Connections Between Crosses
The Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses
Since their discovery by antiquarians, the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses have tended to be discussed together. Ruthwell is only about thirty miles west of Bewcastle along the line of Hadrian’s Wall and the old Roman road running north from Carlisle into Scotland. The two monuments are approximately the same height, carved in a similar style, and have two panels of figural carving in common: John the Baptist with the Agnus Dei, and Christ recognized by beasts. At Bewcastle, which is still in its original position, these same two panels appear on the west side of the cross, and so it is presumed that the side with these two panels at Ruthwell would also have faced west.1 Both also have faces carved with continuous inhabited vine-scroll ornament, however that ornament is treated and distributed differently. At Ruthwell the original north and south faces of the cross contain the vine-scroll, which is surrounded by the runic poem inscribed in the borders, while at Bewcastle only the east face of the cross is carved with inhabited vine-scroll and there is no poetic inscription in the borders. The vertical borders of the Bewcastle Cross are double borders, with, on the west face, an incised line separating the flat interior border that surrounds the panels of ornament from the slightly convex outer border, and on the other faces a rounded double roll-moulding. The vertical borders recall the roll-mouldings of metalwork objects, and were clearly never designed to carry inscriptions. Despite these differences, however, both crosses, display an interest in the recognition of, and revelation of Christ in both his human and divine forms, in eucharistic imagery, and in the tree of life. Both may also have contained relics. 2 There is a hole in the centre of the lowest panel of the west face of Bewcastle just as there is at Ruthwell. Both are large enough to have contained relics that could have been concealed by plaster and paint. If the hole at Bewcastle was indeed for a relic, a relic of the True Cross is a possibility, though of course no more than that. Whatever relic it may have contained, however, the power of the relic would have added to its visionary nature, an element of the cross that will be discussed further below.
Inscriptions on both crosses also focus our attention on the cross as a sign or vision. At Ruthwell the vision is of the True Cross of the Crucifixion, something that viewers would have seen with their minds eye as they circled the cross and read its runic poem. At Bewcastle the primary inscription (also in runes) is commemorative: ‘+þis sigbecn […] setton Hwætred […] þgær … æft [.]lcfri[.]’ (This victory beacon Hwætred … thgær and ... set up in memory of (after) .lcfri…). The next to last line may contain a form of gebiddan, meaning ‘to pray’. The inscription tells us that the monument was set up by Hwætred and one or two others as a ‘victory beacon’, or memorial, for someone whose name contains the letters ‘lcfri’, and possibly requested prayers for his soul, or perhaps for the souls of multiple individuals. 3 While nowhere near as complex as the Ruthwell poem, the Bewcastle inscription still manages to summon a vision of the cross as a shining beacon of victory, and suggests the salvation of whoever was commemorated by the cross, something made possible by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross as recounted in the Ruthwell poem. There is no way of knowing whether the Ruthwell poem itself was known at Bewcastle or not, but certainly the saving nature of Christ’s sacrifice would have been understood by all Christians.
The similarities between the two crosses have led scholars to assume that they were carved within years of each other by the same school of sculptors, although Bewcastle seems to have been carved by only one sculptor, while the hands of at least two can be discerned at Ruthwell. It is also generally assumed that those sculptors came from either the monastery of Lindisfarne or that of Wearmouth-Jarrow. This is in part based on similarities in style and epigraphy with surviving monuments at those two monasteries, but we do not really know enough about other early monastic communities to establish this with certainty. The number of women depicted on the Ruthwell Cross, the fact that the poem describes the cross as both the feminine rod and the masculine galgu, might indicate either a double house of men and women, or connections with such a house, and both Lindisfarne and Wearmouth-Jarrow were male communities. Similarly, the fact that Bewcastle seems to commemorate a layman, and the lack of any evidence for a community of any size at Bewcastle suggests that it may have been an eigenkirche (a private proprietary or family community), yet another type of monastery. That said, craftsmen undoubtedly travelled, monasteries did maintain trading networks, and aristocratic families could have been patrons of multiple monasteries.
However different the types of community might have been, both were located near Roman sites in a way that seems to have been designed to make explicit reference to the Roman past, especially at Bewcastle. Bewcastle is located near Carlisle in Cumberland, on what would have been the terrace of the old Roman fort of Fanum Cocidii just north of Hadrian’s Wall, while Ruthwell is located near the old Roman road that ran from Carlisle north into Scotland. Both are associated with the expansion of the kingdom of Northumbria into the British kingdom of Rheged, and the links with old Roman imperial sites may have served well the political aspirations of the growing kingdom. It is possible that the crosses were erected as the Northumbrians moved westward, or a bit later, after power had been consolidated. Which one was carved first is a matter of debate. Ruthwell displays a far more ambitious programme of images and inscriptions, but Bewcastle is far more elegant in its design and proportions, and consistent in the classicizing style of its carvings. In fact, the differences between the two crosses far outnumber their similarities.4 Most obviously, Bewcastle is a monument to the memory of the man named in its primary inscription, and perhaps also to those individuals whose names are inscribed in runes on some of the horizontal borders between the panels of knot-work and geometric ornament on its north and south sides—the female name kynbur*g̅, on the north side of the cross being the only one still legible. Bewcastle names individuals, at least one of whom, the man with the falcon on the lowest panel of the west face, presumably the man named in the runic inscription, appears to have been a layman. Bewcastle also may have asked us for prayers, while Ruthwell silently invoked them. We should also note that while at least one woman was named at Bewcastle, the figural programme includes absolutely no women, while at Ruthwell half the panels include images of women. The Virgin Mary is conspicuously absent from Bewcastle, while she is central to the imagery and meaning of Ruthwell.
The figural programme on the west face of Bewcastle consists of only three panels which are meant to be read from the lowest panel upwards. It begins with the figure of an aristocratic layman holding a bird of prey. His clothing and long hair identify him as a layman, and the bird identifies him as an aristocrat because hunting with birds was a pursuit limited to the very wealthy. The panel is meant to be read together with the inscription directly above it, which originally identified the figure, along with those who erected the cross in his memory. At the centre of this face of the cross is Christ recognized by beasts in the desert. As at Ruthwell, the beasts cross their paws beneath Christ’s feet, indicating that they recognize him as Lord, but the Bewcastle beasts also raise their outer paws in acclamation, a gesture which balances their much smaller size and less prominent in the panel, while at the same time helping to focus our eyes on the figure of Christ. Directly above Christ’s head is a short two-line runic inscription identifying him as Jesus Christ (g[e]ssus / kristtus). The panel with accompanying inscription is thus linked compositionally to the inscription and panel with the layman beneath Christ’s feet at the bottom of this face. Christ also stands beneath an arch, as does the man with the bird of prey, suggesting, perhaps, that they are linked in their humanity—the episode with the beasts took place during Christ’s mortal life, between his baptism and temptation. At the top of the shaft is John the Baptist holding the Lamb of God. If there was an inscription above this panel, it is now lost. The figure stands within a rectangular frame, indicating that it is different from the panels below, that it is an image of divinity and an apocalyptic image of the future. The frontal stance of the Baptist unites him with the figure of Christ below, and helps us to read the two natures of Christ (human and divine) represented in these two panels as a unity. The frontal stance of Christ and the Baptist also helps to distinguish them from the profile pose of the layman with his bird. At the same time, the presence of animals in all three panels tells us that there is a unifying symbolism to this face of the cross. At its simplest level, it is a story of salvation. Assuming that the layman, like the beasts, recognized Christ as his Lord, he will be amongst the saved, joining the Lamb in heaven at the time of the Last Judgment.
The theme of salvation through Christ is continued on the east face of the cross with its elegant inhabited vine-scroll symbolic of Christ, the true vine, and of the eucharist. The west face thus presents us with the body of Christ, and the east face with his blood. Bewcastle’s vine-scroll is very close to that of Ruthwell, both in the way the vine with its fruits and flowers and the animals that inhabit its branches are depicted. Some, for example, the little hybrid creature that is third from the bottom, are virtually identical to creatures appearing at Ruthwell (compare the second creature from the top of the north face of the lower stone at Ruthwell). Others, for example, the very naturalistic squirrels (or squirrel-like creatures) near the top of the shaft at Bewcastle, are nothing like the Ruthwell creatures, but do have parallels in sculpture at Jarrow.5 The Bewcastle animals bite at the fruits of the vine, which clearly has a eucharistic significance, but the overall symbolism of the monument means that we read the Bewcastle vine-scroll slightly differently. This is again a tree-of-life, but it extends to include the individual (or individuals) commemorated in and amongst the panels of the north, south and west sides. It thus carries a very specific reference to this place and these particular people that Ruthwell does not. Ruthwell may have been part of a community, but it did not name the members of that community. The more slender proportions of the Bewcastle Cross also make the vine-scroll look as if it is growing more actively from the ground, in fact the monument as a whole seems far less earthbound than Ruthwell. Old photographs indicate that this was true even before Ruthwell was moved into its present location in a pit inside the church.
The north and south faces of the Bewcastle Cross are decorated with panels of uninhabited plant-scroll, geometric and interlace ornament, and there is a prominent sundial on the south side of the cross, perhaps the earliest dial to survive from Anglo-Saxon England. The sundial makes it clear that time was important to Bewcastle in a way that it was not to Ruthwell.6 As with almost every other aspect of the monument, it also unites the liturgical with the commemorative. On a basic level the dial symbolizes the passing of time, the passing from this life into the next. The sundial would also have been of use in calculating the liturgical hours for any monastic community resident at Bewcastle—although there is no archaeological or historical evidence for there having been a monastery at Bewcastle. The gnomon of the dial, which would have been made of metal, has been lost, but on a sunny day we can still get a sense of how it would have functioned by watching the shadow of the monument itself as the sun moves through the sky. Further, the way the passage of time and the movement of the sun are a part of both the form and the meaning of the Bewcastle Cross relates to the imagery of its west and east faces—the images of Christ and John the Baptist, and the lush growing vine-scroll. The movement of the sun marked out the growing days that began with the feast of the nativity of Christ from the lessening days that began with that of the nativity of John the Baptist. This was a symbolism that was central to the Ruthwell monument as well, although not evoked there in such a literal manner.
