But the vital problem of the Alfred Jewel is in the enamelled Figure. Of its meaning there have been guesses and suggestions, some reasonable, some wild; M. Labarte could only say, ‘it represents a figure hard to characterize.’ This Figure is manifestly of a religious character, and it is the centre and focus of the whole. All the other parts are relative and subordinate to this, and the entire Jewel is in fact a setting and a shrine for this sacred object. We must endeavour to ascertain its intention and significance, but before attempting this interpretation we must consider the Enamel as a work of art.
For this venerable relic, even if regarded only in its material aspect as an ingenious62 mechanical product, and as a specimen of a once flourishing art, is rare and curious to so high a degree as to confer rank upon any Museum (however otherwise rich) that is so fortunate as to possess it.
Behind the Enamel, in the position of a backboard to a picture-frame, is a separate gold plate bearing a significant device which is certainly intended as a counterpart to the Figure of the obverse. From the relation observable between these two representations we may gather a constructive inference. Thus we have three subjects for our consideration in the present chapter, and it will be convenient to give to each of them a separate section by itself. Accordingly, the plan of this chapter will be as follows:—I. The Enamel as an artistic product; II. The inward signification of the enamelled Figure, and of the Engraving at the back of it; III. A Constructive Inference.
I
The Enamel as an Artistic Product
Of enamels we may say that they are a sort of paintings or embroideries;—only not made63 with liquid pigments nor with variegated threads, but with molten glass diversely tinted by means of metallic oxides[16]. On the one hand they are the precursors of our painted windows, and on the other they are the parents of the famous works of the artists of Limoges. Of this artistic industry the Alfred Jewel preserves a specimen of the rarest kind. It belongs to the type which is designated cloisonnée, because the outlines of the design have first been made by little slender barriers of gold which serve as fences between the colours. Into the compartments so enclosed the material of the enamel is deposited in the form of a vitreous paste, that is, glass ground to a fine powder, and mixed with the colouring material and moistened. So prepared, the work is passed into an oven, with a heat to melt the glass, but not the metal plate upon which the design has been laid. If the64 process is successful, the work is substantially achieved when it comes out of the oven, and nothing remains to be done but the dressing and finishing of the surface. Of this cloisonnée type M. Labarte, in enumerating nine examples, as being the chief works of this kind now extant, gives to all of them the title ‘Byzantine.’
The chief extant Monuments in Byzantine Enamel Cloisonnée, according to Labarte.
The celebrated crown of gold, which goes by the name of the Iron Crown, is the oldest extant jewel that is enriched with enamel. It was given to the cathedral at Monza by Theodelinda, the Lombard queen, who died in 625[17].
The enamels in the altar of St. Ambrose of Milan, executed in 835, must have been executed by Greek artists, who were numerous in Italy at that time. It is to be noted that the flesh tints are rendered by opaque white.
The enamels in the cross called the Cross of Lothaire in the treasury of the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, which we hold to be Byzantine work.
65 “A jewel preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was discovered in 1696 (sic), near the Abbey of Athelney, in which Alfred the Great took refuge when he was defeated by the Danes in 878. Mr. Albert Way has given a description of it, with engravings of front and back, and in section (The Arch?ological Journal, vol. ii, p. 164). The inscription AELFRED MEC HEHT GEVYRCAN (Alfred ordonna que je fusse fait) which stands in the thickness of the piece, is thought to leave small room for doubt as to the origin which is attributed to it. The enamel of the obverse is executed by the process of cloisonnage; it represents a figure hard to characterize (il reproduit une figure dont il est difficile de déterminer le caractère). The flesh portions are in whitish enamel; the colours employed in the drapery are pale green and ruddy brown semi-transparent; the ground is blue. The jewel terminates in the head of an animal, in golden filigree, with all the characteristics of the oriental style.
“Admitting that the inscription may apply to Alfred the Great, this jewel would not by itself be sufficient to prove that the art of enamelling66 was practised in England in the ninth century. The inscription might have been engraved after the king had purchased it (possibly) of a merchant from the East.”
The enamels which environ the gold crown preserved in the treasury of St. Mark’s, at Venice. We see there a bust of the Emperor Leo the Philosopher (886–911), who was probably the donor of this votive crown, which was made to be suspended over an altar.
The enamels on a chalice in the same treasury; it appears by the inscription to have been executed for an emperor who died in 944.
The enamels on the reliquary of Limburg. This magnificent piece was executed before 976.
The enamels upon eight gold plates which were found at Nyitra, in Hungary. Seven of them are in the Museum at Pesth. These eight plates unite to form a crown, one in front and one at back, and three on either side. Each has its enamelled picture. The front piece has a portrait of Constantinus Monomachus (1042). The pieces to right and left of this represent the Empresses Theodora and Zoe; the next two on either side represent actresses; the third on67 either side contains an allegorical figure of a woman, the one being Humility, with hands crossed in front, the other Truth, bearing a cross. The eighth, which is the hindmost, is circular, and represents St. Andrew[18].
