CHAPTER IV

THE TOWERS AND CROSSES OF IRELAND

The saints or early missionaries seem to be as closely connected with the first church-building in Ireland as they were in Gaul, Normandy, and England; only by some curious circumstance, Ireland became christianized and built her churches some centuries earlier than England and Normandy. It is my conviction that in casting off the legends connected with saints, we have also cast off much real history belonging to the early missions. Now, the preceding chapter shows that it is precisely to these first missionaries that we are indebted for the imported architecture of the pre-Norman date in England, and presumably also in Ireland. This architecture has been an enigma and a stumbling-block to archæologists for ages; because while rejecting everything connected with the saints as legend, they also reject the only reasonable hypothesis of the genesis of these first stone buildings, which sprang up in a country as yet only accustomed to build in wood or earth.

The Round Towers of Ireland, for instance, have formed a greater puzzle to antiquaries than the churches of Hexham or Lindisfarne--partly because of their antiquity, and partly from their unlikeness to any local buildings of the time. The theories in regard to them are wild beyond all probability. They have been attributed: (1) By Henry O'Brien to the Tuatha De Danaan, a Persian colony which is supposed to have built them for phallic worship. (2) By Vellaney to the Phœnicians, the buildings being afterwards used by the Druids as fire-towers. (3) By Dr. Lynch, Peter Walsh, Molyneux, etc., to the Danes, as war-towers.

Petrie, with clearer arguments, claims them as Christian. In his Prize Essay on the origin and uses of the Round Towers (A.D. 1820) he proves that no buildings except these towers were known to have cement in pre-Christian Ireland. For the Pagans and Druids have left us the great fortresses of Dun Ængus, and Dun Connor on Aran Mor, and the great sepulchres of Dowth and New Grange, all built without cement and of unhewn stones. Now the Round Towers are of hewn stones closely fitted and cemented, till they are solid as a rock, standing firm as ever, after their fifteen centuries of existence. They are called in Ireland by the generic name of "cloic-theack," or bell-house, and are invariably found close to the ruins of a monastery or a church. In some cases, like the one at Clonmacnoise, the church has entirely disappeared, leaving only the graveyard to mark its site, and in the graveyard a veritable Comacine cross!

It cannot be proved that the towers belong to an earlier age than the churches attached, for we have a witness in the ruins themselves. The masonry of the tower and the remaining walls of the church at Kilmacduagh is identical, as are the later tower and church-porch at Roscrea--_i.e._ good, solid _opus gallicum_.

Miss Stokes and the Rev. John Healy uphold the theory[123] of their being towers of refuge in warlike times. They may well have been used as such, on account of their strength, and also their proximity to the churches, which were always, in the Middle Ages, inviolable cities of refuge. This, however, does not affect our question as to how the towers came into Ireland, and whence came their builders. In the first place, where can similar towers be found dating from times contemporary? The answer is decided: in Italy. In Ravenna and Lombardy, from the date A.D. 300 to the fifth and sixth centuries; and they show just that Eastern touch which distinguishes the Byzantine-Roman architecture at Ravenna, and has caused authors to seek the origin of the Round Towers further east than Italy.

The next question that arises is: What was the point of contact between Ireland and Italy? As in England and Normandy we shall, I believe, find it in the first missions. The first Irish missionary was doubtless St. Patrick, A.D. 373-464, who has been taken as the sign and symbol of Celticism. Yet he was not an Irishman by birth. His father was a Christian named Calphurnius, his mother was niece to St. Martin of Tours; he was consequently of continental origin. His birthplace was Nempthur near Dumbarton, and while yet a boy he was carried a prisoner to Ireland, and the heathendom there appealed so strongly to his feelings, that after his release he was haunted by visions foretelling his future mission to convert Ireland. Pope Celestin I. gave him his mission in about A.D. 430, and he settled in Armagh, where he laboured more than thirty years converting and baptizing both kings and people. He founded schools and built churches. Probably the first worship was conducted in the open air, where a cross was set up, as by the English missionaries. The cross was of the Byzantine form used at that time in Italy; but on its adoption by the northern saint-missionaries it became known in Britain as the Irish cross. The ancient Italian one, once in the Forum at Rome, is of identical style, though of earlier date. St. Patrick's influence remained and spread. Many of his followers in the ministry made the pilgrimage to Rome which he had made, and so great was the fame of sanctity of these Irish preaching brethren, that they were reverenced in Italy even more than in their native land.

S. Fredianus became Bishop of Lucca, and Columban was Abbot of Bobbio. It is to these later missionaries rather than to St. Patrick himself that we must look, as having introduced Italian or Comacine architecture into Ireland. That they were addicted to church-building is evident from their at once setting to work wherever they went; S. Fredianus building a church and monastery at Lucca; St. Columban doing the same at Bobbio.

