The age of Faith, sometimes called the dark ages , lasted from 500 to 1500 A.D. While there are similarities and continuity throughout, there was growth and art can be broken down into three main categories: Early Medieval, Romanesque and Gothic.
Charlemagne (814) set things in motion by uniting western Europe under his rule and encouraging education and the arts. The short lived stability under Charlemagne ended shortly after his death and the turmoil of the times led to feudalism, where freedom and autonomy was exchanged for protection from marauders. Monasteries sprung up, often in isolated places were men pursued a life of prayer and in the process became the guardians of the knowledge of antiquity, and preserved and developed art architecture and music for liturgical settings .
Early Medieval is noted for Manuscript.
St. Matthew, from Gospel Book of
Archbishop Ebbo of Riems c 839
Early Medieval Art, while its content and function is completely Christian, its primitive style, expansive vitality. It owes much to the barbarian helmet and shield decorations, and especially as you move west, and little to the rapidly disappearing Roman civilization. In the manuscript painting of St. Matthew the apostle appears to be rushing down words at a break neck speed and there is dynamic motion in the drapery and hilly background.
Compare the swirling designs and squashed but simple figures 7 th Century Anglo-Saxon Helmet found at Sutton Hoo in England to the Book of Kells.

Early Christianity baptized pre-Christian art forms and culture. In the Book of Kells the account of the crucified Hebrew Messiah and God is written in the Latin tongue with
Celtic and Nordic artistic motifs.
“Using a varied repertoire of semiabstract forms – spirals, knots, snake-like interlacing, and stylized human and animal shapes – they created hypnotic, maze-like patterns that we have come to know as the
Celtic style…Christian artists adapted the swirling, spiral forms for their own use and these mesmerizing patterns lie at the heart of the decoration in the book of Kells.”
THE BOOK OF KELLS: ART, ORIGINS AND
HISTORY, Ian Zaczek
http://www.stonecircles.org.uk/celtic/christian/stjohn.jpg
For medieval man, sophistication of execution was not important, but story-telling and vibrant decoration was. There is a childlike quality to the art that speaks to simplicity of the recently Christianized and barely civilized populace. Jesus said “ unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). There are few who a more free than a child who is allowed to enjoy their childhood naturally. Little children are earnest, uncomplicated, don’t rationalize their bad behaviors, and speak from the heart often at the expense of their head. In like manner, the barbarian cultures were not contained by the
Greco Romans culture that preceded them, as they were taking their art forms of the old cultural identity and setting it to new tasks.

The decadent Romans lounging in hot baths might scorn the rugged and somewhat clumsily executed art of the rustic medieval. However, there was a freedom in the hardy and tenuous and demanding lives of the medieval that comes through in their art style. While a Roman might find it difficult to climb out of a warm bath and do what needs to be done, the medieval would find it hard not his head knew was the first priority, as there was now warm bath, soft bed or X-Box3 to tempt him away from cleaning the stable, building the cathedral or harvesting crops.
If Edmund Burke’s is correct in his observation that “On the soft beds of luxury, most kingdoms expire”, it is in the furnace of tribulation that a new dynamic society was coming of age.
Culture, not politics is the driving force of history. ( Pope John Paul II) There was a new force in history as the world entered the dark ages, a culture that would survive some of the most difficult conditions and fearsome invasions that had obliterated the old Roman empire.
The twisted spirals of the Animal Style found in the Book of Kells and barbarians metal work has similarities to the more elaborate graffiti art of today. Does this tell us anything about the mindset and on the edge lifestyles those who produced the art forms? http://www.espacedefis.com/espacedefis/ graffiti_doc/book-graffiti.jpg
Reproduce in your sketchbook one artifact that falls into the category of early medieval art. i.e. Page 317,