission on Ancient Monu- ments Reports, 102 ; Bucks., Vol. n, 98 ; Essex, Vol. II, 97, Essex, Vol. IV, 97, 148 ; Hunts., no.
Royal Historical Society, 99.
Royal personage in sculpture, figure of a, 167.
Runic inscriptions, 93, 132, 136, 154, 227 f., 237, 243, 246, PL lxxxvx, 265 f.
Russia, 153.
Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire : cross, 100, 122, 132 f., 135 f., 151, 169, 174L, 182, 187, 191, 196, 198 ff., 207 ff., 211, 278 f., 282.
Rygh 673 brooch, 261.
Sackerson in The Merry Wives of
Windsor, 294. Sacred motives on cross-heads, 277 f. Saga Book of the Viking Society, Vols. IX,
X, articles in, see ' Shetelig, Prof. Dr
Haakon.' St Aldhelm, 168.
St Andrew : in mosaic, 202 ; in sculp- ture, 202, PL lxiv, 1. St Andrew's cross: incised, in, on
Manx stone, 243 ; use of, in Norman
decoration, 141, PL xxxvn. St Andrews, Fife, 218 ; Cathedral,
218 ff. ; Cathedral Museum, 218, 220. St Andrew's, South Church, Bishop
Auckland, Co. Durham : cross, 195 ff.,
PL lxi, 217 f. St Augustine, 164.
St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, 176. St Chad, 222-225 ; tomb of, 287 ff., 292. St Cuthbert, 256. St Dunstan, 96. St Gall, Switzerland ; cemetery cross,
112. St Gregory in MS. Cott. Claud. A. in,
144. St James in sculpture, 169.
3*4
INDEX
St John : in Crucifixion subject, 279 ;
in mosaic, 202 ; in sculpture, 133, 169,
202 f., 279. St Just, Cornwall, Cornish cross near,
115, PI. xxxiv. St Mark's, Venice, 173. St Mary in sculpture, 186 f., PL LIV, 189,
PI. LVI, 200, 263 f., PI. xc ; in sculp- tured Crucifixion subject, 279. St Mary Magdalen in sculpture, 133, 174,
203. St Olaf, 242. St Oswald, King of Northumbria, 100,
221. St Paul : in mosaic, 202 ; in sculpture,
169, 201 f., PI. LXIV, 2. St Peter : in mosaic, 202 ; in sculpture,
169, 188, PI. LV, 202, PL LXII, 2, LXIV,
2.
St Peter monument at Whiterne (Whit- horn), Wigtownshire, 106.
St Wilfrid, 176 f.
Salin, Riks-Antiqvar Bernhard, 156, 158, 179, 228, 286.
Sandbach, Cheshire, 273.
Sandstone : red, used for Irton cross, 269 ; used for cross shafts, 148, 259 ; white, used for Jedburgh slab, 183 ; yellow, used for Hovingham panel, 189.
Sta Pudentiana church, Rome, 202.
Sarsens on the South Downs, 176.
Satan in sculpture, 249.
Saxon and Norman periods in sculpture delimited, no f.
Saxon architecture, 138 ff., 177, 190.
Saxon churches, 176 f., 190. (See also ' Enrichment of Anglo-Saxon churches and Saxon architecture ; interior fit- tings of,' 184.)
Saxondom, the early sculpture of, 175,
253> 255- Saxon masons employed by Norman
builders, 138. Saxon motives, 175. Saxo-Norman overlap in architecture,
190. (See also ' Overlap of Saxon and
Norman art questioned.') Saxon sculpture, 138 ff., 148 f., 151 ;
earliest school of, 176. Saxons, the, 229, 231, 252 f. Scandinavia, 239, 243, 265, 268, 280 ;
crosses in, 125, 239 f., 292 f. Scandinavian animal style, 154-157.
Scandinavian bishop in Man, the first, 246.
Scandinavian decorative art, 157-160, 280 ; influenced by Irish art, 162 ff., 280.