Whether the panels of plant-scroll, interlace, and geometric ornament that cover the rest of the south face as well as the north face of the cross ever carried specific meaning is hard to determine. They have frequently been treated as mere ornament, but it is unlikely that so carefully designed and heavily symbolic a monument would have devoted so much space to mere decoration. If we look closely at the panels we can see that multiple crosses have been worked into each and every panel. These may have functioned as a further way of protecting the dead through the sign of the cross, but they also serve as a sort of visual meditation on the cross. Most of these embedded crosses are not immediately apparent to the eye. We have to contemplate the patterns, follow their raised lines and hollow spaces before we can discern the crosses hidden within them. The most famous of these panels is that at the base of the south face of the cross in which a central cross with splayed terminals would originally have been inlayed with glass, or perhaps metal. The monument would also originally have been brightly painted, and colour would have worked further to reveal or conceal the crosses within the larger patterns. The glass and metalwork inlays would also have shown and glistened in the sunlight, making the cross appear more like its metalwork and visionary counterparts discussed below, and reflecting the glittering cross present in both liturgical antiphons for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and the Crux benedicta, a hymn to the Cross composed by Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth century.7
As was the case with Ruthwell, there is uncertainty as to whether the “Bewcastle Cross” was actually a cross. No cross-head survives, but there is a socket on the top of the shaft that indicates that it would have had a terminal feature of some sort. There are antiquarian reports of a cross-head having been found at Bewcastle, but it is by no means clear whether it came from this cross or from a completely different monument. Nevertheless, according to descriptions and drawings, the lost head would be perfectly appropriate to the surviving monument. The head, described in notes for the 1607 revised edition of William Camden’s Britannia, was inscribed in runes with the words ‘ricæs drihtnæs’ (of a powerful lord).8 The inscription could refer to a secular lord, or to the Lord, or perhaps to both, a fitting culmination to the figural programme of the west face of the cross. The head is described and illustrated (though not with the correct inscription) in a 1742 letter in Gentleman’s Magazine,9 and an undated drawing now in the Society of Antiquaries in London, shows a head covered with a chequered pattern placed near the foot of the cross. The pattern is similar to that which appears at the centre of the north face of the cross, and the shape of the head, while rare, does occur on other Cumbrian monuments.10 The chequered pattern is reminiscent of the cloisonné cells of inlaid metalwork, as for example in the gold and garnet patterns of the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps, and it is possible that its alternating sunken and raised panels were painted red and yellow in imitation of such metalwork.11 If this was the case, the Bewcastle Cross might have appeared very like the cross described in The Dream of the Rood, covered with gold and gems, a tree raised up against the sky. Even if we were not to accept the head illustrated in the Antiquaries drawing as the original head of the Bewcastle Cross, it seems clear that the monument must always have been a cross. The so-called “ornament” of the monument’s north and south sides provides a series of visual riddles on the cross that make it clear that the Cross lay at the centre of Bewcastle’s design, message, and vision. It is unlikely that so much visual emphasis would have been given to these multiple crosses had the monument itself not been a cross.
The Ruthwell Cross and the Brussels reliquary cross
Connections between the Ruthwell Cross and the reliquary cross preserved in the Cathedral of Saints Michel and Gudule in Brussels are necessarily less direct than those between Ruthwell and Bewcastle. The Brussels reliquary cross is a relatively small (height = 54.9 cm, maximum width = 27.7cm), portable altar or processional cross made in the early eleventh century somewhere in the south of England, thus approximately 400 years after the Ruthwell Cross was erected and in a completely different part of the country.12 It is also very different in form and composition. The Brussels Cross is made up of a flat oak core composed of two parts riveted together. The decoration that originally covered the front of the cross has been lost, most likely in 1793 when it is documented as having been stripped of its jewels and broken in two by French soldiers under the leadership of General Charles François Dumouriez. A secondary inscription on the front of the cross reads: DIREPTA 7MA/MARTII, PUBLICAE VENERATIONI RESTITUTA 29NA 7BRIS 1793 ‘Looted 7 March, restored to public veneration 29 September 1793.’
The damage done to the cross during the French Revolution has revealed the relic cavity, a rectangular vertical slot, which once contained a relic of the True Cross. In its original state, the front almost certainly bore a figure of the crucified Christ, quite possibly accompanied by figures of the Virgin and St John the evangelist. The sides and back of the cross are covered with engraved silver sheeting, which is torn in places and missing several fragments. Contained within gilded roundels, the borders of which are filled with key pattern, are: at centre, the Agnus Dei carrying a stepped cross and book and facing the inscribed words AGNV/SDI; in the upper arm, the symbol of St John; in the right arm, the symbol of St Mark; in the lower arm, the symbol of St Luke; and in the left arm, the symbol of St Matthew. All four of the evangelist symbols are zooanthropomorphic, hold books, and are partially gilded. The inscription + DRAHMAL MEǷoRHTE (+ Drahmal made me) appears divided symmetrically across the arms of the cross. The use of silver to adorn the cross was a well-established convention going back to the earliest descriptions of the relic of the True Cross preserved in Jerusalem.13
The primary inscription is located on silver sheeting attached to the sides of the cross, and are interspersed with, four sections of Ringerike style interlace and scroll decoration. The inscription is in a mixture of Latin display capitals and lower case letters, not runes. It begins on the lower right edge of the cross (as viewed from the back), and reads up the right side of the shaft, across the top, and down the left side. Right side of lower shaft: +ROD IS MIN NAMA GEO IC RICNE CẏNING BÆR BẏFIGẏN On cusp of base of cross proper: DE B [bit of interlace decoration] End of right arm: LODE BESTEMED: ‘Cross is my name: once I bore the mighty King, trembling and drenched with blood.’ Top right of upper arm: ÞA Top of upper arm: S RODE hET ÆÞLMÆR Top left of upper arm: ǷẏRICAN 7 Top of left arm: AÐE End of left arm: LǷOLD HYS BERoþo[r] Left side of lower shaft: [bit of interlace decoration] CRIstE TO LoFE FoR ÆLFRICES sAVLE hYRA BERoþoR: ‘This cross Æthelmær, and Æthelwold his brother, ordered to be made for the glory of Christ [and] for the soul of Ælfric their brother.’ As Éamonn Ó Carragáin has shown, the inscription forms three distiches, the first of which (the lines that relate to Ruthwell) are in verse, and the other two (the commemorative lines) are in rhythmical prose. The formulaic phrase that names the patrons and states that they had the cross made for the soul of their brother Ælfric, is generically similar to the runic commemorative inscription at Bewcastle, but by the eleventh century this formula was so common that no direct connection with Bewcastle is likely. None of the individuals named in the inscriptions has so far been identified.
Clearly the first part of the inscription establishes a relationship with the Ruthwell Cross and its runic poem, even though the verses are not identical. The Brussels verses relate most closely to the middle of the Ruthwell poem: ‘I dared not bow. I [raised aloft] a powerful king… I was drenched with blood [begotten from that man’s side].’ As was the case with Ruthwell, the Brussels Cross may seem to be a speaking object, but its ability to speak comes from the blood of Christ, which covered the True Cross and allowed it to partake of his substance. There are, however, differences. The cross in the Ruthwell poem does not tremble, and the fact that it does in the Brussels inscription makes the latter immediately more emotional. The new emotional content of the lines may be a result of the increased interest in religious drama that characterizes the late tenth and eleventh century post-Reform period in England. It is also possible that when carried in procession the Brussels cross could have been made to tremble—although the inscriptions would not have been legible to an audience at any distance, and hence would have been impossible to read whilst the cross was being carried.
The lines on the Brussels Cross are much closer to lines 42–44 of The Dream of the Rood:
Bifode ic þa me se beorn ymbclypte; ne dorste ic hwæđre bugan to
eorđan, feallan to foldan sceatum, ac ic sceolde standan.
Rod wæs ic aræred; ahof ic ricne cyning.
(I trembled when that man embraced me; yet I dared not bow to the earth
/ fall to the earth’s surface, but I had to stand fast. / Rood was I raised up;
I lifted up a mighty king)
The Dream of the Rood survives in the ca. 1000 Vercelli Book, so it is perhaps no surprise that the Brussels inscription is closer to that near contemporary text than it is to the Ruthwell poem. The exact relationship between the three texts, while arousing much speculation, remains uncertain. Kemble suggested that The Dream of the Rood could have been expanded from an inscription such as that on the Ruthwell Cross (or the Brussels Cross), although ultimately he thought it more likely that the Brussels inscription was an abbreviated version of lines from the Vercelli poem.14 A number of later scholars have concurred with him on this point.15 Others have preferred to see the three texts as related in a more indirect way. Dickins and Ross described the Brussels inscription as ‘reminiscent’ of The Dream of the Rood,16 while D’Ardenne suggested that both the Brussels and Ruthwell inscriptions ‘draw on phrases common to traditional verse language concerning the Holy Rood, and are doubtless only chance survivors of a body of verse on this subject now lost’.17 Leslie Webster described the Brussels inscription as an allusion to The Dream of the Rood, but also implied a much closer identification of the Ruthwell and Dream poems, stating that The Dream of the Rood is ‘known in a manuscript version and from a runic text carved on the eighth-century stone cross at Ruthwell’.18 It should be remembered, however, that there is no dream described in the Ruthwell poem, and taking it to be a version of The Dream of the Rood is an error that will be discussed further below.
The combination of visual and verbal imagery must be understood as inseparable parts of the meaning of the Brussels Cross, and of the larger cultural discourse in which it participates. The location of the verse inscription around the narrow edges of the reliquary makes it unlikely that it would have been read out publicly, although it would certainly have been known to those who handled the cross, and perhaps to a larger congregation or monastic community. It would thus have been an important part of their experience of the cross as both a functional reliquary and a devotional object. Both the first person voice of the poetic inscription, and the way in which the reader must either turn the cross or move around it to put the various pieces of its meaning together unite it with the Ruthwell monument. The Brussels inscription also positions the reader in the same way as did the Ruthwell poem. The inscription in the voice of the cross is on the side that would have corresponded to Christ’s right side, so that looking up at the cross the reader too would have been invited to envisage him or herself in the position of the Virgin Mary at the Crucifixion covered in the blood of Christ. The inscription goes on to state that the cross bore Christ (bær byfigynde), aligning itself at the moment of Christ’s death with Mary, who bore Christ at the moment of his birth. However, the shape shifting of the cross in the Ruthwell poem, which moves from rood to gallows, is not a feature of Brussels. It is a cross and only a cross, and this is made crystal clear by the inscription which begins with the statement ‘Rod is min nama’.