And what architects did they employ? Surely some members of the Comacine Guild, or their monk colleagues. They had seen them at the court of the Longobardic kings where they tarried and were entertained during their journey to Rome. And seeing the beautiful churches and towers in Italy, all made by the magic hands of this guild, is it not most likely that the Pope, who patronized the guild as one of the most practical instruments in christianization, should have counselled them to take back some _Magistri_ with them to Ireland? There is, I presume, no documentary proof of this, but there are more imperishable witnesses in the works themselves. The only difference between the Round Towers of Ireland and those of Italy in the first five centuries after Christ is the conical roof, which is due entirely to exigencies of climate. The hewing of the square stones, the close-fitting masonry, the Roman cement, the simple arches of the windows with their solidly cut supports, are all pure Lombard-Roman of the time when S. Fredianus and Columban were in Italy. It is true that with this similarity there is also a certain clumsiness of workmanship in the Irish towers, which suggests that either the Italian architects imported by the Irish missionaries were the less skilful men of the guild, or, what is more probable, they were few, and had to train native and unskilled workmen to assist them; but the style they aimed at, and the forms they used, are the early Italian ones of from A.D. 300 to 500.

In Cormac's chapel at the Rock of Cashel we get the square tower such as later Comacines used from the sixth to the tenth centuries, with the double-arched window of the period; and the church beside it has the same signs. Here are the string courses supported by the row of little arches, the projecting apse, and the double-light windows, with only that same northern desideratum--the high gable and sloping roof. Cormac was an early Bishop of Cashel, who was killed in 907 A.D.

Look at the shrine of the Bell of St. Patrick, which I presume dates from about the eighth century, _i.e._ the time of Fredianus, and you will see a fine collection of Comacine _intrecci_ or interlaced work in sculpture. As for the crosses of Ireland, one may trace in them the development of Comacine work, from the early Christian Roman style to the mediæval Lombard.

The beautifully illustrated article in the _Studio_ for Aug. 15, 1898, by J. Romilly Allen, F.S.A., shows the whole line. In the earliest form of Irish cross, _i.e._ that where the cross and Christian symbols are merely cut into the face of a slab of stone, such as in the cross at Reask, Co. Kerry, we see precisely the primitive style of art shown in the Catacombs. The "Gurmarc" stones have their prototype in the earliest Longobardic carving, such as the _pluteus_ of Theodolinda's first church at Monza. The smaller of the three inscribed circles has an even more advanced Comacine _intreccio_ enclosed within the circle, while the cross of Honelt at Llantwit Major (Fig. 5) has a splendid Comacine knot such as one sees on every Longobardic church, placed beneath a very Byzantine geometrical design in which circles, crosses, triangles, and three-fold knots are marvellously intermingled. These are all stones merely incised, and foreshadow the predilection of the Irish converts for the symbolism of the time, the cross of Christ within the unending circle of eternity. The next development shown by Mr. Romilly Allen is the upright cross slab at St. Madoes in Perthshire, where the cross and the circle are in distinct relief and not merely incised. Here, instead of the circle enclosing the Greek cross, it has become subordinate, and is placed behind the arms of a Latin cross. In fact a complete Irish cross in relief. But how is it adorned?--with splendid Comacine _intrecci_, and all the symbolism so familiar to us in early Italian art. Here are the coiled serpent and the dove above, with the four mystic beasts of the Apocalypse below, two on each side of the stem of the cross; and the workmanship and designs are literally identical with those of the sculptures on the façades of the first church of S. Michele at Pavia, and S. Zeno at Verona, and that of S. Pietro at Spoleto, all of the fifth and sixth centuries. (Spoleto church was rebuilt in 1329, but the ancient Lombard sculptures around the doorway were preserved.)

By the ninth and tenth centuries the Irish cross had reached its full development. It was no longer a sign on a slab, but a beautiful upright sculptured cross, with a circle crowning it like a halo, and suggesting the eternity of the human cross of our Saviour. And here again the art is precisely that of the Italian sculptors. There was a cross of earlier date than either the cross of King Flami at Clonmacnoise, King's County, A.D. 904, or the cross of Mucreadach at Monasterboice, Co. Louth, A.D. 924, in the Roman Forum, of which the shape and ornaments are similar to both of them. The cross of SS. Patrick and Columban at Kells has, too, all the marks of the Comacine work in the eighth and ninth centuries, as one sees it in the oldest churches at Como and Verona, at Toscanella and Spoleto. All these things being considered, I think Irish archæologists would do well to work up the undoubted connection of the early Irish missionaries with Italy, and the influence their travels there had, not only on the religion, but the art of Ireland. They might discover whether St. Columban, when King Agilulf sheltered him at Pavia, took from the artists then at work at the wondrous front of S. Michele, any ideas which he caused to be reproduced in the crosses placed by him to sanctify the open-air worship of his Irish converts; or whether he took a few monkish _Magistri_ skilled in sculpture from his monastery at Bobbio to carve those very crosses, and to build the first stone churches, that now lie in ruins at the feet of the rugged old towers.

FOOTNOTE:

[123] See Article on the Round Towers in _St. Peter's Magazine_ for May 1898.