The Mysteries Of Dark Ages Art | An Age Of Light | Timeline

[Music] so far on this artistic journey through the dark ages we've been hugging the Mediterranean and following the Sun but the dark ages wouldn't be as significant as they were in the story of art if they'd stayed in the south to be properly influential they needed also to venture north [Music] this is Lindisfarne high up on the north coast of britain holy island they call it and this monastery you see there was founded early in the 7th century by an Irish monk called Eden what's a place to build a monastery a cut off from the mainland beaten up by the sea it's so out-of-the-way and impractical and that's precisely why it was chosen [Music] the Irish monks who founded Lindisfarne weren't looking for an easy life they were looking for difficulties to conquer these were hardcore northern Christians who'd isolated themselves up here on purpose who worked their fingers to the bone and created something out of nothing as they saw it Jesus had sacrificed his life for them so the least they could do sacrifice their comfort the hardcore determination of the Lindisfarne monks shows not only in the miraculous building of their great monastery but also in the stunning book art they made up here so intricate so detailed so difficult and that's the thing about the North's contribution to the art of the Dark Ages what it achieved it achieved by going the extra mile working the extra hour adding the extra detail nothing was given to it on a plate [Music] in this film we're going to be looking at the Carolingians Dark Age expansionists from France whose huge Empire gobbled up most of modern Europe who made art of exquisite thinness and richness also the Vikings who despite their terrible reputation for raping and pillaging were actually exceptionally inventive craftsman the extreme delicacy of Dark Age vodka art is an unexpected pleasure then up here in the north of England we'll be celebrating a Dark Age nation whose artistic handiwork was admired across the whole of Europe I'm thinking of course the anglo-saxons so skilled so hard-working so ingenious speaking of hard work one of the things we're going to be doing in this film is following the creation of an anglo-saxon jewel from start to finish later on I'll introduce you properly to Shawn green ouch here for now all that really matters is that he's going to be making something exquisite a silver disc broach in the anglo-saxon manor Shawn green houses anglo-saxon broach is a pleasure we're saving for later first we need to confront the North's most notorious barbarians we've tackled some terrifying warrior nations in this series the Huns the Vandals the Goths but when it comes to bellicosity no one has quite as fearsome a reputation as the Vikings [Music] you know people get so much wrong about the Vikings they didn't wear these ridiculous helmets for a star in were invented in the 19th century where stage designer working on a Vulcan or opera you had to make one of the singing Vikings look particularly evil so stuck the Devil's horns on a helmet and the Vikings have been lumbered with these helmets ever since this is what their helmets really looked like the only surviving Viking helmet in the National Museum things were particularly interesting because while all the other Germanic tribes headed south and became thoroughly Italianate the Vikings stayed in the harsh and windy north where they clung to the old ways so they were a barbarian nation of a pure and exciting time the Vikings were a living link to an older and deeper European past there were forces at work in them that civilization hadn't dimmed and that's what's so exciting about them [Music] in fact most of the time they were simple farmers tending the land keeping livestock growing what they could but in the lands of the Vikings you can't go very far without encountering water and this constant presence of the sea had turned them into superb sailors exactly where they reached is still fiercely debated but they certainly got to Greenland and then to Newfoundland the Vikings discovered America a long long time before Columbus so both manip was one of their great achievements and another of their great achievements was art in the great years of Viking expansion roughly 800 AD to roughly 1100 AD the Vikings put almost as much energy into making their own art as they did into stealing other people's this trefoil viking brooch was modeled on the buckles used by Roman soldiers on their sword belts the Vikings adapted it and turned it into a brooch for ladies much of what they made is so intricate and fine it's difficult to see so to make absolutely clear would adventurous creatives they were I've brought you to Oslo to one of the great Viking museums where I wanted to show you this whopping great nautical masterpiece on the 8th of August 1903 a Norwegian farmer called cannot Aram knocked on the door a professor Gabriel Gustafson of the Museum of Antiquities here in Oslo while digging on his farm said Knut the ROM you've come across a buried ship and he thought it might be Viking two days later professor Gustafson arrived at the farm and confirmed the discovery of this thing the author Berg ship [Music] will you look at that it's made entirely of oak over 60 feet long 15 feet wide decorated at both ends with these boisterous Viking carvings inside the ship were two dead bodies an older woman who may have been a queen and a younger woman probably her slave who was buried with her there were also 14 horses three dogs and an ox all sacrificed together and buried with their master in the stern of the boat was a four-wheeled cart the first such Viking cart ever discovered but no one seemed too sure