Comparison with other contemporary altar or processional crosses suggests that the front of the cross would have been decorated with either a crucifixion scene, or simply the body of the crucified Christ. The “jewels” and possibly enamel-work that would have covered its surface were mandatory from an early date, and something of the effect of the colourful surfaces of the metalwork reliquaries would certainly have been reflected in the colours of the paint that originally covered Ruthwell and Bewcastle. When the Brussels Cross was bequeathed to the Cathedral of Saints Michael and Gudule in 1650, it was recorded as having been covered with 24 rubies and 16 diamonds,19 though these may well have been later additions. Continental reliquary crosses were adorned with gems from an early date, as the sixth-century reliquary cross of Justin II now in the Vatican Treasury demonstrates. However, even in late Anglo-Saxon England, garnets, glass and enamelwork were the most popular forms of embellishment, rather than rubies and diamonds, although documentary sources do describe objects as covered with jewels or gems, and a golden and jeweled reliquary cross features prominently in Elene.20 The eighth-century Rupertus Cross, for example, is inset with thirty-eight glass roundels that imitate rubies and other precious stones, capturing perfectly the idea, discussed above, that the blood Christ shed on the cross was a red gem.21 Whatever the reality of the Brussels “gems” may have been, the red and white of the stones were symbolic of the blood of Christ’s wounds described in both the Ruthwell and Dream of the Rood poems,22 and the pure water of baptism that also flowed from his side at the Crucifixion. The dual symbolism calls to mind the combination of baptismal and eucharistic imagery at Ruthwell. Without doubt the gold, silver, and jewels (original or added) would have created an appearance similar to that of the cross in The Dream of the Rood, even if Brussels itself is less monumental than the great cross described in the poem. Something of the shimmering light effects that would have been created by candlelight or sunlight hitting the surfaces of the reliquary can be seen in those photographs of the cross that have been published in colour.
The Agnus Dei surrounded by the symbols of the four evangelists is an apocalyptic reference to the Last Judgment. The Lamb is both sacrificial and symbolic of the eternal triumph brought about by Christ’s sacrifice. It represents the divine body of Christ, so that, as at Ruthwell and Bewcastle, the cross symbolizes the unity of his two natures. On Brussels the Lamb is not held by John the Baptist, but rather holds a book, the Book of Life described in Revelation 5:1. The cross that he carries is again a symbol of both the sacrifice of the Crucifixion and the triumph of the risen Christ, and its stepped base would have recalled literary descriptions of the cross at Golgotha. The ultimate textual source for the image of the apocalyptic Lamb is Revelation 4 and 5, but there is also an implied reference to John 1:29 in which John the Baptist exclaims ‘Behold, there is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.’ The cross that the Lamb carries, with its reference to the Crucifixion, is indeed the cross on which Christ sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. Both it and the Agnus Dei inscription help to bring out this second meaning, and would immediately have reminded an Anglo-Saxon audience of the Agnus Dei chant, derived from the words of the Baptist: ‘Agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi, miserere nobis.’
The Brussels reliquary cross is first and foremost a reliquary. Its relic cavity contained a piece of wood as late as 1925,23 although there is no way of knowing if this was the original relic. Its verse inscription, written in the first person voice of the cross of the Crucifixion, serves to reveal its relic. If the hole in the middle of the Ruthwell Annunciation panel was indeed a relic cavity, then, like Brussels, it would have been considered a reliquary.24 If it held a relic of the True Cross, then their relationship would have been even closer. Certainly the Ruthwell poem, again in the first person voice of the True Cross, would have functioned, like the Brussels verse, to reveal its relic. Relics of the True Cross, perhaps because they partook of Christ’s substance, had the power to turn wood with which they came into contact into further relics of the Cross.25 When “wounded” through the removal of the slivers that provided the numerous relics documented across Europe and beyond, that blood meant that the Cross also had the power to heal itself. Paulinus of Nola (354–431) wrote that, ‘Indeed this Cross of inanimate wood has living power, and since its discovery it has lent its wood to countless, almost daily, prayers of men. Yet it suffers no diminution; though daily divided, it seems to remain whole to those who lift it, and always entire to those who venerate it. Assuredly it draws this power of incorruptibility, this undiminishing integrity, from the Blood of that Flesh which endured death yet did not see corruption.’26 Whether there was a belief that the wood of the Cross literally had the power to turn stone into the wood of the Cross is not clear, although this was clearly the case on a figurative level. Yet, regardless of whether a relic was present or not at Ruthwell, the poem indicates that the monument speaks as Cross, and the vine-scroll imagery on the narrow sides of the cross would have called to mind the growing wood of the Tree-of-Life. The miraculous growth attributed to the Ruthwell Cross in the 18th century,27 is indicative of just how effectively the symbolism of the carved vine-scroll could fulfill its function.
The Ruthwell Cross and the Vercelli Book
The Codex Vercellensis, or Vercelli Book, was written in the south of England sometime near the end of the tenth century. It contains miscellaneous religious works, in verse and prose, and is preserved in the library of the S. Eusebio Cathedral, Vercelli under the shelfmark Codex CVII. The manuscript consists of 136 folios of thin parchment, each with a dimension of about 31x20 cm each of them containing between 23 and 32 lines. In the opinion of many scholars, the manuscript was written by a single scribe, who was particularly diligent and meticulous in using the script of that period, Anglo-Saxon square minuscule. The Vercelli Book contains twenty-three prose homilies (the twenty-third being a prose Life of St Guthlac), and six poetic works following the Anglo-Saxon alliterative metrics.28 Most probably this miscellaneous work was created to make a precious spiritual florilegium for use in meditation and prayer. The manuscript is documented as having been in Vercelli since the late eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century,29 but how the codex was moved from England to Vercelli during the eleventh century is still unclear: the current hypothesis is that the manuscript might have been a gift from an English pilgrim, grateful for the hospitality received in Vercelli during his trip to Rome. Vercelli was an established stopping point for Anglo-Saxon pilgrims. Two of the manuscript’s poems The Dream of the Rood (folios 101v–106) and Elene (folios 121–33v) are related to Ruthwell in different ways. Elene is a poem about the finding of the True Cross by the Empress Helena in the fourth century. It deals with material associated with the very origins of the cult of the cross, and Ruthwell is both an important monument to the cult of the cross in England and, perhaps, a reliquary for wood from the Cross that Helena is by tradition said to have discovered in Jerusalem ca. 326.30 It also deals with the Roman Empire, and the connections between imperial Rome and England were no doubt important. Helena was the mother of Constantine, whose father ruled over the northern part of the empire that included Britain, and Helena herself was British according to some legends. More generally, the classicism of Ruthwell’s carvings recalls the classical style of Early Christian Rome. As was the case with the Brussels reliquary cross, there is no direct connection between Ruthwell and the poem Elene, both are products of a shared interest in the visionary cross and in the world of Early Christian Rome in which it has its origins.
Elene
Elene is the work of the poet Cynewulf who flourished sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries, and who signed his name in a runic acrostic within the poem.31 The poem is divided into two basic parts, the first a narrative of the Invention of the True Cross (celebrated on 3 May), and the second a personal, though formulaic, meditation on the part of the poet. This epilogue, formulaic as it may be is the most original part of the poem, the bulk of historical material deriving from a Latin recension of the Acta Cyriaci, however Cynewulf does expand in significant and original ways on his source text(s).32
The poem opens with the emperor Constantine preparing to do battle against a confederation of Huns, Goths and Franks, the opening section culminating in the famous dream of Constantine, in which an angelic messenger grants him a vision of the True Cross, inscribed with an assurance of his victory.
hređerlocan onspeon,
up locade, swa him se ar abead,
fæle friđowebba. Geseah he frætwum beorht
wliti wuldres treo ofer wolcna hrof
golde geglenged; (gimmas lixtan);
wæs se blaca beam bocstafum awriten
beorhte ond leohte, ‘Mid þys beacne đu
on þam frecnan fære feond oferswiđesđ,
geletest lađ werod’.33
(lines 86b–94a)
(… he unlocked his heart, looked up, as the messenger bade him, the
faithful peace-weaver. He saw bright with ornate treasures the beautiful
tree of glory, adorned with gold, gleaming with gems, over the roof of the
sky. The shining tree was inscribed with letters, brightly and clearly, ‘With
this sign you will overcome that terrible troop of enemies, withstand the
hateful host.’)
Constantine then orders a cross to be made and he and his army proceed to victory. There are several aspects of this episode that are important. Firstly, it is the first moment in the creation of what would become the cult of the Cross, and Constantine’s victory under the sign of the Cross was to be paralleled by the Anglo-Saxon King Oswald’s raising of a wooden cross before and victory at the Battle of Heavenfield in 633/4. Heavenfield has become one of the key battles in the union of Bernicia and Deira into the kingdom of Northumbria, as well as of the triumph of the Northumbrian Church. The site thus united the triumphal symbolism of the cross as vexillum on both political and spiritual levels.34 Located near Hexham and Hadrian’s Wall, it was also to become one of the early centres of the cult of the Cross in the north of England as developed by the monks of Hexham. The growth of the cult was furthered by Adamnán of Iona’s translation of Arculf’s De Locis Sanctis, which described the cross relics of Byzantium and Holy Land. De Locis Sanctis was dedicated to King Aldfrith of Northumbria (685–704), who had copies made for distribution throughout his kingdom. The cult of the cross and the sculpture associated with it provide an important background for both the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses. Secondly, the cross in Constantine’s dream is adorned with gold and jewels. It’s description accords with what we know of early cross reliquaries, such as those described above, and it is the prototype within the poem for the later covering of Christ’s cross with gold and jewels (discussed below), itself a prototype for the painting and adornment of the Anglo-Saxon stone crosses. And finally, it is a shining tree inscribed with letters that speak of triumph and victory through the sign of the Cross. In the Ruthwell poem (inscribed around what was originally a brightly painted tree-of-life) Christ is cast as both king and warrior, assaulted along with the Cross, by arrows, yet ultimately triumphant over death. The ultimate message of the Ruthwell Cross as a whole is one of Christ’s triumph.
