Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe. Art historians usually group Insular art as part of the Migration Period art movement as well as Early Medieval Western art, and it is the combination of these two traditions that gives the style its special character.
The National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology is a branch of the National Museum of Ireland located on Kildare Street in Dublin, Ireland, that specialises in Irish and other antiquities dating from the Stone Age to the Late Middle Ages.
The Bell Shrine of St. Cuileáin is an early mediaeval Irish bell shrine found near Borrisoleigh in County Tipperary, Ireland. The bell is capped by arched openwork mounds, decorated with silver, gold and copper, and has two facing human heads at either side. The main panel would have been its most decorated but is lost, apart from various animal heads on both sides of its upper wings.
House-shaped shrine are early medieval portable metal reliquary formed in the shape of the roof of a rectangular building. They originate from both Ireland and Scotland and mostly date from the 8th or 9th centuries. Typical example consist of a wooden core covered with silver and copper alloy plates, and were built to hold relics of saints or martyrs from the early Church era; a number held corporeal remains when found in the modern period, presumably they were parts of the saint's body. Others, including the Breac Maodhóg, held manuscripts associated with the commemorated saint. Like many Insular shrines, they were heavily reworked and embellished in the centuries following their initial construction, often with metal adornments or figures influenced by Romanesque sculpture.
An Insular crozier is a type of processional bishop's staff (crozier) produced in Ireland and Scotland between c. 800 and 1200. Such items can be distinguished from mainland European types by their curved and open crooks, and drop. By the end of the 12th century, production of Irish croziers had largely ended, but examples continued to be reworked and added to throughout the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Although many of the croziers are associated with 5th- and 6th-century saints, the objects were not made until long after the saints had died. A majority originate from around the 9th century, and were often used as embellishment between the 11th and 13th centuries.
The Clonmacnoise Crozier is a late-11th-century Insular crozier that would have been used as a ceremonial staff for bishops and mitred abbots. Its origins and medieval provenance are unknown. It was likely discovered in the late 18th or early 19th century in the monastery of Clonmacnoise in County Offaly, Ireland. The crozier has two main parts: a long shaft and a curved crook. Its style reflects elements of Viking art, especially the snake-like animals in figure-of-eight patterns running on the sides of the body of the crook, and the ribbon of dog-like animals in openwork that form the crest at its top. Apart from a shortening to the staff length and the loss of some inserted gems, it is largely intact and is one of the best-preserved surviving pieces of Insular metalwork.
Griffin Murray is an Irish archaeologist and art historian specialising in medieval Ireland and Insular art–especially metalwork–in the period between 400–1550 AD. His interests include identifying and contextualizing the social role of medieval craftsmen, Viking art and the relations between insular and Scandinavian craftsmen, and he is a leading expert on both house-shaped shrines and insular croziers.
The Lismore Crozier is an Irish Insular-type crozier dated to between 1100 and 1113 AD. It consists of a wooden tubular staff lined with copper-alloy plates; embellished with silver, gold, niello and glass; and capped by a crook with a decorative openwork crest.
The Prosperous Crozier is a late 9th-century or early 10-century Irish Insular type crozier that would have been used as a ceremonial staff for bishops and high-status abbots. Its origins and medieval provenance are unknown until it was found fully intact by turf cutters c. 1831 near Prosperous, County Kildare. It but did not receive attention from antiquarians until 1851, but is today identified as one of the earliest fully extant and thus perhaps the most historically important European crozier.
The Rinnegan Crucifixion Plaque is a late 7th or early 8th century Irish gilt-bronze crucifixion plaque sculpture found in the 19th century in the churchyard of St. John’s on the head of Lough Ree in Rinnegan County Westmeath, and near Athlone, County Roscommon. It is one of the earliest extant representations of the crucifixion in Irish art, and outside of illuminated manuscripts, a rare example of both representation and a narrative scene in early Irish Insular art.
The River Laune Crozier is a late 11th-century Insular crozier, now at the Archaeology branch of the National Museum of Ireland. The object would have been commissioned as a staff of office for a senior clergyman, most likely a bishop. It consists of a wooden core decorated with fitted bronze and silver metal plates. Although the metalwork is somewhat corroded in parts, it is fully intact and considered one of the finest surviving Irish examples, alongside those found at Clonmacnoise and Lismore.
