have shown, are the extreme rudeness of their construction, the extreme simplicity of their form, the insignificance of their dimensions, and the total absence of any attempt at ornament or refinement of detail.1 I do not insist on these features for the purpose of drawing any conclusion from them as to the capacity and culture of the men who made and used them. If I were to infer that their uniformity of plan implied a deficiency of inventive power, or that the absence of decoration implied an inability to produce or to appreciate it, I should be doing what is often done, but I should be drawing conclusions destitute of relevant evidence to support them. There are other lines of investigation by which the quality of the culture of the early Christian period in Scotland may be partially disclosed, and it is only when we have fully exhausted these, that we shall see how greatly we should have erred if we had sought to deduce that culture from a single phase of the conditions of life with which it has no necessary connection. I do not say that the highest expression of a people's culture may not be found in their architecture. I only say that it is not always or necessarily so, and that a people may be highly cultured in other respects without possessing a

1 It is by no means improbable that the severe simplicity, as well as the uniformity of plan and size, which usually characterise our early churches was less the result of the poverty or ignorance of their founders than of choice, originating in the spirit of their faith, or a veneration for some model given them by their first teachers, for that the earliest Christian churches on the Continent before the time of Constantine were like these, small and unadorned, there is no reason to doubt.-Petrie's Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, p. 191. "These buildings (in Ireland) themselves of the most venerable antiquity, the earliest existing Christian temples in northern Europe, are the representatives of others more venerable still. They derived not their origin from the gorgeous basilicas of Constantine and Theodosius, but in them we behold the direct offspring of the lowly temples of the days of persecution, the humble shrines where Cyprian bent in worship, and which Valerian and Diocletian swept from off the earth."-Freeman's History of Architecture-The Early Romanesque of Ireland.

single structure that an architect would care to look at. If proof of this is wanted, the community of Iceland furnishes a case in point. Though it possessed neither towns nor architectural edifices, it had produced-previous to the introduction of the art of printing-a larger native literature than any country in Europe. It is therefore necessary for us to inquire whether there is any evidence extant by which the nature and quality of the culture of the early Christian time in Scotland may be disclosed, and what is the number and the nature of the actual products of that culture that are still preserved, and may thus be submitted to our examination. In the succeeding lectures I shall direct attention to the various relics that are still extant of the early Celtic Church, their history and associations, their art and its relations to the history of art in Europe. Of these relics, the most interesting and the most relevant for our purpose are the books that were written and illuminated by men who lived in constructions such as I have described; or that were used in the service of the Church in times when this primitive type of structure was the highest effort of Christian architecture in the land.

K

LECTURE IV.

(24TH OCTOBER 1879.)

EXISTING RELICS OF THE EARLY CELTIC CHURCH-BOOKS.

IN 1715 the University of Cambridge acquired the library of John Moore, Bishop of Norwich. It comprised a large collection of manuscripts, among which was one of small octavo form, whose real character remained unknown for a century and a half after its deposit in this great library of one of the principal seats of the learning and culture of Britain. Had it been a classical codex it would have attracted attention at once, but being a Celtic manuscript it lay unnoticed till in 1858 the research of Mr. Bradshaw made known its real character. So slowly do we awaken to the special interest of the antiquities of our own country, that it is only of recent years, when Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome have been well ransacked, that attention has begun to be directed to the great storehouse of national history and native art that exists almost unutilised in the early monumenta of our

ancestors.

The manuscript, as I have said, is a small octavo of 86 parchment folios closely written on both sides. The form of the writing is that which is common to Irish and AngloSaxon manuscripts, the letters being an adaptation of the Roman minuscule characters. Each page shows marks of ruling with a sharp-pointed instrument, and the letters hang from the ruled line instead of resting upon it. This peculiarity suited the character of the Celtic writing, because the

upper part of their long letters coincided with a horizontal line. The pages are surrounded by ornamental borders, most of which are filled in with interlaced work in panels, and with fretwork of a peculiar character, with which we shall become more familiar in the course of subsequent inquiries into the nature and characteristics of early Celtic art. The matter thus written in these pages consists of the first six chapters of Matthew's gospel and part of the seventh; the first four chapters of the gospel of Mark and part of the fifth; the first three chapters of the gospel of Luke and the first verse of the fourth; and the whole of the gospel of John; a fragment of an office for the Visitation of the Sick and the Apostle's Creed. The writing of the Gospels is all in one uniform hand, the ink dark brown with age, and the initial letters of paragraphs designed in fanciful dragonesque forms and variously coloured. At the end of the book, immediately after the Apostle's Creed, the same scribe who wrote the Gospels has written a colophon in the ancient Celtic vernacular, which is translated as follows:

"Be it on the conscience of every one in whom shall be for grace the booklet with splendour, that he give a blessing on the soul of the wretchock who wrote it."

In point of language, says Mr. Whitley Stokes, this is identical with the oldest Irish glosses given by Zeuss in his Grammatica Celtica, which are of the seventh and eighth centuries. The version of the Gospels which the volume contains is one of a class that has been called Irish, because they exhibit certain characteristics in common which are peculiar to themselves, and while mainly corresponding with the Vulgate version, preserve occasional readings from versions that are earlier in date. The language of the Gospels, the Office for the Visitation of the Sick, and the Creed, of 1 See the Preface to the Book of Deer, edited for the Spalding Club by the late Dr. John Stuart, for a full account of this interesting manuscript.

course, is Latin. There is one exception in the shape of a rubric to the office which gives the direction to the officiating priest in the vernacular Celtic, "Here give the sacrifice to him." The office itself is written in a somewhat later hand than the Gospels, but it agrees in character with two similar offices found in the Book of Dimma and the Book of Moling, two early copies of the Gospels preserved in Ireland.1

This little book is thus obviously a manuscript belonging to the early Celtic church, and of a date not later than the ninth century, to which Professor Westwood attributes it on the evidence of its palæographic peculiarities. If this were all that could be said of it, it would still be of exceptional interest, because manuscripts of such an early date are the rarest of all our native antiquities. But its value and interest are enhanced by the fact that not only is it a manuscript of the Gospels of that early date and peculiar character, but it also contains a collection of coloured pictures and ornamental designs contemporary with the writing, executed in the same style, and apparently by the same hand, that penned the contents of the volume. I shall not now enter upon an analysis of the artistic quality of these singular productions, or discuss the question of their relations to other branches of native art with which we have yet to become acquainted in the stone and metal work of the early Christian time in Scotland. I pass from this subject in the meantime with the remark that 1 The Book of Dimma is a small MS. on vellum, the page 7 inches by 5, now in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. It contains the Four Gospels and the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. Each Gospel is preceded by a rude representation of the Evangelist, enclosed in ornamental borders of interlaced work. At the end of the Gospel the scribe has given his name as Dimma Macc Nathi. The Book of Moling is also preserved in Trinity College Library. It is smaller than the Book of Dimma, its pages being only 64 inches by 4 inches. It contains the Four Gospels and the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. The name of the scribe is thus given :-) :- Nomen autem scriptoris Mulling dicitur. St. Moling, Bishop of Ferns, in Leinster, died A. D. 697.