It is no doubt significant, however, that what Constantine sees is the Cross adorned. Here Cynewulf departs from the Latin source, which states only that ‘in coelom uidit signum Crucis Christi, ex lumine claro constitutum’ (he saw the sign of the Cross of Christ in the sky having been outlined by a bright light).35 Cynewulf increases the radiance of the vision, placing a special focus on the jewels and the gold, not the wood itself, although it is not completely hidden from view and is recognizable as the tree of glory. What he does not see is the wounded blood-covered cross that speaks in both the Ruthwell poem and The Dream of the Rood. Constantine does not yet know the story of Christ. He has not yet been baptised and initiated into the mysteries of Christianity in the way that both the members of the Ruthwell community and the dreamer in The Dream of the Rood would have been. It is only after his vision that he undergoes baptism, and bears the sign of the cross within himself through the sacrament. Only then can he hear and understand the story of Christ’s death for the sins of humanity, and only then does he have the knowledge to send Helena in search of the True Cross.
In Jerusalem Helena meets a Jew named Judas who acts as spokesman for the Jewish community. He is at first hostile to her quest, but is eventually converted and becomes bishop of Jerusalem. The tradition of Helena’s discovery of the True Cross and Judas’s role in that discovery had very early on also become a part of the liturgy for the Exaltation of the Cross, a feast which itself had its foundation in the Invention of the Cross in the fourth century.36 As a conversion narrative, the encounter between the Christian Romans and the Jews, might be read as providing a rough parallel for the encounter between the Northumbrian Church and the British people of Rheged in which the Ruthwell Cross is likely to have figured as both sign of triumph and weapon. Again, this is not to imply a direct connection between cross and poem, the triumph of both the Roman and Anglo-Saxon churches through the sign of the cross were common enough tropes.
Two themes that run throughout the poem are the opposition of darkness and light, and the related opposition of concealment or confinement and revelation or freedom. Like the healing of the blind man on the Ruthwell Cross, Constantine, Judas and the converted Jews are all bought from the darkness of their ignorance or disbelief into the light of Christian knowledge. The angel in Constantine’s dream is a radiant figure (hwit and hiwbeorht, line 73) that causes the darkness of the night to disappear (nihthelm toglad, line 78b). The Jews live in error and dark thoughts (gedweoland lifdon, þeostrum geþancum, lines 311b–312a) because of their condemnation of the radiant power (sciran miht, line 310b) of Christ and the Cross. The nails from the Crucifixion are hidden in the darkness of the earth until they are brought up into the light of day.
Leort đa tacen forđ, þær hie to sægon,
fæder, frofre gast, đurh fyres bleo
up eđigean þær þe æđelstan
hæleđa gerædum hydde wæron
þurh nearusearwe, næglas on eorđan.
Đa cwom semninga sunnan beorhtra
lacende lig. Leode gesawon
hira willgifan wundor cyđan,
đa đær of heolstre, swylce heofonsteorran
ođđe godgimmas, grunde getenge,
næglas of nearwe neođan scinende
leohte lixton.
(lines 1104–1115a)
(Then as they looked, the Father, spirit of comfort, caused a sign in the
form of fire to rise up where, through evil cunning, conspiracies of men,
the most noble of nails were hidden in the earth. Then suddenly appeared
brighter than the sun a flickering flame. The people saw their ruler reveal
a miracle, when from out of the darkness, like the stars of heaven or
heavenly jewels, near the ground the nails shining from their confinement
below gleamed with light.)
And, of course, the True Cross is unearthed and brought from darkness into light, and it is that cross that has the power ‘to reconcile the two realms of darkness and light through the revelation of the cross from one condition to another’.37 In this respect, Cynewulf’s portrayal of the True Cross has affinities with the Ruthwell Cross and the way in which its designer(s) incorporated darkness and light into both its form and its message. At Ruthwell there is a contrast between darkness and light, but it is certainly not the dramatic opposition between darkness and light that we find in the poem. Nevertheless, the symbolism of and separation between the two is important. We have already noted the bringing of the blind man to light, but there is also the general baptismal symbolism of the east face of the cross, the side that would have faced the rising sun in the morning, as well as the little creatures in the vine-scroll who clamber from the darkness of the earth towards the light of heaven. The figures of Christ and John the Baptist depicted at the top of the west face of the shaft, and present within their mothers’ wombs at the top of its east face, represented the growing and lessening of light within the cycle of the year. Visually the two are brought together and reconciled on the body of the cross. Moreover, if, as some scholars have speculated, Ruthwell had a special part to play in the Good Friday liturgy (which included an adoratio crucis),38 with the community standing before the west face of the cross as the sun rose in the east, the Ruthwell Cross, like the True Cross of the poem, would quite literally have been brought from darkness into light, as those who underwent baptism on Good Friday morning were brought to light and spiritually reborn.
The cross in Elene does not actually change its character, as it does in the Ruthwell poem, shifting from gallows to rood,39 but it does, as Stepsis and Rand noted, change its condition from the bejewelled tree of Constantine’s vision, to the wooden cross unearthed by Helena and Judas, to the bejewelled cross enshrined by Helena. Its revelation, and the revelation and freedom that belief in its saving power brings about is closely connected to the movement from darkness into light discussed above, but it is, if anything even more physically enacted. Constantine must unlock his heart (hređerlocan onspeon, line 86b) before he is able to see the vision of the beautiful tree. When Judas refuses to reveal the location of the True Cross to Helena he is wrapped in chains, imprisoned in a well and given the choice between death and burial or life and the revelation of the location of the cross. Of course, he chooses the latter, and Cynewulf emphasizes that locating the cross frees Judas from the darkness of both heresy and ignorance, bringing him the clear sight of both faith and Christian knowledge. He is literally enlightened with the newly found knowledge and belief that the revelation of the cross brings to his mind and heart.
He mid bæm handum
eadig ond ægleaw upweard plegade.
Iudas maþelode gleaw in geþance
(lines 804b–806)
(He clapped with both hands on high, blessed and enlightened with
wisdom. Judas spoke clear-sighted in his thought.)
Judas will eventually go on to become Cyriacus, which Cynewulf tells us means the ‘law’ or ‘revelation’ of the Lord (æ hælendes, line 1062a).
In order to discover which of the three crosses unearthed from their deep dark pit (lines 831–832b) at Calvary is Christ’s cross, each is lifted up over the corpse of a dead sinner, and the True Cross literally frees the man from the darkness and prison of death and damnation, revealing to him the true sign of victory. Yet famously, the now revealed cross is then concealed again within its gold and jewelled reliquary.40
Heo þa rode heht
golde bewworcean ond gimcynnum,
mid þam æđelestum eorcnanstanum
besettan searocræftum ond þa in seolfren fæt
locum belucan. Þær þæt lifes treo,
selest sigebeama, siđđan wunode
æđelum anbræce. (lines 1022b–1028a)
(She then ordered the cross to be adorned with gold and cunningly
surrounded with gems and the noblest precious stones and in a silver
vessel locked up with clasps. There that tree of life, best of victory trees
has remained ever since inviolable in its nobility.)
The description of the enshrining of the cross conforms to what we know many True Cross reliquaries, like the Brussels reliquary, actually looked like.41 They were routinely covered with the most precious of materials, with the relics themselves often locked away from view. The opening of the reliquary and display of the relic on important feast days then echoed the original invention (discovery) of the cross, and added to the drama of the event. As noted above, Ruthwell, even though it was mere stone, may have held such a relic, and may have been painted in such a way as to reflect the decoration of contemporary metalwork reliquaries—certainly this seems to have been the case with Bewcastle, which was also adorned with glass and/or metal. Even if that relic were sealed over with painted plaster, its display on relevant feast days would not have been impossible. It’s location, at the centre of the Annunciation panel, would have driven home the point that the Annunciation was a revelation of Christ’s entry into this world, and that just as Mary bore Christ into life, so the cross bore him into death—a point the Elene poet makes explicit lines 773–775a:
þæt ricsie se đe on rode wæs,
ond þurh Marian in middangeard
acenned wearđ.
But regardless of whether the Ruthwell Cross ever held a relic, the disguising and repetition of cross patterns on both it and Bewcastle would have mirrored in miniature, and on an admittedly less dramatic level, the discovery of the True Cross. While there are far more of these hidden cross puzzles on Bewcastle, Ruthwell does display such crosses in the crossed paws of the beasts beneath Christ’s feet, the cross inscribed on the bread held by Paul and Anthony, and of course the cross hidden within the runic poem. As one reads that poem and moves around the monument, the cross of the poem slowly describes the events of the Crucifixion, not fully revealing itself until we get to the second half of the poem on the south face.42
Finally, the body of Christ and the cross are inextricably linked on both Ruthwell and in Elene. On Ruthwell the body of Christ is everywhere present. It is depicted in each of the panels, either in figural or symbolic form. It’s divinity is revealed in human form to Mary Magdalene, the blind man, and the beasts in the desert, and in divine form by John the Baptist, and it is carried by the Cross in the runic poem. In Elene, the body and power of Christ himself are less immediately apparent, though no less present. It is at the centre of Helena’s address to the Hebrews, as well as the story of the Crucifixion that Judas repeats to the Hebrews, it is what gives the True Cross its value and power, and it is the one thing in the poem that cannot be contained.
þreo niht siđđan
in byrgenne bidende wæs
under þeoster locan, ond þa þy þriddan dæg
ealles leohtes leoht lifgende aras,
đeoden engla, ond his þegnum hine,
sođ sigora frea, seolfne geywde,
beorht on blæde.
(lines 483a–489a)
(For three nights afterwards he was biding in the tomb in a dark confine,
and then on the third day the light of lights arose living, the Lord of angels,
and to his followers the true Lord of victories revealed himself, bright in
life.)
