It was at one time a very popular book,
being a Latin cyclop?dia, dealing with the sciences and general
knowledge of the time; yet the example referred to by M. Fleury shows us
only a crowd of initials learnedly styled by the Benedictine authors and
others "ichthio-morphiques" and "ornithoeides," _i.e._ made up of fishes
and birds, and about equal in quality and finish to the efforts of a
very ordinary schoolboy.
These initials betray an utter decadence from the beautiful uncials of
the fifth and sixth centuries, seen in the St. Germain's Psalter, for
example, now in the National Library at Paris. The colours are coarse
and badly applied, and even where brightest are utterly unrefined and
without taste.
Notwithstanding, however, the apparently total eclipse or extinction of
Roman art in Gaul, or, as it must henceforth be called, France, it is
claimed by M. Fleury[13] that the interlacements which constitute the
principal feature of these earlier Merovingian MSS. are derived from the
remains of Roman mosaics found profusely at Blanzy, Bazoches, and Reims.
This may be so, but those mosaics would not account for the same
features in the Irish work, for the Romans never reached Ireland as
occupants or colonists.
[13] See later.
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