Scandinavian influence and the intro- duction of Scandinavian elements into the art, 150, 152-157, 160, 162 ff., 184, 207, 227-235, 249, 261, 264 ff., 268, 278, 280, 282, 284 f. ; in Isle of Man, 231, 235, 237 f., 243-247; in Manx carvings, 232, 235, 237 f., 242-247.
Scandinavian introduction of Irish ele- ments into the Anglian style, 162 ff.
Scandinavian ring, 145, 264, 285.
Scandinavians, 161, 163 f., 227, 231, 235,
, 237-
Scandinavian subjects, 231-235, 243-247. Scargill, nr. Harrogate, W. Yorks., 266. Sceatta coins, 216; style of the, 264;
time of the, 256. Sceptre in sculpture, 196, PL LXI. Scotland : cross tradition in, 236 ; Vik- ings in, 227, 235. Scottish monuments, characteristics of,
104, 238, 244. Scourging of Christ in sculpture, 174. Screens of marble in Italian churches,
177. Screen, triple-arched, 172. Scroll foliage ornament independent of
vine and acanthus, 254, 256. (See
also ' Foliage motives.') Scrolls, hand-held, by figures of Christ
and the Aposties, 174, 186 ff., 201. Scrolls not of foliage character, 249 f.,
290. Scroll-work, 143 ff., 147. Sculpture in the South, 185 f. Sea-life, motives from, 160. Secular motives on cross-heads, 278. Sepulchral monuments, Saxon, 138. Serpents in sculpture, 244, 249. Severn End, nr. Hanley Casde, Worcs.,
253. (See also ' Lechmere stone.') Shafts, see ' Cross shafts.' Shafts or enriched pillars in Armenia, 129. Shafts or enriched pillars from Acre,
Syria, now at Venice, 126, 130. Shakelton, Mrs, 270. Shakespeare, 253, 294. Sheaf : at vine stem junctions, an Anglian
detail, 151, fig. 14, 2, 3 ; motive, 206,
fig. 20.
INDEX
3*5
Sheaths on stem junctions in foliage, 151, fig. 14, 2, 3, 257, PL lxxxviii, 3.
Sheffield, W. Yorks., fragment of carv- ing from, now in British Museum, 196.
Shetelig, Prof. Dr Haakon, 145, 1576°., 215, 228, 235, 237 f., 244 f.
Shetland, Vikings in, 227.
Shoes in sculpture, 195, PI. LX.
Shoulder-like projections on cross shafts, 141, 275 ff.
Shrines, 161.
Signatures on carved stones, 215, 237 f., 243.
Sigurd : forging the magic sword, 232, PI. LXXVii, lxxviii ; listening to the bird, 233 f., PI. lxxix, lxxx, 2 ; roasting the dragon's heart, 232, PI. LXXVII, LXXVIII, 244, PI. LXXXIII, I ;
story, 232, PI. lxxvii, lxxviii, 244,
PI. LXXXIII, I.
Silver repousse work, 256.
Simonburn, Northumberland : cross
shaft, 206, fig. 19, 294. Skellig Michael, Co. Kerry : cross, 112. Slabs: figured, 137, 230; sculptured
architectural, 177 ff., 181 ff., 188 ff.,
PI. lvi, material of, 183, 189, of marble
in Italian churches, 177. Slate used for cross-slabs in Isle of Man,
242 f. Smith, Lucy Toulmin, see ' Leland,
John.'^ ' Smiths ' as carvers, 215. Society of Antiquaries of London, 248,
268, 273. Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 95,
219. Socket-stones, decorated, 129, 196 f.,
270 f. Soldiers in Crucifixion subject, 279. Sol in Crucifixion subject, 279. Source of the figure-work and orna- ment on early English carved crosses,
119 f., 123. ' Sources of the Irish Illuminative Art '
paper in Art Studies, Vol. 11, 1928,
see ' Hovey, Mr W. R.' South Downs, sarsens on the, 176. Southern Syria, see ' Butler, Prof. Howard
Crosby.' South Kyme, Lines. : carved fragments
built into chancel wall of the church,
181 f., PL XLVIII.
