Illuminated Manuscripts. John William Bradley

referred to. The handwriting, too, is clear and legible, whether capital, uncial, or minuscule.

      In absolute contrast to all this the Iona Gospels have the first page completely covered with ornament. On the next the letters are of an enormous size, followed by a few words, not merely in uncials, but in characters varying from half an inch to two inches in height. The page opposite to each Gospel is similarly filled with decoration, separated into four compartments by an ornamented Greek cross. This may, of course, be simply a geometrical device in no way connected with Greece, but, taken in connection with other features, we see in it an indication of contact with Byzantine work and the side of illumination which deals rather with the tabular enrichment of the page than the development of the initial. Further, the writing, though large, is not easily legible, for it is involved, enclaved, and conjointed in a manner sufficiently puzzling to those who see it for the first time.

      The plaiting and inlaying are certainly borrowed from local usages, and the survival of the same kind of interlaced plaiting in the Scottish tartans is some evidence of the long familiarity of the Celtic race with the art of weaving. When we remember that some of the early illuminators were also workers in metals, we can understand that penmen like Dagæus, Dunstan, and Eloy had designs at their command producible by either method. So we see, both in the MS. and in the brooch and buckle, the same kind of design. Among the earliest animals brought into this Celtic work we find the dog and the dragon; the latter both wingless and winged, according to convenience or requirement. The dog is so common in some of the Celto-Lombardic MS., of which examples still exist at Monte Cassino, as almost to create a style; while the dragon survives to the latest period of Gothic art.

      Whatever is introduced into a Celtic illumination is at once treated as a matter of ornament. When the human figure appears it is remorselessly subjected to the same rules as the rest of the work; the hair and beard are spiral coils, the eyes, nostrils, and limbs are symmetrical flourishes. Colour is quite regardless of natural possibility. The hair and draperies are simply patterned as compartments of green or blue, or red or black, as may be required for the tout ensemble; the face remains white. Lightened tints are preferred to full colours, as pale yellow, pink, lavender, and light green. A very ludicrous device is made use of to denote the folds of the drapery; they are not darkened, there is no light and shade in Celtic work, but are simply lines of a strongly contrasting colour. The blue and red appear to be opaque, and therefore mineral colours; the rest are thin and transparent. Nothing can be more wayward than the colouring of the symbolic beasts of the Gospels. In the Evangeliary of St. Columbanus (not Columba, but the founder of Luxeuil and Bobbio, who died in 614) the Lion of St. Mark is an admirable beast in a suit of green-and-red chain armour in the form of mascles or lozenges. (See the illustration in Westwood's Palæographia Sacra Pictoria of a figure page from the Gospels of Mael Brith Mac Durnan for a typical example.)[12]