The poem ends with the hope that the realm of the angels into which Christ rose should be opened eternally to all those who follow Christ and the cross, and with the poet’s own reflections on how he had been bound and oppressed by sins, evil deeds and worries until Christ granted him knowledge and opened his heart, and how he had meditated in particular on the Cross, the wuldres treowes (tree of glory, line 1250b). Returning to the theme of the golden light-filled vision with which the story of the invention of the cross begins, he observes that those who will be saved on the day of judgment will be melted down like pure gold.
hie asodene beođ,
asundrod fram synnum swa smæte gold
þæt in wylme biđ womma gehwylces,
þurh ofnes fyr, eall geclænsed
(lines 1308–1311)
(they will be separated from sins like pure gold that is in the flame,
through the oven’s fire, completely cleansed of every imperfection)
The saved will be like the gold that adorns the cross, figuratively we can envisage them adorning the cross like the images of the saved that adorn the cross at Ruthwell in figural form, and this community of the saved will shine forth in beauty with Christ and the angels forever.
Forđan hie nu on wlite scinaþ
englum gelice, yrfes brucaþ
wuldorcyninges to widan feore.
(lines 1319a–1321)
The Dream of the Rood
So closely are The Dream of the Rood and the Ruthwell Cross linked in scholarship, that since the rediscovery of the Vercelli Book by modern scholars between 1822 and 1833, no account of Ruthwell has omitted discussion of the poem, nor has an edition of The Dream of the Rood failed to include some discussion of the cross and its poem.43 The exact relationship between the two has, admittedly, troubled scholars for years, but the general consensus has been that either the Ruthwell poet excerpted lines from a longer poem, or that the Dream of the Rood poet saw the verses on the Ruthwell Cross and they became the inspiration for the later poem. Swanton, for example, believed that the Ruthwell poem was missing its beginning and end but that it ‘hardly represents the substance of a poem … [having] all the appearance of a reference or quotation from some familiar text’. This, he believed, was the most likely scenario because ‘the Ruthwell artist was an habitual quoter, not only in the allusive nature of the material he portrays, but also in his use of the Vulgate to illustrate the theological content of his work’.44 Alternatively, Kenneth Sisam suggested that a poem written in the south of England could have travelled north, taken on Anglian forms, and then returned to the south, eventually becoming the Vercelli Book version we have today.45 Despite their long-standing textual associations, the connections between the Ruthwell Cross and The Dream of the Rood are perhaps the most problematic of all. Scholars still make the mistake, as did Swanton, of stating that The Dream of the Rood (or a version of it) is inscribed on the Ruthwell Cross.46 It is not. The Ruthwell poem and The Dream of the Rood are very different poems. If we accept the Ruthwell runes as eighth century and contemporary with the erection of the cross, then the Ruthwell poem is much earlier than The Dream of the Rood as it survives in the Vercelli Book, and thus cannot be a version of it. To deny that there is some kind of relationship between the Ruthwell verses and the Vercelli Book poem, however, would be foolish, but that relationship need not be direct, and need not imply that the creators of the cross knew of a longer poem, or that the Dream of the Rood poet had seen the cross, or that the two are part of an ongoing chain of writing and rewriting. The poet of The Dream of the Rood remains unknown, although the poem has been wrongly ascribed to both Caedmon (as was the Ruthwell Cross), on the basis of what Bede tells us of Caedmon’s poetry, and Cynewulf on the basis of its relationship to the content of Elene and the fact that it directly precedes that poem in the Vercelli Book.47
The Dream of the Rood contains lines at its centre that are very close to those of the Ruthwell runic poem, although it also includes much material both before and after its central verses that are not a part of the Ruthwell poem. Both poems, however, take the Crucifixion as their primary subject, both include verses in the voice of the Cross, and both have visionary components. Both may be products of a tradition of writing about the Crucifixion that was current throughout the Anglo-Saxon period,48 but if they are they are written differently: the Ruthwell poem is inscribed in runes and written in a Northumbrian dialect, The Dream of the Rood is written in Roman letters in a square minuscule script with predominately West Saxon linguistic forms. The height of the Ruthwell Cross would have created a distance between reader and text (even as it invited them to join with the cross in speaking the inscribed words) and made at least some of the poem difficult to make out, while the Vercelli Book would have been held in the hands, its texts easy for a literate reader to follow. The one demands physical movement, the other replaces movement with stillness and meditation. The one need not necessarily be read in one single narrative order,49 the other must be read in that way.
The lines of The Dream of the Rood that correspond to the Ruthwell verses are lines 39–42, 44b–45, 48–49a, 56–59, 62b–64a, though the correspondence is by no means exact. Extracting these verses from the longer Dream of the Rood poem would give us:
Ongyrede hine þa geong hæleđ, (þæt wæs God ælmihtig),
strang ond stiđmod; gestah he on gealgan heanne,
modig on manigra gesyhđe, þa he wolde mancyn lysan.
Bifode ic þa me se beorn ymbclypte; ne dorste ic hwæđre bugan to
eorđan …
Ahof ic ricne Cyning,
heofon Hlaford hyldan me ne dorste…
Bysmeredon hie unc butu ætgædere. Eall ic wæs mid blode bestemed,
begoten of þæs guman sidan …
Crist wæs on rode.
Hwædre þær fuse feorann cwoman
to þam æthelinge. Ic þæt eall beheold.
Sare ic wæs mid [sorgum] gedrefed, hnag ic hwæđre þam secgum to
handa,
eall ic wæs mid strælum forwundond …
Aledon hie đær limwerigne, gestodon him æt his lices heafdum;
beheoldan hie đær heofnes Dryhten …
(The young Lord stripped himself, strong and brave (that was God
almighty). He ascended the high gallows, brave in the sight of many when
he willed to redeem mankind. I trembled when the man embraced me, yet
I dared not bow to the earth … I raised up the powerful king, heaven’s
Lord. I did not dare to bend … They mocked us both together. I was all
covered with blood, begotten from that man’s side … Christ was on the
cross. But people came hastening from afar to that prince. I beheld all that.
I was sorely troubled with sorrows, nevertheless I bowed to the hands of
those men. I was all wounded with arrows … There they laid the
limb-weary one, stood at the head of his body. There they beheld heaven’s
Lord.)
Even in these lines there are differences from those on the Ruthwell Cross. Christ is a young Lord, while in the Ruthwell poem he is simply God almighty. We see him as a young man in the figural panels of the broad faces of the cross, however, so Ruthwell may be described as telling the same tale rather differently. Rather than seeing the cross as simply excerpting from, or quoting, or abbreviating from a longer poem like The Dream of the Rood, we can understand it as expanding on the central Crucifixion story through it’s carved panels, and through them it tells a very different story than does the later poem.50
The Dream of the Rood gets its title from its opening sequence in which the ‘dreamer’ tells of the swefna cyst (choicest of dreams or visions) that came to him in the middle of the night when all other reordberend (speech-bearers) were asleep in bed. It could equally well have been titled The Vision of the Rood, as the word for dream and vision is the same. The setting for the poem is night, while, as noted above, the sun and daylight are central to the meaning of Ruthwell. The dreamer is alone with his vision and, if the Vercelli Book was indeed a florilegium for use in meditation or prayer, the poem would have been read in a private contemplative setting that echoed that of the dreamer. Ruthwell, on the other hand, was a very public monument that would likely have been encountered as often as not in a communal liturgical setting. The dreamer also states at the beginning that all other “speech-bearers” are in bed. The only voices we hear in this poem are those of the dreamer and the cross, while at Ruthwell there are multiple voices and languages in and on the cross, and the monument itself would have been encountered in a context that included the sounds of wind, rain and birds, if not the sound of other human voices and liturgical services. The dreamer does not identify himself other than to indicate that he is a devout Christian and, by the end of the poem, devoted to the cult of the Cross. Similarly, the speech-bearers are not identified—and they return near the end of the vision, as the nameless mass for whom the Cross has cleared the way (89). Indeed, most of humankind in this poem consists of speech-bearers, enemies, criminals and sinners (the dreamer describes himself as a sinner in line 13). The one group that forms an exception is that of the ‘urgent people’ (57) who rush to Christ and the Cross, and to whom the Cross bows so that Christ’s body can be taken down. They are not described as noble people, as they are at Ruthwell,51 nobility is reserved for Christ and Mary and, eventually, the Cross, which is adorned with treasure like a king. There is also a marked contrast between this poem and Elene, which immediately follows it in the manuscript, and in which the imperial might and splendour of Helena and Constantine are emphasised repeatedly. The original owner of the Vercelli Book would certainly have been amongst the elite, no one else could have afforded or been able to read such a volume, and one wonders where he (less probably she) might have situated himself in relation to the humankind of the poem.
The vision granted to the dreamer is of a great jewelled tree/cross that is similar to, though again not identical to those described in Elene, or the much smaller reliquary crosses, and which would have been echoed in the colours of the Ruthwell Cross. It was
syllicre treow
on lyft læden, leohte bewunden,
beama beorhtost. Eall þæt beacen wæs
begotten mid golde; gimmas stodon
fægere æt foldan sceatum; swylce þær fife wæron
uppe on þam eaxlegespanne. Beheoldon þær engel Dryhtnes ealle,
fægere þurh forđgesceaft. Ne wæs đær huru fracodes gealga.
Ac hine þær beheoldon halige gastas,
men ofer moldan ond eall þeos mære gesceaft.
Syllic wæs se sigebeam, ond ic synnum fah,
forwunded mid wommum. Geseah ic wuldres treow,
wædum geweorđode, wynnum scinan,
gegyred mid golde; gimmas hæfdon
bewrigene weorđlice wealdes treow.
Hwæđre ic þurh þæt gold ongytan meahte
earmra ærgewin, þæt hit ærest ongan
swætan on þa swiđran healfe. Eall ic wæs mid sorgum gedrefed.
Forht ic wæs for þære fægran gesyhđe, Geseah ic þæt fuse beacen
wendan wædum ond bleom; hwilum hit ws mid wætan bestemed,
beswyled mid swates gange, hwilum mid since gegyrwed. (lines 4b–23)
(a marvellous tree lifted up on high, wound around with light, the
brightest of trees. That sign was all covered with gold; gems stood fair at
the corners of the earth, and there were also five up on that cross-beam.