South, sculpture in the, 185 f. South-western England and the Mid- lands, rather than the north, the
home of zoomorphic decoration, 280,
285. South-western England, later carvings in,
280-286. Spain, use of cross-form in, 125 f. Spat-Romische Kunstindustrie , see ' Riegl,
Alois.' Spear in Crucifixion subject, 279. Sphinx in sculpture, 191. Spiral joints in Scandinavian animal
style, 156, 228, 230, 247. Spiral motive, 163, 179-182, fig. 18,
PI. XLVII, XLVIII. Spirals on animals, heads joined to
bodies by, 283. The Spital, Hexham, Northumberland :
cross shaft, 199, PL cvni, 279. Sponge in Crucifixion subject, 279. Sproxton, Leics. : cross, 276 f., PL cv. Stafford-knot, 291. Stanground, Hunts. : ' Lampass ' cross,
no f., PL xxxi, 1, 3, 275 ff. Stanwick, N. Yorks. : cross, 242,
PL LXXXVII. Stapleford, Notts., 273. ' Star ' pattern, 107, 141, PL XXXVII. Statistique Monumentale du Calvados, see
' de Caumont.' Stavanger Museum, 162, 240, 267. Stavanger, Norway : cross, 240 ff.,
fig. 23. Staveley, W. Yorks. : cross, 234 f., PL
lxxxi, 276. Stavkyrker, 294. ' Stenkors i Bergensamterne ' paper in
Oldtiden, Bind 11, 191 2, see ' Bendixen,
B. E.' Step-pattern, 179, 181, PL XLVII. Stockholm Museum, 158. Stone-masons, 221. Stone of the monuments, 142, 146, 148,
183, 189, 240, 242, 250, 253, 259, 269,
281 ; different kinds of stone in a
single monument, 248 f. Stone-quarrying, 212. Stones, carved : dating of, 145 (see also
' Dating ') ; funereal, 229 f., 245 f. (see
also ' Memorials '). Storia dell' Arte Italiana, see ' Venturi,
Prof. Adolfo.' Strathclyde Welsh, 235.
3l6
INDEX
Stroud, Glos. : the Bisley, or Lypiatt,
cross near, 108 f., PI. xxx. Strzygowski, Prof. Josef, 105, 117 f.,
fig. 14, 120, 127 ff., 255. Stuart, Dr John, 112. Sweden, 153, 158 ; crosses in, 240. Swedes, 153. Sword motive, 146. Symeon of Durham, 252. Syria, 120, 123, 131, 151 ; classical
forms derived from, 200. Syria, Hellenistic, 150. Syrian characteristics and indications,
x85. Syrian models the originals for the
foliage, 208. Syrian naturalness of figures, 196. Syria, no evidence for the free-standing
cross as a form of art in, 131 f. Syrian plastic art, its rise and decline,
123 f., 200. Syrian prototypes : of cross shafts, Acre
columns as, 126 ; of pointed leaf
motive, 150. Syrian sculptors in England, the ques- tion of, 175 f., 185, 189, 215. (See
also ' Foreign artificers, the question
of.') Syria rather than Italy the source of
the decorative style, 120, 123. Syrie Centrale, Architecture civile et reli-
gieuse du Ire au Vllme Siecle, see ' de
Vogue.'
Tapering : of cross shaft, 93 f., 108, 126 f., 129 ff., 141 f., 145-148, 167, 173, 182, 188, 194, 247 f., 259, 271 ff. ; of coped tombstone, 290. (See also ' Cross shaft, tapering,' and ' Crosses, free-standing carved stone, tapering.')
Tara brooch, 161.
Tarsus, Paul of, see ' St Paul.'
Taylor, Henry, 1 68, 188, 274 f.
Temple of Bacchus, Baalbec, 151 f., PI. xli, 175.
