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486 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
the years 650-70, but an earlier date is not altogether excluded.
The first great Anglo-Irish illuminated manuscript, the Book
ofDurrow (Trinity College, Dublin), also dates from the third
quarter ofthe century. Its exact place oforigin is uncertain. It is
traditionally held to have been written at the monastery of
Durrow in Co. Offaly, but its ornament, particularly its
trumpet'pattern, suggests English motifs, and textually it is
based on the Vulgate version of the Gospels current in the
newly Romanized English Church, Whatever its prove/
nance, it is the precursor, in its magnificent decoration, of the
Lindisfarne Gospels, the great masterpiece of Northumbrian
monasticism, written c. 700. But where the evangelist pages of
the Durrow Gospels are still patterned abstractions, hardly
recognizable as human, the Lindisfarne pages show seated
author portraits, based on classical humanist models, with a
genuine attempt to give proportion and roundness to the forms,
a pictorial tribute to the return of Christian Rome (PL 91 a).
The splendour of the book lies, however, in its glowing, inx
tricate initials, where trumpet patterns swell and curve, ribbon
animals ceaselessly interlace, bending birds appear, and closely
woven patterns fill the background spaces with an ever-chang/
ing, brilliant inventiveness (PL 91 ). The new classical feeling
can be seen in two pieces of carving, the Bewcastle and Ruth/
well crosses, the former datable by an inscription to c. 700, the
latter undated but
nearly contemporary work. Both crosses have
figure/subjects; those of Bewcastle are somewhat flatter and
stiffen Both have affinities to the Lindisfarne evangelists and
also to the
figure ofSt. Cuthbert incised in 696 upon his coffin.
On the Ruthwell cross the
figures, worn and weathered
though they are, still have a plastic sense and a noble dignity
that stand
comparison with the masterwork ofany period. The
at the feet of Christ
huge, simplified gesture of the Magdalen
has an expressiveness which transcends any crudity in the
naturalism of its execution (PL 92 a).
Nowhere in north-western Europe has this union of the
classical and the barbaric produced such striking work, and it
was not long before its influence began to spread. Northunv