All fair creation beheld there the angel of the Lord. Indeed, that was not
the gallows of a criminal. But holy spirits gazed on it, men over the earth,
and all this glorious creation. Marvellous was that victory tree, and I
stained with sins, wounded with sins. I saw that tree of glory honoured
through its coverings, shine wonderfully, covered with gold. Gems had
worthily covered the ruler’s tree. However, through that gold I could
perceive the former aggression of wretched men, that it first began to
sweat on its right side. I was all oppressed with sorrows. I was afraid in
the presence of that beautiful sight. I saw that urgent sign shift its
coverings and colours; sometimes it was moistened with wetness,
drenched with the flow of blood; sometimes adorned with treasure.)
Like Constantine’s vision, this cross is a sign that will lead to victory, both for Christ who will mount the cross as a warrior and defeat death, and for all those who carry the sign of the cross within them (þe him ær in breostum beređ beacna selest line 118), the dreamer himself amongst them. The phrase begotten mid golde echoes that used to describe the Cross as begoten with the blood from Christ’s side at the Crucifixion, while the fact that there were five gems on the transom of the cross is a clear reference to the five wounds of Christ.52 The dreamer goes on to state that he was able to see through the gold that the cross had been covered in moisture on its right side. The word swætan is often translated as “to bleed”, but it can also mean to be covered in other types of moisture. The ambiguity of the term allows us to understand the cross as covered both with blood and water.53 The two liquids signified the two sacraments of the eucarist and baptism, as did the panels on the two broad sides of the Ruthwell Cross, and also call to mind the red and white jewels said to have adorned the front of the Brussels reliquary cross. The vision also shifts its appearance so that at times it seemed covered with blood and/or water, and at times with gold and jewels, driving home the symbolism that the coloured gems would have had for an Anglo-Saxon audience. The cross then goes on to affirm that it is very much what the dreamer has described it to be. His vision is one of truth, clarity and light.
There is an emphasis in this poem on the cross as tree and on its woodenness. The dreamer states at the outset that he saw the most marvellous tree (4b), a victory tree (13), the Lord’s tree (14, 17, 25). When the cross begins to speak it is described as the best of wood (27), and it tells the story of how it was a growing tree until it was cut down to become an instrument of death for criminals (wergas, line 31b). But that was not its true nature. As the dreamer tells us near the beginning of the poem, the tree of his vision ‘was not the gallows of a criminal’ (Ne wæs đær huru fracodes gealga, line 10b). It is a tree-of-life cross but, with the exception of Christ, it was intended to be covered with the bodies of the dead or dying rather than the living, in contrast to Ruthwell’s symbol of the cross as tree-of-life, its inhabited vine-scroll. It is not until the moment of the Crucifixion itself that the cross describes itself as a cross: Rod wæs ic aræred (The Cross was I raised up, line 44a). After the Crucifixion both Christ and the Cross are buried and resurrected, the Cross becoming a relic encased in gold and silver.
The Cross in The Dream of the Rood is made to identify with Christ’s body in a way that the Ruthwell Cross is not. The Ruthwell Cross is covered in blood, but it does not bleed. As noted above, the idea that the cross partook of Christ’s substance through his blood was commonplace and the Dream poet brings out this aspect of the cross to a remarkable degree. The identification of the cross with Christ begins at the moment that it lifts up his body. The statement Rod wæs ic aræred (The Cross was I raised up), the first half of line 44, is paralleled by the statement in the second half of the same line, Ahof ic ricne cyning (I raised up a powerful king). Like Christ, the Cross is pierced with nails, leaving gaping wounds that it describes as still visible on its own body: on me syndon þa dolg gesiene opene inwid-hlemmas (line 46b–47a). Its words provide a quite literal explanation for the wounds, the earmra ærgewin, that the dreamer is able to see through the gold that covers the Cross at the beginning of his vision. The Cross repeatedly tells us of its wounds and of its blood. It is mid blode bestemed from Christ’s side (48–49). It is left to stand covered in blood as Christ’s body is laid before it: Forleton me þa hilderincas standan steame bedrifenne; eall ic wæs mid strælum forwundod (The warriors left me to stand covered in blood; I was all wounded with arrows, lines 61b–62). The pain and suffering of the Cross helps to focus our attention on the pain and suffering and blood of Christ with whom it is identified. At the end of the Crucifixion narrative it is cut down and buried. This emphasis on death and burial, on blood, and on the identification of the Cross with Christ are not features of either the Ruthwell Cross or its runic poem. Death and suffering are almost completely absent from Ruthwell. In the poem it is the Cross, not Christ that suffers affliction, and the Crucifixion panel, the only one to depict suffering in any form, is a later addition to the monument—perhaps added at the time that the religious drama and emotion that we find in both The Dream of the Rood and Elene were becoming a part of Anglo-Saxon art and culture more widely.
The Cross in The Dream of the Rood is also identified with Mary’s body. The association between Mary and the Cross is a widespread feature of art and literature throughout the Middle Ages, in part because the Annunciation and Crucifixion were both believed to have taken place on 25 March. It occurs at Ruthwell, where the Cross in the runic poem speaks of bearing the human Christ, while in the figural panels we see Mary bearing Christ in the Annunciation, Visitation, and Flight into or out of Egypt panels.54 On Ruthwell, however, we also see Christ borne in the divine form of the Lamb by John the Baptist, and in symbolic form by Paul and Anthony. Because of the iconic composition of the panels it also appears as if Christ is borne aloft on the paws of the beasts who recognize him and by the figure of Mary Magdalene as she dries his feet. There is a general interest in touching and being touched by Christ that runs throughout the visual and verbal programme at Ruthwell. In The Dream of the Rood the identification of the Cross with Mary is made more explicit, even though Mary herself figures much less prominently in the poem than she does on the Ruthwell Cross. It is the Cross itself that makes the connection.
Hwæt, me þa geweorđode wuldres Ealdor
ofer holmwudu, heofonrices Weard,
swylce swa he his modor eac, Marian sylfe,
ælmihtig God, foe ealle men
geweorđode ofer eall wifa cynn.
(lines 90–94)
(Listen, the Lord of glory, the Guardian of heaven honoured me over all the
trees of the wood, just as he, almighty God, honoured his own mother,
Mary herself, in the sight of all men over all women.)
The words echo those of the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation, ‘Blessed art though amongst women’ (Luke 1:28), words which are included in the inscription around the Annunciation panel of the Ruthwell Cross, as well as those of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55).55 Similar references to the honouring of the tree of the Cross above all other trees occur in the chants for the liturgy of the Divine Office of the Exaltation of the Cross.56 Both Cross and Mary are honoured through their acceptance and bearing of Christ’s body. They are also in turn given birth to through his blood. It is Christ’s blood that allows the cross to partake of his substance and to become the speaking object that we find in the poem, as well as in the Ruthwell and Brussels inscriptions. While the Cross is wounded by nails, it is the blood from the wound in Christ’s side that covers it so completely. In this respect it is like Mary, who by the tenth century had become associated with Ecclesia, the personification of the church that was born from the wound in Christ’s side. Mary is sometimes depicted in later Anglo-Saxon crucifixion images reaching towards, or touching, or standing beneath the blood as it falls from the wound.57 In some of these images Mary weeps, and her sorrow is here also felt by the Cross, which tells the dreamer that it has endured bitter sorrows (sarra sorga, line 80a). However, unlike the Mary of the manuscript images or the Ruthwell Cross, the Cross in The Dream of the Rood bleeds with Christ.
If both Cross and Mary are connected through their bearing of Christ and through his blood, they are also connected as witnesses to the events of his death and as intercessors on behalf of humanity. In later Anglo-Saxon art, once again, it is common to see Mary and John flanking the crucified Christ and witnessing his death. Unusually, the Cross in The Dream of the Rood states specifically that it too bore witness: Ic þæt eall beheold (58b). As Christ’s human mother, Mary has the power to plead with Christ on behalf of those who desire to be saved, as she does in a number of late Anglo-Saxon prayers.58 It is, then, through her that many mortal souls are able to enter heaven, a role that the Cross in the poem assimilates when it states at the end of its speech that through it every soul that desires to dwell with Christ will find its way from earth to the kingdom of heaven:
Ac đurh đa rode sceal rice gesecan
of eorđwege æghwylc sawl,
seo þe mid Wealdende wunian þenceđ.
Finally, the cross of The Dream of the Rood is above all a sign, and this is
what gives it its remarkable shape-shifting powers. It is a beacen (6b) at the beginning of the dreamer’s miraculous vision, and it is called a beacen (21b) again at the moment that it begins to change shape from golden triumphal relic to blood covered wooden tree. Throughout its story of the Crucifixion itself, the Cross refers to itself as an object, a tree, a gallows, a rood, but when it ends its account of what it has seen and experienced, and turns to address the dreamer in an imperative voice it is again a sign, a beacen (83a) that humankind must honour and worship, and a gesyhđ, that the dreamer must declare to his fellow men (96a). It is also by being signed with the cross at baptism and bearing that sign in their hearts that men and women will be led through the cross to heaven. When the vision has ended, the Cross returns to being a material object, the rod to which the dreamer will direct his thoughts and prayers (131a), and which will eventually lead the dreamer, he hopes, to dwell in happiness with the saints (136b).
The Visionary Cross and the Ruthwell Cross
The Cross as sign or vision was central to the medieval world in general. Its status as sign was what gave it its ability to manifest itself in so many different guises, monuments and metaphors.59 It is what allowed it to shift shape so easily, and, indeed, to take on multiple shapes or personas simultaneously—as in the case of the visionary cross of The Dream of the Rood, which is both covered in blood and in gold and gems at the same time. Similarly, the Ruthwell Cross is at one and the same time both an inanimate stone object and the living Cross of the Crucifixion, as it tells us in its runic poem. The liturgy of the Exaltation of the Cross that would have been used at Ruthwell in the early Middle Ages would have embedded the shape-shifting nature of the cross in the mind of its community. That liturgy, as Cynthia Hahn notes, ‘uses a physical cross, by preference a reliquary, and binds it through ritual and text, with a glorious vision of a gemmed cross in heaven’.60 Indeed, even without a physical cross at its centre the feast had the power to make real in the minds of participants ‘the salvific reality of the Cross, as a sign of redemption’.61 The Cross then could be a vision made manifest through a physical object, and a physical object that became The Cross through the visionary objects described in the liturgical texts. It could be word, sign, vision and object all at once, and this was repeatedly affirmed by the faithful as they recited the sequences of psalms and prayers that made up the Divine Office of the Exaltation of the Cross.
