A.R. Danziger, Art & Design

Why did the Celts decorate their crosses? Let's take a little trip through the ages to find the inspiration that sparked the Celtic imagination: To begin with, the pre-Christian Celts already had a tradition of decorative stone carving. The Picts chisled spirals, key patterns, and other designs into boulders that possibly served as boundary and land markers.  In the 8th century, more and more slabs featured large cross shapes filled with spirals, keys, and intricate interlaced knotwork. This coincided with Irish Gaels and Anglo-Saxons pushing into Pictish lands, bringing Christianity along with them. Aberlemno Cross Slab ( Anne Burgess / Aberlemno Cross ) The Irish high crosses, as I explained in my last post , often displayed saints, biblical figures, and Christ surrounded by a ring which could represent the victory wreath, eternal life, or the cosmos. These concepts and imagery travelled along with clerics, missionaries, and pilgrims from Rome, Jerusalem, and perhaps even Egypt. ...

  Why are some Celtic crosses surrounded by a ring shape? If you ask this on an internet forum, the stock answer is that it's a leftover from the time of sun worship: some sort of compromise with the pagans. I have even heard it asserted that Celtic crosses existed before Christianity. So, I set out to find whether this was true. Turning to art history and archaeology, I found that there are no carved stone crosses in Ireland or Britain before the 8th century.  The earliest surviving Irish standing high crosses, Pictish stones with crosses and Christian motifs, and the Northumbrian crosses all date to around 800 A.D. This is centuries after the Gospel was first proclaimed in the British Isles, well after the establishment of monasteries, and over 100 years after the Synod of Whitby. The term "sun cross" was coined after World War II and refers to European Bronze Age sun chariot wheels created by sun worshiping cultures. As you can see, these are quite different objects al...

I painted some Celtic style art this past week to place in my neighborhood for my neighbors to find and take home.  I haven't painted in a while, but I felt inspired by some combination of Art and Found Day, my great enthusiasm for St. Patrick's Day, and by the volunteers who have been working hard to clean up trash in my part of the city.  I really wanted to give something back to this community and add to the beauty of it in some small way. It was fun to find places to hide them; especially since I love labyrinths, and we happen to have a couple small ones in the corner of a local park. Whoever found each one, I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for being my neighbor!

I intend this to be the first in a series of early Scottish saints: Saint Ninian, the first Apostle of Christianity in Scotland  St. Ninian, Bishop of Whithorn, first missionary to Scotland, and Apostle to the Picts (d. 432 A.D.) He is shown here carrying a Gospel book, bishop's crozier, and his bell (the Clogrinny) used for summoning monks to pra y the divine office. His vestments are modelled on the clothes in the Book of Kells, and the geometric lettering is based on the incipit from the Lindisfarne Gospels. Some of the details are a bit anachronistic, but tie him to the town of Whithorn in Dumfries and Galloway where he founded the first church in Scotland, Candida Casa (the White House). The Whithorn crozier is a historic artifact owned by one of Ninian's successors in the 12th century. He stands in the doorway of Whithorn priory's ruins. The cross on his Gospel book is from the Peter Stone at Whithorn. Available on Zazzle

The BBC recently did a piece on the Lindisfarne Gospels. You can listen to it here: BBC iPlayer You can also flip through the pages at The British Museum Digitised Manuscript collection here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_nero_d_iv    The Chi-Rho monogram from the Gospel of Matthew in the Lindisfarne Gospels, England, approximately 700A.D.