what the weather was going to be like in heaven because there were also four sledges but it's the carving of these boats and carts and sledges that it makes this particular Viking find so exciting look at the elegant line of this ship how it ends so gracefully up there with the curved head of the snake at either end above the waterline where they can be seen are these busy expanses of carving so active and lively scores of twisting bodies clutching hands and staring eyes sniffing snouts all jumbled together excitedly a gymnasium of animal acrobats tying themselves into knots you have to get your eye in with Viking carvings otherwise they can frighten you with all this amazing complication it's all based on animal shapes all interwoven and overlapping so that for example is one animal there's the head and there's the tail and this figure 8 shape here that's the whole of its body and that's biting the tail of this animal here and that animal is biting the tail of that animal and so on so imagine the 3d vision you need to carve this the steady hand the computer brain so if anyone ever says to you the Vikings were barbarous grab them by the ear and tug them here to Oslo runes more rooms and still more rooms all over Scandinavia Norway Denmark particularly here in Sweden you find these magnificent standing stones left behind by the Vikings covered in wobbly carvings all these rooms are the bits of writing on the twisty snakes you usually find them on Viking gravestones these ones here say Gideon loved her husband and remembers him with her tears because they're carved on these mighty stones and not written down on handy bits of parchment or vellum there's a tendency to mythologize them to see great truths in the runes according to Norse mythology the runes were found by Odin the supreme god of the Norse men while he was hanging from the tree of life the famous pig Drusilla [Music] nine days and nights odin stayed in the great tree waiting hoping until eventually the rooms fell into his hands and revealed themselves to him odin passed then to us thus from the start the rooms were associated with magic and the mysteries of the cosmos [Music] this splendid story about Oden up in the trees and the origin of the runes is another example the extraordinary power that words had in these fateful years words letters symbols seemed to mean so much in the dark ages they were so loaded they had such resonance [Music] it's actually a simple alphabet so this shape here that's a vert sound that's an A L and so on so that says Valdemar and in fact this whole messages here stands Valdemar in Viking land the runic alphabet or foot hark as it's called had 24 letters in it originally later on when the Vikings attacked Britain they took the rooms with them and the foot Hawk grew to 33 letters the new letters were needed to describe new sounds every time the Vikings conquered the new territory new words entered their language they needed new letters to describe them so for example originally there was no W and I have to use a a V sound for my name Valdemar so the runes were never some cobweb covered dead language fit only for a museum they were always alive vibrant and constantly changing [Music] what a good-looking alphabet it is - so energetic and upright it's based on vertical lines because verticals are easier to carve particularly in wood but also in stone this vertical emphasis gives the runes a spiky presence and a mysterious relationship with time as if every mark is somehow counting down the days the Vikings were the last of the great Bob Aryan Nations to convert to Christianity wasn't till the 10th century a thousand years after the birth of Christ that paganism hold on the frozen north was broken so around here the paganism was stubborn and in Viking art it's often difficult to tell where the paganism ends and the Christianity begins this is the biggest and most famous of all Scandinavian rune stones the yelling stone it weighs over ten tons it's two and a half meters tall and as you can see the entire stone seems to rise with energy what a fabulous thing this inscription here this goes all the way around tells us that the yelling stone was put here by Harald Bluetooth the energetic Viking ruler who's usually credited with converting the Danes to Christianity I am Harald it says here son of God and I made the Danes Christians it's carved on all three sides and on this side there's an image of a giant snake attacking a stylized lion now obviously there are no Lions in Scandinavia it's an image they found abroad but the Vikings identified with the Lions fighting spirit so it pops up a lot in their art it's an image they made there now I know what you're thinking you're thinking what lion and what snake well inside the visitor center at yelling there's a coloured replica of the great stone which shows you how the lion and the snake would originally have looked before all their paint fell off but the most surprising sight is here on the biggest side it's the culmination of the entire stone but you can't see it yet the light has to be exactly right [Music] what you have to do is wait till the Twilight begins to work it's magic can you see it it's a splendid Viking crucifixion with this Stern Christ in the center surrounded by all these writhing Viking knots it's as if the whole stone can't keep still and I like the way Christ has an actually got a cross he's just standing there with his arms outstretched so it's obviously another image that's been imported from abroad and is now being misunderstood so confidently [Music] when the Vikings began behaving like Vikings and invaded Britain they encountered the most exciting jeweler's of the dark ages the anglo-saxons how do we