St. Fillan's Crozier is an 8th century Insular crozier crook traditionally associated with the Irish monk St. Fillan, who lived in the eighth century at Glendochart in Perthshire, central Scotland. Only the crook survives; the staff was lost at an unknown date. Sometime around the late 13th century it was encased in the Coigreach, a crosier-shrine of similar size and form built as a protective case, made from silver, gold and rock crystal and dating from the late 13th century, with additions c. the 14th or 15th centuries. The Coigreach was rediscovered in the mid-19th century by the archaeologist Daniel Wilson, who opened it and found St. Fillan's Crozier inside.
St. Mel's Crozier was a fully intact 10th or 11th century Insular crozier discovered in the mid-19th century on the grounds of an early medieval church in Ardagh, County Longford. It consisted of a wooden core lined with metal sheet tubing decorated with silver, coral and glass, as well as three knopes and a ring towards its base. The drop plate was formed by a separately formed wood block, and added to in the 12th century with a figure of a cleric or bishop wearing a mitre and holding a staff.
St. Columba’s Crozer is a badly damaged and incomplete 8th or 9th century Irish Insular crozier fragment. It consists of a wooden core covered by sheet bronze tubes decorated with a bronze knope lined with silver and gilt. The wooden shaft measures four-feet and is elaborately decorated but incomplete: it was found broken in two and both its foot and crook are missing.
The Corp Naomh is an Irish bell shrine made in the 9th or 10th century to enclose a now-lost hand-bell, which probably dated to c. 600 to 900 AD and belonged to an early Irish saint. The shrine was rediscovered sometime before 1682 at Tristernagh Abbey, near Templecross, County Westmeath. The shrine is 23 cm (9.1 in) high and 12 cm (4.7 in) wide. It was heavily refurbished and added to during a second phase of embellishment in the 15th century, and now consists of cast and sheet bronze plates mounted on a wooden core decorated with silver, niello and rock crystal. It is severely damaged with extensive losses and wear across almost all of its parts, and when discovered a block of wood had been substituted for the bell itself. The remaining elements are considered of high historical and artistic value by archeologists and art historians.
The Shrine of St. Patrick's Bell is a bell shrine reliquary completed c. 1094–1105 in County Armagh, Ireland, to contain a c. 500 iron hand-bell traditionally associated with the Irish patron saint Saint Patrick. Inscriptions on the back of the shrine record that it was commissioned after 1091 by the Uí Néill High King Domnall Ua Lochlainn and completed c. 1105 by the metalworker Cú Dúilig, about whom nothing is known. Both objects are historically significant, with the bell being one of the few Irish very-early medieval artifacts with a continuous provenance lasting from around the 8th century to the present, and the shrine being a highpoint of Irish metalwork from the late Insular and early Romanesque periods.
Cormac Bourke is an Irish archeologist specialising in Medieval studies, early church history and insular Christianity. He is a former, long term, curator of Medieval Antiquities at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and currently works at the antiquities department of the National Museum of Ireland.
The Shrine of St Patrick's Tooth is a medieval reliquary traditionally believed to contain a tooth belonging to Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, who lived in the 5th century. The shrine comprises a wooden case lined with bronze and decorated with gold, silver and amber fittings, and was built in two phases. It's basic structure and the central ringed crosses on either side are 12th century, while the purse-shaped form and most of the metal work, including the saints, were added in the 1370s when the object was substantially refurbished.
Bell shrines are metal objects built to hold early medieval hand-bells, particularly those associated with early Irish saints. Although the enshrinement of bells lasted from the 9th to the 16th centuries, the more well-known examples date from the 11th century. Nineteen such Irish or British bell shrines survive, along with several fragments, although many more would have been produced. Of those extant, fifteen are Irish, three are Scottish and one is English. Most follow the general shape of a hand-bell capped with a crest above a semicircular cap that matches the shape of a bell handle.
The Bell Shrine of Conall Cael is an early 12th century bell shrine found on Inishkeel island in County Donegal, Ireland. It was built to contain a 6th century bell associated with Conall Cael, a relatively obscure early Irish saint associated with Coolaun church, near Cashel in County Tipperary, and was probably created by a secular commissioner to give prestige to the locality.
