Irish medieval art and architecture

The Christian faith arrived in County Mayo in the 5th century. The  focus was on evangelism, the converting of the people and the establishing of churches.  Along with that focus it was important to bring ancient holy places into alignment with the faith.  By the end of the 6th century monasticism had become the leading institution in the church with the office of Abbot typically more important than that of bishop.  From the 8th to the 12th centuries some of the monasteries had free standing stone crosses carved.  These became one of the defining objects of art of the early Christian period in Ireland.  From the 10th to the 12th century Round Towers joined the High Crosses as a distinctive architectural feature of some monasteries.  Following the year 1111 CE the role of Abbot became less important and the diocesan and parish system of the rest of the Catholic Church became the norm in Ireland as well.  The purpose of this paper is to flesh out some of this history with  examples from each of the developments outlined above.

Hughes Hall was founded in 1885 as the Cambridge Training College (CTC) for graduate women schoolteachers. It is therefore Cambridge's oldest Graduate College, consisting currently of around 50 Fellows and some 400 student members, men and women, who study for doctoral or M.Phil. degrees or for the postgraduate diplomas and certificates offered by the University. We also have an increasing number of mature undergraduates in a variety of subjects. As a result, the academic community of Hughes Hall is now extremely diverse, including students of over 60 nationalities and representing almost all the disciplines of the University. Enquiries about entry as a student are always welcome and should be addressed initially to the Admissions Tutor, Hughes Hall, Cambridge, CB1 2EW, U.K. (http://www.hughes. cam.ac.uk/). An important step in this transformation came with the granting of Cambridge degrees to women in 1948: the CTC was then given the status of a 'Recognised Institution', the crucial first move towards integration with the University proper. The College took the name of CTC's charismatic first Principal, the celebrated women's educationist, Elizabeth Phillips Hughes. Apart from Miss Hughes's Welsh heritage, there is no known connection between the College and the scholar now commemorated in this series of lectures.

This paper discusses the ancient high crosses on the Isle of Iona.  The term “ancient” in this context indicates the crosses were carved, or likely carved, before 1200 CE.  These will be discussed in three categories utilized by The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) in their 1982 volume on Argyll, Vol. 4, Iona.  These categories are:  cruciform stones, disc-headed cross-slabs and free standing crosses.

This paper examines the cult of Dar Erca and aims to disentangle it from the cult of Patrick (she came to be imagined as her sister). It also considers the importance of her status as both a saint and a mother, a rare example of a married woman being venerated in the early Irish Church.

Please note that this is a first-proof. The pagination (29-31) differs in the published version and there are some minor changes.

A Scottish carved stone ball with unusual surface markings is described and analysed. Although undoubtedly an original prehistoric artefact, it is an unprovenanced find and there is no absolute certainty about the dating and character of its unique markings. Its enigmatic nature, with the possibility of anthropomorphic depiction, presents an interpretative challenge for archaeologists and art historians.

An intriguing, lightly incised, animal-headed, Pictish figure, discovered in Mail, Cunningsburgh, Shetland, is described and analysed in the light of existing knowledge of Pictish art. The figure is considered both in the context of other figurative art, and also in the context of its find-spot in Mail. A date in the early seventh century is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to define and describe what is meant by the term “Irish High Cross.”  Included in this assessment will be a description of the morphology, or physical characteristics of the crosses; the date range during which they were carved; the purpose and meaning of the crosses; their decoration, including both geometric design and figural art; and a special note regarding a sub-set of Irish High Crosses known as Scripture crosses.

Kleos Issue 4 | 2021
The fourth Kleos issue is out! We are proud to present the work of starting scholars of (r)MA, PhD, and even BAlevel in the fields of Ancient History, Classics and Archaeology.
The papers included in the issue cover a wide range of subjects, ranging from gendered patterns in funerary practices of the Northwest‐European Corded Ware culture to the opportunities that present day collaborations between game developers and scholars of the ancient past can offer us.

The identification on the badly worn Skeith Stone at Upper Kilrenny, Fife, of a rho-hook attached to a cross of arcs motif the decoration of which is augmented with a saltire of arcs is significant because it is the first example of a chi-rho symbol to be recognized in Pictland. The design on the stone shares stylistic links with carved monuments at Whithorn and on the Isle of Man and also with sculptural motifs in western Ireland. It seems to belong within a seventh-century context. The stone is erected next to an apparently ancient trackway leading into Kilrenny, a place-name which is thought to contain a dedication to Ethernan, a Pictish saint whose death is probably recorded in AD 669. The village is identified from 19th-century maps and aerial photographic evidence as a relict early monastic precinct divided into three sections with the Skeith Stone functioning as a wayside boundary marker to the site. A relationship between the Kilrenny site and another Ethernan focus on the nearby Isle of May is postulated.

For AD history to be fully convincing and to be made to rest on firm foundations, it will need to undergo a rigorous revision similar to the one that scholars have been undertaking for BC history, with the application of a revised stratigraphy. There may be some indications that the history of Charlemagne is yet far from having been established on such firm stratigraphical foundations.