know they were exciting because they've left behind this the Sutton Hoo treasure this is the finest hoard of anglo-saxon gold ever dug up in Britain one of the great treasures of the British Museum just look at it my legs go weak every time I see it because it's in such excellent condition much of the art that survives from the dark ages has been battered by time but not a sudden new treasure in the finest pieces here there's hardly a gram of gold bent out of place or a garnet missing the Sutton Hoo treasure was dug up out of the ground in East Anglia just a few weeks before the start of the Second World War in 1939 so it couldn't be investigated properly till after the war was over and what a torture that must have been for the waiting archaeologists the treasure dates from around 620 ad and comes from the grave of an important East Anglian King the king was buried in a ship his transport to the next world and all this was buried with him to serve him in the afterlife [Music] these bits of sword here and the helmets mark him out as a mighty warrior you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of this man in heaven [Music] we found a liar in his grave as well so the king could listen to his favorite music in the afterlife that's a recreation of it he had to eat well so this fabulous cooking cauldron was buried with him look at all the intricate Celtic decoration around it [Music] most important of all the people who buried the King made sure that he'd look good in the next world by burying him with his best anglo-saxon ruler bling which is where this gold comes in and those magnificent garnets if you've ever seen finer jewelry than this let me know where because I want to go there how did they do it these anglo-saxon wizards to penetrate their secrets I've tracked down a man who knows in his youth Shawn greenhouse was a skilled forger and some of the world's greatest museums have admired his out Shawn was finally caught and sent to prison so he served his time and these days puts all that expertise to much better use as an independent craftsman the methods he uses aren't exactly the same as the methods of the Dark Ages the modern world has changed too much for that but they're about as close as you can get and what Shawn's work gives us is an insider's view of how anglo-saxon jewelers actually made their pieces so short can you tell us what it is you're going to be making oh it's an angle Saxon dicks brooch silver with Simon are more gilding cover in most of the aspects in the anglo-saxon jewelers would use they obviously had lots of different techniques in the way they made their jewelry yeah well this is probably a 10th century it's like a late Saxon dispatch the earlier ones with a golden garnet most of these are really just symbolism on these is this based on an existing broke silence it's my own design but it kind of encompasses elements of other other things going off so it's an original design in itself the sensor parts will be a learning goal driven because all their different clothing are mothers and that's a picture of an anglo-saxon King yeah just a jury the elements of the delights of Shawn's anglo-saxon disk brooch will have to wait first we need to cross the channel and search out those powerful Dark Age creatives the Carolingians rulers of the franks the franks were the ancestors of the modern french originally they were germans just like the anglo-saxons but they arrived in Gaul on one of those expansionist barbarian waves that we saw in film 2 and early in their story the franks converted to christianity and they became particularly fierce defenders of the faith [Music] plenty of Dark Age societies liked their art to Sparkle a taste for gold is one of the dark ages defining characteristics but when it comes to religious bling the Frankish Christians were top of the charts [Music] if you've ever wondered why the fringe sometimes conduct themselves as if they were the chosen people it's because that's exactly what they thought they were in 732 ad the Franks led by the heroic shall mark tell Charles the hammer defeated an invading Muslim army which had caught from Spain hoping to conquer Europe the Franks believed God had chosen them to save Europe from Islam they were his chosen people and their art seems particularly aware of this special position in God's good books the mightiest of the Frankish Kings Charles the great or Charlemagne as is usually called came from a dynasty called the Carolingians he was crowned in 768 and with typical Frankish modesty pushed himself right to the front of Dark Age politics Charlemagne was determined to expand the Frankish Empire after all it was God's chosen Empire and the Carolingians were God's chosen leaders and this expansion of Charlemagne's Christian Empire was achieved with deep brutality [Music] in Germany the Saxons who are still pagans were given a very simple choice convert to Christianity or die they didn't become Christians they were killed that was Charlemagne's choice in 800 AD in Rome on Christmas Day itself the Pope rewarded Charlemagne for his efforts on behalf of Christianity by crowning him as the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne was now the leader of the largest empire Europe had seen since the fall of the Romans the center of gravity of Europe had shifted and it had shifted to the north this is the chapel that Charlemagne built here in our han on the Belgian borders and from here he ruled his new Christian Empire this is actually the marble throne on which he sat [Music] there's a spooky simplicity to Charlemagne's thrown for slabs of ancient marble a few metal clamps six marble steps and that's it a gold loving emperor is pretending to be a