The cult of the Cross, which provides the context for all our objects and texts, has its origins in Constantine’s vision of the heavenly sign of the cross as told in the poem Elene. The actual event was believed to have taken place the night before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, at which Constantine vanquished his rival Maxentius. According to Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea and Constantine’s biographer, after his vision and his victory, Constantine ‘proclaimed this triumphant Sign, by monuments as well as words, to all mankind, erecting it as a mighty trophy against every enemy in the midst of the imperial city, and expressly enjoining on all to acknowledge this imperishable symbol of salvation as the safeguard of the power of Rome and of the empire of the world’.62 Through a combination of historical tradition and liturgical practice the idea of the cross as both sign and object or monument—indeed, its ability to shift between the two—entered Northumbria, one of its earliest manifestations becoming the Ruthwell Cross. The Ruthwell Cross is itself a sign of the True Cross, an envisioning or materialization of a vision. At the heart of the meaning of the Ruthwell Cross, the cross as sign remains. It is the answer to the riddles that the monument poses, the mystery behind its miracles, and the vision that it presents to any audience that knows how to unlock its own mysteries.
The runic poem provides Ruthwell’s most obvious connection to the tradition of the visionary cross, but it must be remembered that the poem itself would have presented many in its audience with a mystery. It was written in runes, an arcane language that very few would have been able to read. And it was positioned on the cross in such a way that it would be difficult for anyone who was not already familiar with its content to make out all of its characters. Spoken in the first person voice of the True Cross, it presented the reader with a mystery, and it was itself a sign of the cross. For those who were able to read the poem it presented a vision of the Cross and the key events of the Crucifixion, inviting its readers to participate in them alongside the Cross. Liturgical texts, such as the prayers and chants mentioned above would have echoed the content of the poem and would have further helped the faithful to visualize the cross, and to re-enact the events described in their imaginations. The inhabited vine-scrolls that the poem surrounds envision the cross as a tree-of-life. They are again signs of the True Cross, and their fruit is a sign of Christ’s body and the blood that covered the Cross. The creatures that inhabit the vines partake of Christ’s body and blood along with the Cross. The imagery thus mirrors the poem by suggesting that the viewer is like these creatures, participating in both the events of the Crucifixion and the path to salvation that it and belief in the True Cross provide.
But most people approaching the Ruthwell Cross would begin not with the poem or the vine-scrolls on the narrow faces, but with the figural images of its two primary faces. If we begin, as Ó Carragáin has argued that we should, with the original west face of the monument, the cross presents Christ to us in multiple forms: the Christ child, the loaf of bread, as a human in whom divinity is recognized, and as the sacrificial and triumphant Lamb of God. Each of the figures on this side of the monument bears Christ, as the Cross once bore Christ, thereby connecting humanity to the Cross itself. The men (and women?) of the monastic community at Ruthwell would have recognized themselves as united with that community represented on the cross. Their approach to their cross would have re-enacted on a smaller scale veneration of The Cross, a ritual which had come to be seen as elevating participants in the liturgy of the Exultation of the Cross to ‘perpetually sharing in the continuing bliss of the Cross’.63 There is also a clear vertical axis created on this side of the monument by the repetition of either the body of Christ and/or a cross at the centre of each panel. Reading from the bottom up, the Virgin Mary presents us with the Christ Child in the Flight into or out of Egypt panel, reminding us again of the connection between her body and the True Cross. Paul and Anthony break bread, the body of Christ broken on the Cross, and a cross at the centre of the bread reminds us of this. The beasts in the desert cross their paws directly beneath the standing figure of Christ who is crowned with a cruciferous halo. In the top-most panel John the Baptist holds the Lamb of God. Each panel presents the viewer with an icon that focuses our attention in one way or another on Christ borne by figures and, in some, marked by the sign of the cross. Each can thus be read as a sign of the Crucifixion that is everywhere alluded to, but nowhere represented literally on the monument—at least not until the addition of the Crucifixion panel in the ninth century. The allusion to the eucharist that each of the panels on this side carries would also have generated a vision for the Ruthwell community of their own symbolic partaking of the body and blood of Christ, broken and shed at the Crucifixion.
Moving to the east face of the monument, and ignoring that later Crucifixion, we again begin with the Annunciation, a scene that again draws our attention to the connection between Mary and the True Cross. The programme on this side of the monument culminates at the top of the shaft in the Visitation/Martha and Mary panel, giving added visual emphasis to the role of Mary as bearer of Christ, but also to her importance as a role model for those who have entered the monastic life (symbolized by Martha and Mary). Christ is depicted in each of the panels, but on this side the sign of the cross is not as literally present as it was on the west face. However, the figural programme of these panels is symbolic of baptism, and so would have reminded viewers both of the sacrament, and of the fact that they were signed by the cross at baptism, and carried that sign within themselves. At the top of the cross the archer taking aim at the bird on a branch would, for those who knew the runic poem, have provided a vision of the Cross wounded with arrows and drenched with blood.
The sign of the cross was also a weapon against adversaries, both spiritually and politically—though of course the two were believed to be linked. The sign of the cross made at baptism was a weapon in the war against Satan and evil that the faithful carried with them for life. For Constantine, the sign of the cross was a sign of military victory that he had placed on his shields and banners in the form of the vexillum. The vexillum was in use by the Roman army before Constantine, but it was with the legend of his dream and subsequent victory that its combined military and spiritual power was popularized across the early medieval world. The vexillum as a sign of the power of the True Cross was taken up by early Christian writers, and became part of the prayers used in the liturgy of the Exaltation of the Cross, especially in the Frankish world.64 Venantius Fortunatus (b. 530), poet, hymnodist, and bishop of Poitiers, composed a set of hymns for the adventus of a relic of the True Cross sent to the abbess and queen Radegunde in 569, that featured military language and that foregrounded the military nature of the victory of the Cross. In his Pange lingua, which takes its metre from Roman military marching songs, the Cross is a weapon in and trophy of the glorious battle between God and Satan, Christ and death.65 In Vexilla Regis, the Cross is Christ’s banner from which he reigns as King: ‘Vexilla regis prodeunt, fulget cruces mysterium’ (The King’s banners appear, the mystery of the Cross is radiant).66 In this respect, the Ruthwell Cross was also a multifaceted weapon. It was, to be sure a weapon in the daily battle against sin and evil, but it was also a weapon in the expansion of the Northumbrian church and kingdom into the British kingdom of Rheged. It was a literal sign of dominance in the landscape, and its textual and visual programme invoked the power of the visionary True Cross as a means of backing up its claims. For the uninitiated, the language of the cross was little more than babel, and they were excluded both from its saving power and from its visionary language. Following the words of Paul in 1 Cor. 1:18, ‘For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God’, they would literally have been unable to hear the voice of Cross. As such, Ruthwell is representative of a very different sort of vision, the political and cultural vision of the kings under whom the Northumbrian expansion took place.
The power of the Ruthwell Cross was ultimately dependent on that of the True Cross. We can now only speculate as to whether or not it originally contained a relic in the hole in the middle of the Annunciation panel, and, if it did, whether that was indeed a relic of the True Cross. Regardless of whether or not it held a relic, the Ruthwell monument would have represented the power of the Cross, and would have been used in the liturgy of the Exaltation of the Cross that had the visionary True Cross at its centre. If it did house a relic of the Cross, however, its power would have been infinitely increased as that relic had the ability to transform that which it touched. It would have transformed the Ruthwell Cross into a True Cross, making real the visionary cross of the runic poem, and turning inanimate stone into living wood.