This article elicits statements about the medieval self from the Danish rural churches. It explores one ubiquitous style-making motif in Romanesque church architecture, namely the round arch. This "commonplace motif" is fused with practice theory to show how meaning-making arise in interplay between ritual practices, practitioners, and the churches' visual articulation. The article suggests that it is possible to explore aspects of perception by the participating self, but not the self as a traditional subject-based entity through this combined approach. The underlying objective of the article is to explore the twelfth-century churches from a non-conventional approach. This article is, in essence, a methodological and theoretical experiment. It explores the limits of what can reasonably be said about the medieval self 1 based on the rural churches of twelfth-century Denmark. Traditionally, these churches have been viewed as mute and thus redundant in relation to questions of medieval selfhood, cognition, and perception. The primary concern is, then, how we can get these buildings to talk, and to that, if and how they might testify to a notion of the medieval self. Conventional, discipline-specific approaches have proven to be insufficient in this regard. As such, the following article is an attempt at fusing different branches of current theories from the humanities and the social sciences in an effort to explore otherwise inaccessible information. More simply put: What did the visual articulation of twelfth-century churches intend? How were they used? And, might this intent and ritual usage inform us of aspects of the medieval self? In order to explore these questions, it will be useful to suggest a hypothesis to drive the discussion throughout the article. The working hypothesis to be tested on the material is thus: meaning-making

Set of abstracts for sixth in the BAA's series of International Romanesque confences, to be held in conjunction with the Dommuseum in Hildeshim. The conference has been postponed as a precaution against the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), and will now be held online from 7-10 September, 2021

This PowerPoint lecture gives information from a chapter in my book "The Most Traveled Man on Earth."  The lecture describes the family and birth of Brian Boru, probably the most famous Irishman in history, who was the High King of Ireland.  His descendant line down to Lt. Col. Thomas Ligon of early Virginia is provided, and other British and American descendants listed.  Brian Boru's life and accomplishments are outlined, and then sites around Ireland that are related to Brian Boru are visited and shown, including Dromoland Castle, the Cliffs of Moher, Killaloe, St. Patrick's Cathedral at Armaugh, and the Battle of Clontarf (north of Dublin).

The Pictish symbols are here provided with a list of each symbol’s occurence, together with a distribution map of that symbol. 
The symbol lists are divided for convenience of size into two papers, Part One and Part Two.
This paper is PART ONE. 
Part One contains mostly high-frequency symbols, Part Two the lower frequency symbols. 
A table of symbol frequency is included in Part One. 
These lists and maps are offered to enable exploration of possible concentrations or peculiarities of certain symbols, which may point to their significance, provide an insight into their function, and take us a step closer to understanding their meaning. 
The papers here do not offer indepth analysis of the data, except for a few brief header notes.

A warrior with his spear marches to the left across the land in four known instances. Three of these spearmen are in the south of Pictland, at Collessie, Bertha(Tulloch), and Balgavies, and only one in the north, at Rhynie. This story started off asking what, and potentially who, this Spearman is. But it quickly fell into a swirling story, of Caledonians and Picts, massacres, grain, Romans, people and ideas facing each other at the far end of their world, and how the Spearman and the early Pictish symbol stones tell their own part in the story of this extraordinary moment in time and place. 

Connecting the Spearman to the Roman and high-status native context in which they are found, points to these Spearman stones being contemporary with the Severan campaign, and this dating is supported by the weapons and portrayal of northern native warriors of the time in Romano-Celtic art.  Archaeology, art history and environmental studies also point to a hiatus in southern Pictland after the Severan massacres, which leads to the conclusion that the CI stones of this southern area are dated to the early centuries AD, with their origin being in the late Iron Age pre-Roman flourishing of native culture.

Presented are minor memoirs on Prof.Hilary Richardson, art historian, a scholar of the medieval Irish art; they are supplemented with the Georgian translation of the paper on the IV International Symposium on Georgian Art, held in Tbilisi and published by H. Richardson in 1983.

Mathematically, the frequency distribution of Pictish symbols shows that the symbol stones as a body do not hold a personal name, acting as some kind of burial or memorial marker in the form X mac/ui Y, where X and Y are the symbols of a symbol pair.  The evidence for this is reviewed, and the proposal of di-thematic names where each symbol represents a word or ‘theme’ is analysed and this is shown also to be mathematically untenable.  A third possibility is raised, in which a symbol can occasionally be used to represent a name, if and whenever it is required, as part of a broader mnemonic system.

Carrickfergus has been a town for over 800 years and it is one of the most excavated urban centres in Ulster.  A number of major monuments survive in the town — the famous medieval Castle, St. Nicholas’ Church (a fascinating mixture of medieval and 17th century architecture), the early 17th century town walls (the earliest town walls in Ulster) and Ireland's only preserved Victorian gasworks.  All of these represent important stages in the history and development Carrickfergus.  Heavily illustrated with colour maps and photographs, the book describes the fascinating historical and archaeological story of the town.

There are also special sections in the book containing more detailed analysis about Carrickfergus Castle, St Nicholas' Church, and the historic town walls.

Published  by TSO Ireland in 2008.

ABSTRACT:  The rules for orientation of Early Christian oratories or chapels in Ireland and Scotland have been the subject of scholarly speculation for some time. By applying the techniques of archaeoastronomy (Hawkins 1983) to monastic oratories, new light is shed onto the history of Early Christianity. It now appears that oratories were calendrically oriented to sunrise on saint’s days of the Celtic Early Christian Church and pagan solar bonfire days.

Un'analisi che esamini la Miniatura Insulare a partire dal sostrato culturale e storico-artistico in cui si è sviluppata, tenendo in considerazione la cultura e l’arte dei popoli contemporanei ad essa ed i precedenti, che si insediarono nella medesima area geografica, creando civiltà altrettanto diverse tra loro.
Alle isole britanniche si riconducono le popolazioni celtiche, che ivi si sono stanziate, e quelle germaniche, che lo hanno fatto in seguito, dando vita quindi ad un miscuglio di popoli con caratteristiche del tutto uniche, che confluiscono nell'affascinante mondo dell’arte insulare.