simple man Charlamagne began building this Chapel in 786 ad and at exactly the same time in Spain the Muslims were building the Great Mosque in Cordoba which I hope you remember from the last film such inventive and dramatic architecture with those nimble double arches and that gorgeous forest of columns [Music] Seana mines Chapel this Chapel was intended to be a deliberate riposte to the Muslims a Christian answer to the Cordoba mosque look up there at the arches and see how they have these alternating bands of color just like the arches in the Cordoba mosque but in our home the stripy arches don't float or saw nothing does this is architecture drawn with the biceps not the wrist effortful and ponderous I don't like this building it feels brutal clunky this round shape was based originally on a Roman mausoleum you can still sense the do me cold atmospheres of the mausoleum in here [Applause] gloomy expensive intense Frankish Christianity bulldozes the senses but it doesn't really pleasure them at least I don't think so in the battle of the northern Christians give me anglo-saxon art any day [Music] [Music] Christianity arrived in Britain from three directions at once in a three-pronged religious assault in the South in ancient Kent a team of monks led by Saint Augustine was sent here by the Pope in Rome and they brought with them the official Roman version of Christianity cup here in the north of Britain it was Irish monks from across the sea who came over to convert the pagans they brought with them a harsh more basic more penitential form of Christianity they deliberately built their monasteries in difficult locations and where they produced glorious art with an ecstatic an insistent tone to it like the chanting of a great monks choir the third type of Christians found in anglo-saxon Britain were the ones who were already here remember in film one how the Romans converted to Christianity under Constantine and how one of the earliest known Christian house churches was found in Roman Britain in lulling stone in Kent we don't know much about these existing Christians they were a modest Christian presence but perhaps tiny droplets of this modesty were thrown into the melting pot as well so the anglo-saxons would have had would would we tip films or charcoal brazier should be matching this is the silver I'm going to make the broad chose of it's basically about 82 percent silver a bit of copper quite a lot of lead which designates as anglo-saxon or Viking a few other bits impacts in it all the truth telling which you don't get is not the silver Shawn melts down the anglo-saxon silver and to turn it into something useful pours it into some molds made from cuttlefish bones so tell me about this cuttlefish it's what was used in ancient times that's with the pin and the pin bones next thing to do is to reduce this piece of silver for the main body down to about one and a half millimeters to replicate a lot suckling dispatch is very existence so first of all a facade debut from the center to the outside oops out to the side enjoy your visit inova top yeah basically yeah Oh on the other side you start in the central works in the middle that's all keeping uniform thickness because it tends to bowl to natural bone shape it starts to split once you start to spread it out even further because we are meaning it gets higher and higher the pitch with the content will its hardness we don't crack it [Music] Wallace brought it to the next stage so it's just a matter of us no repeat of the process and as we reduce the area you'll get larger and once we've made a big enough piece actually reduced its wall enough elements other boats will have a large enough piece to cut the Disco's off this is one of the half millimeters as you can see that is just the same as this just the same sir but I've worked on it it took two days camera work and a lot of ear bashing following it with your neighbors from what I've used to get into that so starts on with this now well that is the basic shape of the brushes ASIC shape of approach well Shawn greenhouse bangs away in his lair back at the front line of the Dark Ages the anglo-saxon custom of burying the dead with things that would be useful to them in the afterlife was of course a pagan custom and unfortunately when the Anglo Saxons were converted to Christianity that custom was stopped in a Christian burial you buried the body and that was it so nothing a sumptuous as the Sutton Hoo treasure has survived from the Christian era instead we get another kind of anglo-saxon treasure it's a treasure made of granite and limestone the resilient spiritual treasure that is the anglo-saxon funeral cross earlier on who saw how the Vikings commemorated their dead with these mighty standing stones covered in runes and this idea that stone is somehow eternal and lasts much longer than new is something that was shared by all the voyage in tribes of the north there's something splendidly basic about these anglo-saxon crosses they're supposed to be Christian but somehow if Christianity feels superficial and confined to the surface underneath you can still sense the atmospheres of Stonehenge a connection with the faraway past and the central mysteries of creation see all this decoration here it's called interlacing it's Celtic in origin you get it on the anglo-saxon crosses but also on the great manuscripts written later in the monasteries that Lindisfarne [Music] a lot of people have written a lot of books on the subject of Celtic interlacing what it means why it was used it's so beautiful to look at but also so intrinsically mysterious [Music] they say that its origins lie in basket weaving and plaiting and we'll never know for sure but my guess is that