Notes
Although Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, has also identified theological and liturgical reasons for their alignment which are discussed above, p. 00. ↩
Cyril of Jerusalem, writing ca. 350, stated repeatedly that in his day relics of the wood of the Cross had already spread from Jerusalem to fill the world. See Cyril of Jerusalem, Catachesis, Patrologiae cursus completes, Series greca (Paris, 1857–1866), vol. 33, 331–1128, at 469 (4,10), 685–88 (10,19), and 776 (13,4). It was only after the fourth or fifth century, however, that relics reached Rome and the rest of Europe. ↩
Other names have been inscribed in the borders between the panels on the monument’s north and south faces. The only one now legible is the female name kynbur*g̅ inscribed just above the lowest panel of plant scroll on the north face, and there is an illegible inscription in the band above the lowest panel on the south face of the cross. The letters ssu/s are carved at the top of the north face, but there is no way of determining what the full inscription might have been with any certainty. The name in the primary inscription is thought by some to be that of the Northumbrian king Alcfrith, whose queen was named Cyniburg. ↩
On their differences see especially, Bailey and Cramp, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. 2, 19–22, 61–72; Orton and Wood with Lees, Fragments of History. ↩
Rosemary J. Cramp, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. 1, County Durham and Northumberland (Oxford, 1984), pls. 98.526 and 90.478. ↩
For a detailed discussion of the sundial and its relation to the monument as a whole see Orton and Wood, with Lees, Fragments of History, 131–43. ↩
See van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, 185, 202, 246. ↩
London, British Library, Cotton Julius F.vi, fol. 313. See R. I. Page in Bailey and Cramp, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. 2, Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands, 172–3. ↩
George Smith, ‘The North and West Prospects of the Famous Runic Obelisk at Bew-Castle in Cumberland’, Gentleman’s Magazine 12 (1742). Born in Scotland, Smith was a schoolmaster at Boothby (near Carlisle), and a keen local antiquarian. His letters to Gentleman’s Magazine included detailed illustrations of many local ancient monuments and artefacts. ↩
Bailey and Cramp, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. 2, 72–3. ↩
For an idea of the effect this might have created see the figure of Matthew in the Book of Durrow (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A.4.5. (57), fol. 21v). ↩
How the cross left England is uncertain, but it is recorded as having been in the Netherlands in 1315. For a summary of the later history of the cross see Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 339–42 and references therein. ↩
In the early fifth century, for example, the pilgrim Egeria described the relic as encased in silver-gilt: ‘loculus argenteus dearatus, in quo est lignum sanctae crucis.’ See Itinerarium Egeriae, ed. A. Franceschini and R. Weber, CCSL 175 (Turnhout, 1958), p. 37. ↩
J. M. Kemble, ‘Additional Observations on the Runic Obelisk at Ruthwell, the Poem of the Dream of the Holy Rood, and a Runic Copper Dish found at Chertsey’, Archaeologia 30 (1844), 31–46 at 38. ↩
A. S. Cook, The Date of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses. Trans. Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (1912), 247–9; Cook, ‘The Date of the Old English Inscription on the Brussels Cross’, 157; Michael Swanton, ed. The Dream of the Rood (Exeter, 1970), 41–2; Gameson, Role of Art, 88. ↩
The Dream of the Rood, 18. ↩
‘The Old English Inscription on the Brussels Cross’, 149; see also William O. Stevens, The Cross in the Life and Literature of the Anglo-Saxons, Yale Studies in English 23 (New York, 1904), 82. ↩
‘Brussels Cross,’ in The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art 966–1066, ed. Janet Backhouse, D. H. Turner and Leslie Webster (London, 1984), 91. ↩
Anne Van Ypersele de Strihou, Le Trésor de la Cathedrale des Saints Michel et Gudule à Brussels (Brussels, 2000), 44. ↩
C. R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Ithaca, NY, 1982), 188–215. On Elene, see below p. 00. ↩
The Rupertus Cross was made by an Anglo-Saxon craftsman working on the Continent, possibly for the Carolingian aristocrat, Duke Tassilo. Originally in the parish church at Bischofshofen, it is now in Salzburg Cathedral Museum. The inhabited vine-scroll worked in gold around the gems on the surface of the cross provides an iconographic connection with the Ruthwell Cross. On Christ’s blood as a red gem see above p. 00. ↩
The Blickling Homilist, writing in the tenth century, not only connected Christ entering the Virgin’s womb with his mounting the Cross, but described both the womb and the Cross as thrones, and the blood that Christ shed on the Cross as a precious gem given to humankind. See Richard Morris, ed., The Blickling Homilies, EETS o.s. 58. 63. 73 (London, 1967), 8–11. ↩
Simonne Thérèse d’Ardenne, ‘The Old English Inscription on the Brussels Cross’, English Studies 21 (1939), 145–64, and 271–2, at 146. ↩
The same would have been true of Bewcastle, although it does not have an inscription in the voice of the cross that would have brought out this facet of the monument so clearly. ↩
On this aspect of relics of the True Cross see d’Ardenne ‘The Old English Inscriptions on the Brussels Cross’, 145–6; Van Ypersele de Strihou, Le Trésor de la Cathedrale des Saints Michel et Gudule à Brussels, 35. ↩
Paulinus of Nola, Letters of St. Paulinus of Nola, trans. P. G. Walsh, 2 vols, (Westminster, 1967), letter 31.6, pp. 132–3. ↩
See above p. 00. ↩
In addition to Elene and The Dream of the Rood, the manuscript contains the following poems: Andreas, Fates of the Apostles, Soul and Body I, and a fragment of a poetic adaptation of Psalm 28.3. ↩
A north Italian hand of that period has added a neumed response, an extract from Psalm 26, from the music of the Italian church service at the bottom of folio 24v. ↩
The earliest source to attribute the finding of the True Cross to the reign of Constantine is a mid fourth-century letter from Cyril of Jerusalem to Constantine’s son and heir, Constantius II. See van Tongeren, Exaltation of the True Cross, 23–7. ↩
Fates of the Apostles was also written by Cynewulf. ↩
On the poem’s sources see. P. O. E. Gradon, ed., Cynewulf’s ‘Elene’ (Exeter, 1977), 15–22; Mary Catherine Bodden, ed. The Old English Finding of the True Cross (Cambridge, 1987). ↩
Text from George Philip Krapp, ed., The Vercelli Book, ASPR II (New York, 1932). ↩
On the cross as a weapon against adversaries see also below, p. 00. ↩
Text from Bodden, ed. The Old English Finding of the True Cross, 62. This point is also noted in Manish Sharma, ‘The Reburial of the Cross in Elene’, in New Readings in the Vercelli Book, ed. Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard (Toronto, 2009), 280–97, at 290–1. ↩
Van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, 185–9, 195, 196, 200–201. ↩
Robert Stepsis and Richard Rand, ‘Contrast and Conversion in Cynewulf’s Elene’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969), 273–82, at 274. ↩
The ritual of the Cross was introduced to the Roman liturgy for Good Friday between 683 an 752 (van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, 120). ↩
Although the poet does say that it acted as gallows at the Crucifixion (line 719a). ↩
On this episode in the poem see in particular Catherine Regan, ‘Evangelicism as the Informing Principle of Cynewulf’s Elene’, Traditio 29 (1973), 27–52; Sharma, ‘The Reburial of the Cross in Elene’. ↩
See Egeria’s account of the reliquary of the True Cross in Jerusalem cited above. See also the description of the gold and jeweled cross that Constantine donated to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (originally the basilica of Helena’s Sessorian palace in Rome) in the Liber Pontificalis (Anatole Frolow, La Relique de Vraie Croix: Recherches sur le Développement d’un Culte (Paris, 1961), 177 no. 27. ↩
It is a fitting, though not deliberate part of the history of the Ruthwell Cross that it, like the True Cross, was buried and dug up several hundred years later. ↩
John Mitchell Kemble was the first to bring the two together (‘Additional Observations on the Runic Obelisk at Ruthwell, the Poem of The Dream of the Rood, and a Runic Copper Dish Found at Chertsy’), and to read the runic inscription through the lens of the manuscript poem. See, also, for example, Swanton, ed., The Dream of the Rood, 9–42. Swanton saw the Ruthwell poem as a ‘lesser text’ of The Dream of the Rood. ↩
Swanton, ed. The Dream of the Rood, 41. ↩
Kenneth Sisam, ‘Dialect Origins of the Earlier Old English Verse’, in Studies in the History of Old English Literature, ed. Kenneth Sisam (Oxford, 1953), 119–39, at 122. He was followed in this by a number of later scholars, including Swanton, ed. Dream of the Rood, 39. The hypothetical return to the south is often connected to King Alfred’s acquisition of a relic of the True Cross in 885 (ibid). ↩
See also John Fleming, ‘The Dream of the Rood and Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, Traditio 22 (1960), 43–72; Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London, 2003), 203; David Rollason, Northumbria 500–1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge, 2001), 158–9. ↩
See A. S. Cook, The Dream of the Rood (Oxford, 1905), ix–xli. ↩
As is pointed out in Orton and Wood, with Lees, Fragments of History, 151, assuming such a tradition imposes a unified narrative of Anglo-Saxon culture that may never have existed. ↩
See Orton and Wood with Lees, Fragments of History, 144–69 for alternative ways of approaching the runic poem. ↩
Even Orton, Wood and Lees, who are otherwise so clear in discussing the differences between Ruthwell and The Dream of the Rood, tend not to consider the inscribed verses as part of a larger narrative that extends to the figural panels. They tend to read text only against text. See Orton and Wood, with Lees, Fragments of History, 144–69. ↩
A point noted by Ó Carragáin in Ritual and the Rood, 319. ↩
The Rupertus Cross, discussed above, has an arrangement of five glass roundels imitating gemstones arranged in the shape of a cross on each of its arms. ↩
The combination of blood and water that flowed from Christ’s side at the Crucifixion is described in Vercelli Homily 1. See Donald G. Scragg, ed., The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, EETS, os 300 (Oxford, 1992), 8. See also, Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 326–7. ↩
On the identification of Mary with the Cross see now Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 308–16. On gender in The Dream of the Rood see especially Mary Dockray-Miller, ‘The Feminized Cross of The Dream of the Rood’, Philological Quarterly 76 (1997), 1–18; John Canuteson, ‘The Crucifixion and the Second Coming in The Dream of the Rood’, Modern Philology 66 (1960), 293–7; J. Stephen Fountain, ‘Ashes to Ashes: Kristeva’s Jouissance, Altizer’s Apocalypse, Byatt’s Posession and The Dream of the Rood’, Literature and Theology 8 (1994), 193–208. On women on the Ruthwell Cross more generally see, Farr, ‘Worthy Women on the Ruthwell Cross’; Karkov, ‘Naming and Renaming: the Inscription of Gender in Anglo-Saxon Sculpture’. ↩
Ó Carragáin sees the words that the Cross speaks in lines 78–94 of the poem as representing its own Magnificat (Ritual and the Rood, 310). ↩
Van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, 185, 214. It also occurs in Venantius Fortunatus’s hymn, Pange lingua (ibid., 238). ↩
Although slightly later than the Vercelli Book, an excellent example of such an image survives in the ca. 1021 Red Book of Darley (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 42 p. 53). On Mary and Ecclesia more generally see Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, 12, 15, 158, 169, 170, 247–8. ↩
See Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, 255; Mary Clayton, ‘Delivering the Damned: A Motif in Old English Homiletic Prose’, Medium Aevum 55 (1986), 92–102. ↩
For the multiple forms, meanings, and functions the cross could take in Anglo-Saxon England see Catherine E. Karkov, Sarah Larratt Keefer and Karen L. Jolly, eds., The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2006); Karen L. Jolly, Catherine E. Karkov and Sarah Larratt Keefer, eds., Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (Morgantown, WV, 2008); Sarah Larratt Keefer, Karen L. Jolly and Catherine E. Karkov, eds., Cross and Cruciform in Anglo-Saxon England and on the Continent (Morgantown, WV, 2010). ↩
Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA, 2012), 75. ↩
Van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, 84. ↩
Eusebius of Caesarea, The Life of the Emperor Constantine, trans. Samuel Bagster, rev. Earnest Cushing, Volume I, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, (Edinburgh, 1955), book ix.8. ↩
Van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, 97. ↩
See van Tongeren, the Exaltation of the Cross, 93–4, 130. ↩
Van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, 236–43. ↩
Van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, 243–4. See also Inge B. Milfull, ‘Hymns to the Cross: Contexts for the Reception of Vexilla regis prodeunt’, in The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Karkov, Keefer and Jolly, 43–57. ↩