The Irish pointed style, used for quicker writing, is but
a modified, pointed variety of the round hand, the letters
being laterally compressed. This hand appears in some
pages of the Book of Kells, but the best example is in the
Book of Armagh.[1]
[1] See Thompson, 236, where Irish calligraphy is fully dealt
with; Camb. Lit., i, 13.
Although the Roman alphabet was introduced by
Augustine at the Canterbury school, it wholly failed to
have any effect on the native hand from that source. On
the other hand, when, in the seventh century, Northumbria
was converted by Irish missionaries, the new Christians
copied the Irish writing, so well, indeed, that the earliest
specimens extant can hardly be distinguished from the
beautiful penmanship of the Irish. The Book of Durham,
generally called the Lindisfarne Gospels, of about 700,
is an exquisite Northumbrian example of the Irish round
hand, in the characteristic broad, heavy-stroke letters.
Another good specimen of this style is the eighth century
manuscript of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, in Cambridge
University Library.
Irish illumination is as characteristic as the writing.
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