this is also an attempt by the Dark Age mind to grasp and mimic the rhythms of creation to convey the sense that the cosmos goes on and on and on that everything in it was interrelated [Music] this is a rather wonky specimen which is why I like it so much it's not quite right so you just want to hug it but because it's so wonky the interlacing on the lonen cross in the Isle of Man is particularly clear we're going to be seeing a lot of this Celtic interlacing and the marvelous manuscripts that are coming up so I just wanted to show you quickly how it was done it looks immensely complicated but it's actually relatively simple [Music] so first you need to mark out a grid say we want to do a decorative border on a gospel book so is the border and we know from unfinished bits a manuscript that the monks are left behind that the way they did it was to make this grid with dots to guide them so then I got three dots two dots that he dots need on three dots 2.2 dot two dots and like the dots on a dice three two three two three two then you start filling in the spaces in between now the big rule in interlacing is that one line goes over and the other line goes under over under over under over under all the way along when you're about to get to the edge you stop cuz you need to work out how you're gonna do the edges now I'm just gonna square them off that's the simplest way of doing it but they also did all these elaborate things as leave out bits of the pattern them create this kind of a symmetrical symmetry what's too complicated for me I'm afraid and once you've got your overall over under over under then you start to fill in the bits of the background red black [Music] you are with a Celtic interlacing so I've done this very big because I've got insensitive and stubby fingers but if you're a Dark Age monk pouring over a precious manuscript then the borders you made with Tully knee I mean these people must have had extraordinary eyesight of course if you're a sculptor on the other hand once you've designed your interlacing you need to carve it into stone and that's mightily difficult so and with this cross loanin cross you can see that the interlacing it's ok when it begins up here but as it comes down it gets wonky then one Kia and one Kia back in Bolton Sean greenhouse has engraved the symbols of the four evangelists round the edges of his silver brooch and he's now ready for the really difficult bit in the middle the anglo-saxon King created so carefully with Kwame enamels the class on enamel technique is a very old technique practice by the Romans and the Celts even before then it's just powdered glass dome not too mixed in with water and then just fine in the Hilton but the anglo-saxons and all the people in the dark age and into the Middle Ages would use Roman glass Tesoro's growing up the kind of thing you see in wall more takes in Ravenna in such places Constantinople and so suddenly because although they have the technologies to make the glass they didn't have the oxides to get the various colors as you can see the yellows and the greens and the blues the first stage is to lay down the kings outlines in a delicate framework of itsy-bitsy bits of pure gold Italy little bit you know then the really tough work begins getting the powdered glass into this labyrinth of gold cells yo just fill in the background no the dark blue it's always better to get the background in first the largest areas to fill the largest area the kind of holds most of the wires in position and so you know pushing it from the boat into the the other cells but otherwise it ought to be washed off if you do that you don't start so games just go to work over the color schemes no I think the yellows keep going next so I'll mix some yellow all right we got difficult part to fill the smaller pieces because of just touching them with the surface tension turns to like glue them to the damn brush so slowly does it happen then we'll pull the atashi in there long DP Edward the Confessor - big yellow but General Custer heard him just slop fiddly work you know I was fighting the surface tension with it was dark just pale green the cloak itself from that we're ready for firing when I've dried it out while Sean prepares to pop his anglo-saxon King into the kiln I'm thinking that his brooch reminds me strongly of the most famous of all anglo-saxon jewels the so called Alfred jewel they say that originally it was the top of a reading implement sent out to the bishops by King Alfred himself it's now found in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and what a beautiful thing it is [Music] so this style approach was obviously elite anglo-saxon yeah got the 10 cent really Virginia design a lot of people always say that the anglo-saxon jewelry was at its peak earlier than that they think of the Sutton Hoo the garlic stuff and the garnet you or the gold and what have you that's right fashions change I suppose I prefer the later stuff I think it's far more elegance and there's me far more to it should anyway that's the US only finished beautiful so that's obviously an echo if you like of the alfred jewel is yeah so it's kind of like a mishmash of various things but it's all of its time and period so come on have a look at that and I see yes beautiful and who is this figure you've put on that's kind of King Alfred is it well no it's just a generic figure of a a Saxon King I suppose with the long pointy beard live longer and the Blue Ivy's you find a very like to portray themselves Ashley imagine so anyway we just have to get on no and assembling yes so that will do that next ship way yes right first thing to do is put the crystal insulated silver gilt collar that just drops into there and