Chapter XVI - Art and Learning

Summary

Here, again, the actual records compel us to go far in discount of current exaggerations.

In art, the monks themselves would be very surprised if they could hear what is often attributed to them. Modern writers generally rely, directly or indirectly, on Montalembert's Monks of the West, which is a panegyric exaggerated everywhere, and on this particular point inaccurate almost beyond belief. Out of the fifty documents upon which Montalembert professes to rely for his statement that the monks commonly built their own churches, only eight are to some extent accurate in special instances, while six say plainly the very opposite of what he claims for them. And, in Scotland, when we happen to have clear documentary evidence, we find that the building or painting or carving is nearly always done by hired workmen, and often by men imported from abroad. This country of exceptional monastic endowments was exceptionally dependent upon foreign artists.

As a characteristic specimen of exaggeration in the past, we may take Cosmo Innes's preface to the valuable Bannatyne Club edition of the Kelso chartulary, page xliii. It runs:

That the arts were cultivated within the Abbey walls, we may conclude without much extrinsic evidence. […]