Teutonic motives in animal carving,
154 ff. Teutonic settlers, 251. Thanet, see ' Isle of Thanet.* Theodore of Samos, 200. Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of
Canterbury, 121, 175. Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
253.
Thompson, Prof. Hamilton, 288.
Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, 209 ; Nith Ford cross, 11 1 f., PI. xxvi, 2.
Thrybergh, nr. Rotherham, W. Yorks. : cross shaft in cemetery, 142-148, PI. XXXViii, 1, 2, 3, 250, 273 ; cross shaft in field, 145-148, PI. xxxvm, 4.
Thyra, Queen, 285.
Tiles, see ' Roofing tiles motive.'
The Times, Dec. 4 and 10, 193 1, notices in, concerning Abyssinian metal cross- heads, 127.
Toes, number of, on a foot in animal carving : three, an Irish motive, 156, 284 ; two, a Teutonic motive, 154 ff., typical of ' Anglian beast,' 211.
Tomb furniture, Anglo-Saxon, 152.
Tomb of wood, 287 f.
Tomb slabs, Coptic, 151.
Tombs, Swedish chieftains', 158.
Tombstones, coped and flat, 289 f. (see also ' Coped tombstones.')
Tombstones, Coptic, see ' Coptic tomb- stones.'
Tools used in carving, 214.
' Transenna ' at East Lexham, Norfolk, 129.
Transport of finished monuments, the possibility of, questioned, 214, 251.
Traquair, Prof. Ramsay, 130.
' Tree of Life ' vine scrolls, 205, PI. xlix.
Trees in sculpture, 187, PI. lv, 232, PI.
LXXVII, LXXVIII.
Trefoil leafage in foliage ornament, 150, 256 f., 278. (See also ' Pointed leaf motive.')
Trellis pattern, 146 f.
Triangle on shafts of crosses, 293. (See also ' Cross-heads, pointed downward extension of, below transom.')
Trier : market cross, 107, PI. XXVIII.
Triquetra knot, 284.
Trocadero Museum of Comparative Sculpture, Paris, 107, 113.
Trollope, Anthony, 221.
' Trumpet pattern ' or ' trumpet spiral,' 180 ff., fig. 18, PI. XLVIII.
Trumpet-shaped apertures at vine stem junctions, 151, fig. 14, 2, 3. (See also ' Sheaf and Sheaths on stem junctions in foliage.')
' Trumpet spiral,' see ' Trumpet pattern.'
Tunisia, 119.
Turks, 220, 252.
INDEX
3i7
Turner, J. M. W., 185.
Tweed, Anglian kingdom north of the,
182. Twisting together of stems that are
parallel in direction, a northern motive,
185, PI. LII. Tympana, Norman, 140. Tyne Valley, Northumberland, 206.
'Vandalism,' 216-220.
Van Millingen, Prof., 130.
Van Scheltema, 255.
Variety in form and enrichment of the
carved stones, a principle throughout
the art, 165, 201, 251, 265, 275, 277,
282, 286, 292. Vaulting, 177.
Vendel, in Upland, Sweden, 158. ' Vendel style,' 158. Venice, 159, 293 ; early decorated pillars
from Acre in Syria at, 126, 130;
'columnae caelatae' in St Mark's, 172 f. Venturi, Prof. Adolfo, cited, 126. Vesterlandenes Indflydelse paa Nord-
boernes i Vihingetiden, see ' Bugge,
Alexander.' Victoria and Albert Museum, London,
J97> J99> 20I> z69» 272- Victoria History of the Counties of England,
101 f., 115, 249, Durham, Vol. 1, 196,
218 (see also ' Hodges, Mr Charles
Clement'), Hants., Vol. 11, 138 (see
also 'Allen, Mr J. Romilly '), Kent,
Vol. 1, 256. Vidar, 244.
