![]() Of all illuminated Insular manuscripts, biblical manuscripts survive in the largest numbers, but they were not alone in receiving decoration. By the late 8th century, Gospel books and Psalters, the most significant biblical texts for Christian thought and prayer, appear to have become sites for development of complex interpretative images and traditions of graphic presentations that incorporated concepts of orthodoxy, liturgical and devotional meaning, and the role of the church. Moreover, the imported medium of book art required adaptations of native decorative forms and assimilation of foreign traditions, such as illusionism and depictions of the human figure. Manuscript decoration played an important role in visual art developments because of the Bible’s centrality to Christian thought, ritual, and authority. Another term, “Hiberno-Saxon,” is sometimes used, but it, too, is not entirely satisfactory because it appears to exclude all but Irish and Anglo-Saxon contributions and to ignore the complexity of the various groups’ interactions. The name “Insular,” however, is used here not to denote a style but rather to provide a simplified label for the stylistically diverse examples of decorated manuscripts from 7th- through mid-9th-century Irish, Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Pictish, British, and Scottish contexts. Artistic developments in this context included mixtures of native art with Mediterranean as well as interpretations of Late Antique and contemporary Mediterranean art. Linked to the arrival of Christianity, it includes some of the earliest surviving examples from groups of northern European people who, never having lived fully within the Roman Empire, received the religion from a culture outside their own milieu. The manuscript decoration produced in Ireland and the British Isles from about 600 to 850 marks the advent of medieval book art. ![]()
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