by Andy McSmith - The Independent - 6 August 2008
They have been dismissed as savages who resisted the march of civilisation. But the remains of a monastery found in the north of Scotland suggest the Picts have been wronged...
The Picts have long been
regarded as enigmatic savages who fought off Rome's legions before mysteriously
disappearing from history, wild tribesmen who refused to sacrifice their
freedom in exchange for the benefits of civilisation. But far from the primitive
warriors of popular imagination, they actually built a highly sophisticated
culture in northern Scotland in the latter half of the first millennium AD,
which surpassed their Anglo-Saxon rivals in many respects.
A study of one the most
important archaeological discoveries in Scotland for 30 years, a Pictish
monastery at Portmahomack on the Tarbat peninsula in Easter Ross, has found
that they were capable of great art, learning and the use of complex
architectural principles.
The monastery – an
enclosure centred on a church thought to have housed about 150 monks and
workers – was similar to St Columba's religious centre at Iona and there is
evidence they would have made gospel books similar to the Book of Kells and
religious artefacts such as chalices to supply numerous "daughter
monasteries".
And, in a discovery
described as "astonishing, mind-blowing" by architectural historians,
it appears that the people who built the monastery did so using the proportions
of "the Golden Section", or "Divine Proportion" as it
became known during the Renaissance hundreds of years later. This ratio of
dimensions, 1.618 to one, appears in nature, such as in the spiral of
seashells, and the faces of people considered beautiful, such as Marilyn
Monroe. It can be seen in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the Alhambra palace of
Granada in Spain, the Acropolis in Athens and the Egyptian Pyramids, but was
thought to have been too advanced for the Picts.
"The Picts have
always been an attractive lost people, they are one of the most interesting
lost peoples of Europe," said Martin Carver, a professor of archaeology at
York University who has worked on the site since the mid-1990s, and recently
written a book detailing the findings. "The big question is what happened
to them and did they ever really make a kingdom of their own."
The answer to the latter
question seems an emphatic yes, based on the findings at Portmahomack, which is
remote today but would have once been a key point on sea routes in the North
Sea. "They would have been dreaming of a New Rome and a new world
connected by water rather than Roman roads," said Professor Carver.
"They were the most extraordinary artists. They could draw a wolf, a
salmon, an eagle on a piece of stone with a single line and produce a beautiful
naturalistic drawing. Nothing as good as this is found between Portmahomack and
Rome. Even the Anglo-Saxons didn't do stone-carving as well as the Picts did.
Not until the post-Renaissance were people able to get across the character of
animals just like that."
In addition to stone
carving, the archaeologists found evidence that vellum, chalices and other
religious artefacts were being made at the site on a considerable scale.
Vellum, a form of paper made from animal skin, would have been used to make
highly decorative gospel books. The cemetery, containing graves of middle-aged and
elderly men almost exclusively, and a piece of stone bearing a tantalisingly
incomplete inscription provided other key clues as to the Christian nature of
the site.
"The most important
piece had a Latin inscription. That's as common as muck in the Mediterranean,
but extremely rare in Scotland," said Professor Carver, who previously led
research into the Anglo-Saxon burial mound at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk. "It
says 'This is the cross of Christ in memory of Reo...' and the rest is broken
away. Unfortunately the key bit, the name of the person, is missing. It means
there's someone around there who knows how to write in the eighth century. That
itself is a revelation."
A Pictish wall, which is
believed to have formed part of the original monastery's church, was discovered
in the basement of the derelict church on the site, which has now been turned
into a visitor centre. But it was the dimensions of another structure within
the complex, the "Smith's Hall", that attracted particular attention
as it was made with "a startling symmetry offering us more than just
competence in construction".
A detailed study was made
of the horse-shoe shaped building, searching for the unit of measurement used
by the Picts. Professor Carver said a "Tarbat foot" of 12-and-a-half
inches seemed to have been the standard measure used to make hall and other
parts of the monastery. He also found the ratios of lengths of different walls
and bays inside the window conformed to the architectural principle called the
Golden Section. "The Golden Section, together with its inverse, the Golden
Number, 1.618, has been valued by artists for millennia ... and it is a true
delight to observe it among their architects," he said. "It shows the
importance of symbol and worship in everything done in the service of the
Christian God.
"There is something
rather intriguing in the learnt character of them. This is a building put up to
house metal workers. It's the idea they were all possessed of the same kind of
knowledge and all trying to serve it."
Jean Gowans, who recently
retired as chairman of the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland, said the
idea the Picts had been using the Golden Section was "wonderful,
astonishing".
"It really is
absolutely fascinating. It's mind-blowing stuff," she said. "This is
staggering to hear, but I'm not totally surprised. I think they were pretty
sophisticated, when you think of all the Pictish stones and the wonderful
carvings that they made, a lot more sophisticated than perhaps they are given
credit for in public perception."
The monastery at
Portmahomack suffered a major fire in the ninth century and several stone
sculptures were smashed, suggesting it was sacked by an invading force, likely
to be Vikings intent on expanding their territories in northern Scotland. The
site continued to be occupied but at this point evidence of a monastic
settlement disappears.
However, the shared
religion of the Picts and Scots may have helped them unite against a common
enemy, ultimately creating the kingdom of Scotland. "There was a war as
important as Alfred's against the Danes [in England] and the Picts got really
battered. In the Annals of Ulster, there are records of battles where the
flower of Pictish aristocracy is killed," Professor Carver said.
"Portmahomack got
burnt down pretty definitively round about 820. The idea is they were under new
masters. It could be the Norse or the Men of Moray, MacBeth and his family. I
think Portmahomack was captured by the Men of Moray. The Norse wanted it badly
but they didn't get it. There is no Norse material there. There was no more
vellum-making and sculpture and it stopped being a monastery. In the ninth to
11th centuries, they are making metal work, but that's the real Dark Age."
Portmahomack: Monastery
of the Picts is published by Edinburgh University Press
Tribes that
resisted the Romans
Picts was the name which
the Romans gave to a confederation of tribes living beyond the reach of their
empire, north of the Forth and Clyde.
The name makes its first
known appearance in the works of a third-century orator, Eumenius, and is
assumed to come from the Latin word pingere, "to paint", suggesting
they painted or tattooed their bodies.
But what name they called
themselves, or what language they spoke, we do not know.
One thing that puzzled
outsiders is that they were the last people on these islands to trace their
lineage through their mothers. The Venerable Bede, writing in 731, said that
the Picts had come from mainland Europe,presumablyScandinavia, to northern
Ireland to ask for land, but the Irish sent them on to Scotland.
Hence a myth that the
Picts were given Irish wives, on condition that they became matrilineal.
Other wild stories
included that they were dark-skinned pygmies who hid in holes in the ground
during the afternoon, but had magical powers at night.
Probably they were a
coalition of indigenous tribes brought together by the Roman threat.
In Bede's lifetime, the
Picts were defeated in war by the Northumbrians and converted to Roman
Christianity.
Andy McSmith
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