Viking age, 160, 241, 243, 265. Viking axe-head from ' Pippin Castle,'
Scargill, W. Yorks., 267 f., PI. XCIV, 3. Viking chief, portrait of a, 194, 260-262,
264, PL xci. Viking helmets, 234, 244. Viking intrusive burial in a Yorks.
barrow, 267 f. Viking invasion of York in 867, 152 fF.,
157, 184, 207, 227, 229, 247, 266. Vikings, 157, 159, 162, 164, 227, 229 fF.,
235, 252, 267 f., 272, 280, 282, 286. Viking Society, see ' English Viking
Society for Northern Research.' Vine motive, 144, i5of., PI. xlii, XLin,
153 f., 182, PI. xlix, L, 184 f., 257;
tradition, 256. (See also ' Foliage
motives.') Visigoths, 128; use of cross-form by, 125^
Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, see ' Plummer,
Mr Charles.' Volutes : as terminals to mouldings,
245 f., PL LXXXIV; in scroll-work, 290. Votaries, two, adoring a Saint, 263 f.,
PL xci, xcii.
Wakefield, W. Yorks., 185.
Walton cross, nr. Hartshead, Cleck-
heaton, Leeds, W. Yorks., 129, 270 f.,
PL xcvu. Welsh, the Strathclyde, see ' Strathclyde
Welsh.' West Camel, nr. Yeovil, Somerset :
cross shaft, 281 f. Westwood, J. O., 144. Whalley, Lanes. : crosses, 274 f., PL
cm, 2 ; multiple socket-stone and
shafts, 270. ' Wheel ' cross-head, suggested origin of,
104. Wheel cross-heads, 129, 230, 233, PL
LXXix, 276 f. ; distribution of, 245,
PL LXXXIV, 247. Whitby, N. Yorks. : fragment of cross- head, 100 f., fig. 12; site of Saxon
abbey at, 100 ; worked stone destroyed
by bombardment during Great War,
100. Whitchurch, Hants. : funereal stone, 255,
PL LXXXIX. White Lyne, or Langbar, Common, nr.
Bewcastle, Cumberland : cut and
squared stone, 212. Whiterne (Whithorn), Wigtownshire,
95 f. ; St Peter monument, 106. Whithorn Priory, Wigtownshire official
guide, see ' H.M. Office of Works for
Scotland.' Wieland the Smith, 233, PL LXXX, 1. Wilfrid, St, 176 f. William of Malmesbury, 167 f. Winchester, Bishop of, 168. ' Winchester ' school, 140. Winged angels in sculpture, 189, 192,
PL lvi, lviii, 196. (See also ' Angels
in sculpture.') Winged figures (other than angels) in
sculpture, 233, PL lxxix, lxxx. Winged quadruped in sculpture, 191. Wolverhampton, Staffs. : pillar, 272 f.,
PL CII ; St Peter's church on site of
Saxon college, 272.
3»8
INDEX
Wood-carving from Jellinge tumulus showing early Scandinavian ring, 285, PI. ex.
Wooden tomb, 287 f.
Writing, a Celtic art, 161.
Wroxeter, Salop : church and cross- shaft, 220, PI. LXXIII.
Wulff, Prof. Dr Oskar, 123, 131.
Wulfruna, 272.
Wreath encircling a cross, 103 ; exist- ence of a, in Armenia, suggested by Strzygowski, 129.
Xerxes, 200.
York, 258 ; Danish invasion of, in 867, 152 ff., 157, 184, 207, 227, 229, 247,
266 ; Museum, bones with incised designs in, 213, cross (Hospitium no. 2) in, 282, cross shaft from the Hos- pitium in, 194 f., PI. LX.
Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, papers in, see ' Collingwood, Mr W. G.'
Yorkshire : crosses, 242, 293 ; Early Christian monuments of, 134, 266, described, 101 ; Norse and Danish settlers in, 153, 232, 236, 240, 242, 282 ; ravaged by William 1 in 1068, 149 ; stone-work, 148.
ZlMMERMANN, Dr, 135.
Zoomorphic decoration prevalent on monuments in Midlands and south- western England rather than in the north, 280, 285.
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