The enamels which decorate the royal crown of Hungary, which was sent as a present to Geysa I, king of Hungary, who died in 1077.
In this list the famous ‘iron’ crown of Monza holds the first place, being, in fact, an ample golden fillet richly decorated with enamels, and containing within it a narrow hoop of iron, which is reputed to have been made of a nail from the Cross.
The fourth place in this catalogue is assigned by M. Labarte to the Alfred Jewel, and by this classification it is referred to a Byzantine source. But as it is plain from the matter as well as the manner of his description that his acquaintance with the Jewel is second-hand, we pass over this local element, while we accept his classification so far as it refers to structural affinities.
In the spring of 1839, during some excavations68 in Thames Street, was discovered a fibula which happily passed straightway into the hands of Mr. Roach Smith, and he wrote a memoir upon it which may be seen in the Arch?ologia for 1840, accompanied with a splendid illustration in colour and gold. It contains a bust in cloison-work enamel, and invites comparison with our Jewel more than any of those in the above list, probably more than any other extant specimen. It is now in the British Museum. Both the figure and the filigree are of superior workmanship to the Alfred Jewel, as if it were a later and more refined product of the same school. A French critic calls it Byzantine, and assigns it to the eleventh century[19].
So far about other extant specimens of enamel cloisonnée. This species of enamel rises like an island out of the broad level of the enamel champlevée, in which the plate was prepared for the vitreous deposit by scooping the pattern upon it. To this common method belong the older and more rudimentary enamels of the British horse-gear, correctly described by Philostratus,69 who will be quoted below. To this belong also the late enamels, for which during the thirteenth century Limoges was famous.
The history of the art of enamelling is very imperfectly known, and the paucity of extant specimens makes the investigation the more difficult. The canvas upon which these pictures were laid consisted of plates of the precious metals, the smaller works being laid upon gold or silver, the larger on copper. As a natural consequence it happened that as soon as they were antiquated or had served their turn, they were lightly cast into the melting-pot, save where they were protected by some peculiar veneration.
Hence it has come to pass that a favourite art of the Dark and Middle Ages, which we have reason to believe was for centuries very prolific (until it was superseded by the increased vigour of painting and sculpture in the fourteenth century), is now represented by a few specimens only, and its history is hard to retrace. I shall make no attempt to supply this want, and shall only rehearse a few interesting facts which the present investigation has brought70 to my knowledge. Origins I leave to specialists: but this I may say, that such evidence as the present enquiry has brought within the circle of my observation seems to suggest a Keltic source for the Enamel in our Jewel.
The earliest mention of enamel to which we can confidently point is found in the book of Philostratus entitled Pictures (Icones, Ε?κ?νε?). This author was a Greek rhetorician and connoisseur in Art, who came to Rome (a.d. 200) in the reign of Severus, attracted by the Court of Julia Domna, who (in the words of Gibbon) was the patroness of every art and the friend of every man of genius. In his Icones he makes pictures the text of his elegant and fashionable discourse. Whether his pictures were real or imaginary is a matter of no consequence to our present purpose. The picture in which we are interested is one that represents a Meet for a Boar-hunt. The writer comments upon the well-equipped company, the horses and their riders, in the splendour of their get-up for the sport, drawing special attention to the curiosity and costliness of their horse-trappings. Their bits are silvern, and their head-stalls are decorated with gold71 and enamelled colours. For the production of these colours it is said that ‘the barbarians who dwell in the ocean do smelt them upon heated copper, and that in cooling they do set and harden and keep the design[20].’
It has been questioned who are meant by the barbarians in the ocean. Modern French writers have generally applied it to the Gauls; but Olearius, the editor of Philostratus (1709), understood the Keltic peoples; and certainly the expression appears more applicable to the British Isles than to Gaul. Moreover, it is in Britain, and not in Gaul, that enamelled horse-trappings have been found. Some of these may be seen in the Ashmolean, and more in the British Museum.
‘The antiquities discovered at Stanwick in Yorkshire, Polden Hill in Somersetshire, Saham Toney in Norfolk, Westhall in Suffolk, and at Middleby in Annandale, Scotland, which are all of Celtic workmanship, consist principally of bits and portions of horse-furniture of various 72kinds which have preserved, in many cases, the enamel with which they were decorated[21].’
