Celtic Art in the Global Village, continued

"The evidence gathered from dated examples of interlaced-work in Italy tends to show that there was gradual advance in the elaboration of the patterns as time went on.

Consequently the style could not have been borrowed en bloc from Italy, or vice versa, at one time; but interlaced ornament must have been a prevalent form of decoration throughout the whole of the West of Europe, and the style advanced in all the different countries simultaneously, there always being a constant communication between Rome and the centers of religious activity abroad.

As for the genius of the insular Celts, Romilly Allen places it centrally in the mainstream of a universal, pan-European development.

"Some races, like those in Great Britain, who now appear to have had a special gift for inventing new patterns and combining them with a sense of artistic fitness, may have made more rapid strides than their neighbors and have influenced the development of the style in consequence, but that is all that can be said."

As to why knotwork survived long after other types of Celtic art faded from Carolingian manuscripts, Romilly Allen speculated that this was statistically probable due to the almost infinite number of variations can can be made from even the most basic knot.