“Anglo-Saxon Art” and “Irish and Hiberno-Saxon Art”

In this way, I divided the material in my early medieval art survey.  Under “Anglo-Saxon Art,” I placed the Codex Amiatinus, the Ruthwell Cross, and the Franks Casket.  Everything else insular went under “Irish and Hiberno-Saxon Art”.  “Everything else” began with the earliest decorated insular manuscripts, the material from Lindisfarne, the Durham Cassiodorus from Wearmouth-Jarrow, and the eighth-century manuscripts associated with Canterbury.  Such a decision entails, of course, a certain degree of arbitrariness.  Furthermore, this division of material violated two general principles of contextualization: works from the same place should appear together, and later works should come before earlier works.

As an alternative, I could have employed the broadest term, “Insular”, and divide the material in two or, perhaps, even three parts according to chronology – first the earliest insular decorated manuscripts including the Book of Durrow and up to the Codex Amiatinus; then the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Ruthwell Cross, and the Franks Casket; finally an array of manuscripts from all of England, from Lindisfarne to Canterbury, including the Echternach Gospels, the Vespasian Psalter, and others.  But even here, chronology proves tricky, because of the imprecise dating of many of the works.

So, although I would have preferred to introduce the earliest insular experiments in manuscript illumination before the Codex Amiatinus, until another solution presents itself, I will stick with the separation of material that I employed this semester – “Anglo-Saxon” and “Irish and Hiberno-Saxon”.