then this piece and be riveted on the back were these little rivets also did a song yeah so I put them in though so little bit of finish [Applause] there we have it and it it's finished that's beautiful the Shawn green house jewel we wrote in the light you can get the edges of the actual gold or something any kind of sparkles yeah I love quasi may work I love it up in the harsher corners of the anglo-saxon world the Irish monks who converted the north of Britain were deliberately cutting themselves off from life's little comforts exiles for Christ they called themselves Lindisfarne up there where the monastery was founded by st. Aidan in 635 AD was deliberately out-of-the-way secluded when the tide was out the only way across was along this path here the pilgrims way it was caught marked out with his wooden stakes but if you're coming from the other side of the island from the sea then Lindisfarne wasn't cut off at all in fact it was very tempting the Viking raids on Britain which did so much to tarnish the reputations of the Norse men began with a raid on Lindisfarne in 793 and for the next century or so the Vikings kept coming back monasteries were easy pickings they were basically undefended manned by peaceful monks and they were packed with sumptuous religious treasures and excellently positioned for Viking raids the monasteries of the Dark Ages were Aladdin's caves of treasures jewel-encrusted relic boxes golden crosses studded with rubies and pearls we live in a world in which Louis Vuitton luggage and Jimmy Choo shoes seem precious in the Dark Ages they knew better [Music] for the Vikings the main attraction of the monasteries was obviously all that fabulous Christian gold in them the rubies the pearls but it's recently been suggested that there were other reasons why they targeted the monasteries religious reasons remember in 793 AD when they raided Lindisfarne the Vikings were still hardcore pagans stubborn believers in Odin Thor and Freyr but these pagan Vikings the fierce missionary enthusiasm of the Irish monks and the brutal conversion tactics of Charlemagne constituted an assault on their religion the Vikings liked being pagans they didn't like being told they were worshipping the wrong God so when they attacked the monasteries it wasn't just to grab all this fabulous Christian loot it was also a form of religious payback you think our religions wrong we think your religions wrong the monks on Lindisfarne were also fighting a religious war their monastery was a hive of busy missionary activity but unlike the Vikings the preferred weapon of the monks wasn't the sword but the word [Music] you must have noticed that all the way through this series I've been harping on about the power of words in the dark ages I'm like a stuck record on the subject words letters inscriptions they keep appearing in this story and wherever they appear they seem to glow with dark age urgency if you controlled the word in the dark ages you controlled the world and for me the most captivating evidence and this immense power that words had as the great book created here by the monks of Lindisfarne the Lindisfarne Gospels [Music] this isn't just one of the great masterpieces of British art this is one of the great masterpieces of all art written and decorated on Lindisfarne by a monk called ed Freeth the Lindisfarne gospel contains a calligraphic cosmos of exceptional vitality [Music] it contains the four Gospels of the New Testament the story of Christ has told by Matthew Mark Luke and John and each of these evangelists gets a portrait to himself so there's st. Matthew writing his gospel and it says Mattel's Matthew up here all the portraits in here rather traditional it could easily be Italian or buys an time but then you turn the pages and you come across this this certainly isn't traditional or Italian this is a uniquely British contribution to the art of the dark ages look at all this amazing Celtic interweaving that's filling all the letters and all these cosmic swirls and twirls and spirals it's like a magnificent garden of paradise that's I wrapped it across the pages and yet it's got this pagan kick to it as well [Music] this is st. John the writer of the fourth gospel that's his portrait and there above his head the eagle that's his sign just so we know who it is and this is the actual beginning with John's Gospel and look how astonishingly beautiful it is and you know what this says what all this amazingly complicated interlacing and all this cosmic calligraphy do you know what this says it says in principio air at verbum add verbum air at a port down in the beginning was the word the Word was with God [Music] in the Lindisfarne gospel Christian energy and Celtic inventiveness pictures and letters have come together in cosmic adulation of the word so that's the story of the dark ages they weren't dark at all the Christians struggle to imagine their God was one of the most exciting struggles in art the barbarians were inventive peoples who made glorious bling Islam spent these years reaching for the stars while the anglo-saxons were magnificent Goldsmith's and brilliant wordsmiths when William the Conqueror invaded Britain in 1066 and brought the Dark Ages to some sort of official end he brought to an end one of the great ages of art you

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Keywords: real, the dark ages, Documentaries, Channel 4 documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, history documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary, Full Documentary, BBC documentary, dark ages, documentary history, History, stories

Id: mEMGUN5oJsI

Length: 60min 3sec (3603 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2017