Cross-carpets and Chi-Rhos: turning the page on the Irish Gospels of St Gall
The incipit on p. 7 begins with three oversized letters: X, P and I. The X and P are in fact the first two letters, Chi and Rho, of the name of Christ in Greek. This Chi-Rho symbol was used throughout the early medieval period in manuscripts and inscriptions to represent Christ. The letter that follows the Chi-Rho on page 7 is the Latin letter I, XPI being the standard medieval scribal abbreviation for the genitive form Christi. The subsequent words AUTEM GENERATIO are written as ‘Insular display capitals’, the ‘gate’ M being particularly distinctive. Insular display capitals are also found on the Ardagh Chalice (1874:99) and occasionally appear on early medieval Irish stone monuments, Toureen Peakaun in Co. Tipperary and Nendrum in Co. Down providing examples. The finals words on page 7, SIC ERAT, are written in the standard Insular half-uncial script of the remainder of the Gospels. The monumental Chi-Rho page in Cod. Sang. 51 can be compared to those in the earlier Lindisfarne Gospels (British Library, Cotton MS Nero D IV, f. 29r) and in the later Book of Kells (Trinity College Dublin, MS 58, f. 34r). The arrangement is also close to that in the 8th-century St Chad Gospels (Lichfield Cathedral), especially in respect to the character of the Insular display capitals.
The preceding cross-carpet page can also be compared to Lindisfarne and Kells, which each feature several, and to other early Insular Gospel-Books such as the Book of Durrow (Trinity College Dublin, MS 57) and the St Chad Gospels. Ultimate La Tène, fret and interlace patterns, all of which also appear on the Chi-Rho page, are combined to fully decorate the ‘carpet’. A spiral-filled equal-armed cross occupies the centre of the design, which also includes T-bar extensions, corner brackets and six squares with cross-like fret designs. Intricate zoomorphic interlace fills the four large quadrants between the central cross and the other design elements. The form of the cross is particularly reminiscent of that on folio 210v of the Lindisfarne Gospels, which also has the small central cross, separate T-bar terminals, corner brackets and small square elements, here filled with swastikas. A similar cross can also be seen on folio 129v of the Book of Kells.
Insular book illuminators were particularly fond of carpet pages, which often but not always featured crosses. There is a second cross-carpet page of Irish origin on display in the Words on the Wave exhibition, namely that seen on the 8th- or 9th-century St. Gallen fragment Cod. Sang. 1395, p. 422. This page features a different cross type, an expansional (rectangular) cross, and is unusual in having four undecorated quadrants between the cross and border. The earliest Insular carpet page may be that in the 7th-century Bobbio Orosius (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, D 23 sup., fol. 1v). Though the term ‘carpet page’ is a modern invention, it is possible that carpets or textiles of Eastern origin may have been the ultimate inspiration for the carpet pages found in Insular manuscripts.
Calkins has suggested that Insular carpet pages may have been inspired by metal book covers or by cumdaigh (sing. cumdach) or book-shrines that were produced to contain precious manuscripts. He argues that the carpet pages may have represented internal covers offering symbolic protection to the precious incipit pages they preceded. The Words on the Wave exhibition features one such cumdach, namely the Lough Kinale Book-Shrine. The front of this early 9th-century bronze shrine does indeed resemble a cross-carpet page, featuring a large expansional (round) cross with cusped arms within a La Tène decorated border. The small 8th- and 9th-century ‘Type A’ grave-slabs from Clonmacnoise, which feature crosses carved within a square or rectangular frame or border, have also often been compared to manuscript cross-carpet pages. Some of the crosses indeed feature the small central crosses, T-shaped terminals and corner brackets that appear on the Cod. Sang. 51 cross. The study of cross-carpet pages again brings home how designs and art-styles crossed between the media of manuscript, metalwork and stone carving in the early medieval period, one of the major themes of the Words on the Wave exhibition.
Calkins, R. G., Illuminated books of the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1983), 30–92
Charles-Edwards, G., ‘Insular display capitals and their origins’, in R. Moss (ed.) Making and meaning in Insular art (Dublin, 2007), 228–41.
Dora, C., ‘The Irish Gospels of St Gall and its family’. In C. Dora and F. Schnoor (eds), The cradle of European culture. Early medieval Irish book art, 74–85. (St. Gallen, 2018).
Meehan, B., 'Early Gospel-books at St. Gallen', in M. Seaver, D. Ó Riain and M. Sikora (eds), Words on the wave: Ireland and St. Gallen in early medieval Europe (Dublin, 2025), 26–35.
O’Reilly, J. ‘The St Gall Gospels: art and iconography’, in J. O’Reilly, Early medieval text and Image 1: the Insular Gospels; edited by C. A. Farr and E. Mullins (Abingdon, 2019), 279–350.
https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0051