The Romans or Romanized populations continued the practice of this art, and from the evidence of the finds that occur from time to time it appears probable that some of the finest specimens were made in Britain. A large flat plate, representing an altar, which was found in London and is now in the British Museum, has all the appearance of being unfinished. A curious cup, which was found at Rudge in Wiltshire, has round it the names of five of the towns on the Roman Wall. And this specimen appears, by peculiarities of workmanship, to be nearly related to the beautiful vase which was found in a tumulus on the Bartlow Hills, in Essex, where it seems to have been deposited after the time of Hadrian. And if the Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries did, as it is thought, obliterate all traces of this art in the other parts of the west, this could only have had the effect of making the practice of it peculiar73 to Ireland; and the Irish were not a stay-at-home race, neither did they hide their gifts from other people.
There is a Keltic aspect in the enamelled designs which was remarked by Franks, and which may have accompanied the tradition of this art even when it passed out of Keltic hands[22].
In short, all the indications which this enquiry has brought to my notice concerning the technical history of our Enamel do seem to localize it in the British Isles. At a later stage of this chapter we shall be met by evidence of a different kind, tending in the same direction.
II
The Inward Signification of the Figure, and of the Engraving at the back of it
About the signification of this Figure the conjectures have been diverse, but they have 74all agreed in recognizing the two sceptres as the characterizing attribute. Hickes, in his first interpretation, thought that the icuncula represented the glorified Saviour with a lily sceptre in either hand, denoting his twofold realm of heaven and earth: or else the pontiff of Rome as his vicegerent wielding both the temporal and the spiritual power. Afterwards, however, when he had read in pseudo-Ingulph the story of St. Cuthbert’s appearance to Alfred, and had contemplated in the Lichfield Book the figure of St. Luke (seemingly, but not really two-sceptered), he was moved to think that the icuncula represented a saint, and was, perhaps, meant for St. Cuthbert[23].
I think Hickes was right in his first interpretation, and especially in the second member of his alternative, wherein he referred it to the pope. In the ninth century the thought of Christ was easily blended with that of his vicegerent upon earth: and it is plain that the Figure is arrayed in precisely those insignia which best represent the dominant thought of the papacy at that epoch. The two sceptres75 aptly symbolize the claim and aspiration of the Western hierarchy during those very years which Alfred spent in Rome.
Leo IV, the pontiff who welcomed the princely boy to Rome, had already, as the organizer of victory over the Saracens, done much to prepare the exaltation of the Roman See. Many causes conspired to the same result. This was just the moment when the famous Decretals were ready to start upon their triumphant career. A first display of their working was seen in 858, when the novel solemnity of coronation was added to the consecration of Nicholas I. And, as I apprehend the course of events, this falls within the period of Alfred’s sojourn at Rome.
Not long after this the surprizing spectacle was seen of the pope on horseback, and the emperor on foot walking by his side and holding his bridle as he rode. This pontiff gave commands to kings and ruled over them as lord of the whole world; and he actually realized his ambition of making all secular power subject to the papacy.
He claimed the subjection of all national churches to the bishop of Rome. He decreed,76 in 866, that no archbishop might be enthroned or might consecrate the eucharist, until he had received the pallium from the Roman pontiff.
There was much in the conditions of the time and in his own experience to cause Alfred to view these things wholly on their favourable side. The enamelled head is probably not meant for a portrait of Leo IV or any particular pope, but we can hardly be mistaken if we interpret it as a symbolical figure to represent the papal authority as the vicar and vicegerent of Christ.
And if this be a true solution of the problematical icuncula, there is yet something more which we naturally desire to know. We naturally inquire about the composition of the symbol, of what elements is it made up, and from what source did the suggestion come?
ILLUMINATION FROM THE ‘BOOK OF KELLS.’
In the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, is preserved a very famous book, known as the Book of Kells, a monument of Irish learning and art in that period when Ireland most justly earned the glorious title of ‘Insula Sanctorum.’ One of the full-page illuminations which adorn that book represents a scene of the Temptation, in which Jesus is on the pinnacle and Satan is77 near. Such is the action represented: but besides the action the same picture conveys also a reflection or comment upon the action. Lower down, and more in the body of the building, there is a window at which is seen a majestic personage holding a sceptre in either hand, which leans and rests on either shoulder. At first sight the effect is quaint, bizarre, and puzzling; but a little attention makes all plain. It becomes clear that a contrast is intended between the humiliation and the triumph of the Christ; and perhaps also, by the association of ideas which the last two verses of St. Matthew’s Gospel have made familiar, to suggest the duty (zealously discharged by the early Irish Church) of missionary devotion. No one who has given time and thought to this picture can doubt that the two-sceptered figure is Christ. Here is no question of the pontiff of Rome. In the seventh century, to which the Book of Kells is assigned, the papal claims were not admitted, much less glorified, by those of the Scotian rite. Therefore the interpretation of that Irish picture is quite simple, and it ............