History of the Ruthwell Cross

The Ruthwell Cross is amongst the earliest and most complex Anglo-Saxon sculptures to survive. It is also one of the best known and most exhaustively studied of all Anglo-Saxon sculptures. Created, or at least begun, in the eighth century, it is carved with figural scenes and inhabited vine-scroll ornament that are amongst the most classicizing in style of all Anglo-Saxon art. Standing at just under eighteen feet high, it is also one of the tallest of the surviving standing stone crosses, a type of monument that is characteristic of Ireland and the British Isles in the early medieval period. Its iconographic program—incorporating both the visual language of its carved panels and the verbal language of its multiple inscriptions—has generally been read as one that unites biblical imagery with liturgical practice, male viewers with female viewers, vernacular and Latin, poetry and prose, baptismal and Eucharistic symbolism, the cultures of the classical world of Mediterranean art and that of the relatively wild and desolate (though no less sophisticated) world of the Insular north.

Early History of the Monument

The Ruthwell Cross is carved from two blocks of different shades of red sandstone that are possibly from two different quarries, or from different parts of or seams in the same quarry. The largest section of the shaft (the ‘lower stone’) is much lighter in colour than the upper stone (the section above the Christ recognized by Beasts and Mary Magdalene at the feet of Christ panels). It is dated on stylistic grounds to the eighth century, although there remains some debate about whether the upper stone, and perhaps the runic poem, were added at a later date. There is evidence that many Anglo-Saxon sculptures were originally covered in gesso and brightly painted, and it is possible that this was the case with the Ruthwell Cross, although no trace of gesso survives today. If it was originally painted this would have masked the difference in colour between the two stones. The inscriptions might also have been painted to make them stand out.

The combination of Roman and runic scripts, Latin and Old English languages, and the deeply learned programme of figural and vine-scroll imagery make Ruthwell one of the most sophisticated, if not the most sophisticated sculptures to survive from the period. Its style and complexity have led to some debate as to who was responsible for designing and carving the cross. Some consider it to be a product of Wearmouth-Jarrow as its texts and images appear to have connections with liturgical innovations associated with the monastery, and the arrangement of its figural sculpture in panels recalls Bede’s mention of the icons brought back from Rome by Benedict Biscop for the twin churches of St Peter’s Wearmouth and St Paul’s Jarrow.¹ Others have noted that its combination of languages and scripts might indicate a connection with Lindisfarne,² while still others have suggested that its play with language and the space that it devotes to women (nearly half of the cross) may connect it with Whitby or some other prominent double monastery.³

Why exactly the cross was erected at Ruthwell is also open to debate. Its date, and its stylistic connections with Northumbria place it firmly within the period in which the Northumbrian Church was expanding into previously British territories to the west, as well as north along the Solway shore. Was there a monastic community already there? Did the Northumbrians found a monastic community there? Excavations at Ruthwell have proven inconclusive, and the cross is, at present, the only thing to suggest that the site was once home to a community of monks, or monks and nuns.⁴ It is also located near an old Roman fort. This is likely to have been both deliberate and important perhaps as a statement about continuity with Roman culture, and/or about the connections between the Roman and Northumbrian churches. Such a statement would certainly be in accord with the classicizing style of the images depicted on the cross and the arrangement of some of its inscriptions, both of which hark back to the art of Early Christian Rome.⁵ The Bewcastle Cross, with which Ruthwell is so often compared was located on the terrace of a Roman fort, part of which was still standing at the time of its erection, and other Anglo-Saxon sculptures are also located in or near Roman sites, or make use of Roman stone, so that locations that were part of the world of old Roman Britain would seem to have remained important.

There is also some debate about whether the cross originally stood outside or within a church. Most standing-stone crosses were sited out of doors, but the depth of detail that survives on the cross may indicate that it was moved indoors at an early date. The Crucifixion carved on the base of the east face of the cross is in a ninth-century style that is clearly later than the other figural panels. It may be that the cross was raised and moved inside the church at an early date, and the carving added at this time. Whether carvings were added to the other three faces of the base at the same time is uncertain as virtually no evidence of such additions remains on these faces today. Whatever the case, the cross was definitely standing inside a church that may have been an Anglo-Saxon (or largely Anglo-Saxon) structure at the time of the Reformation.⁶

In 1640 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met in Edinburgh, and in its Act anent the demolishing of Idolatrous Monuments decreed that all idolatrous sculpture (crucifixes and any sculpture depicting Christ, Mary or the saints) was to be destroyed.⁷ Two years later, when the Ruthwell community had still not complied with the decree, they singled out sculpture at Ruthwell for destruction: ‘Anent the report of idolatrous monuments in the Kirk at Ruthw[ell] the Assemblie finds that the monument therein mentioned is idolatrous, and therefore recommends to the Presbytrie that they careful[l]y urge the order prescrived be the act of Parliament anent the abolishing of these monuments, be put to execution’.⁸ The upper stone of the cross was pulled down and broken into several pieces either in the process of falling or afterwards. Many of the cross’s panels appear to have been deliberately defaced, and in the case of the upper stone this is most likely to have occurred after it had been separated from the rest of the monument. The lower stone was broken in two and partially buried in the floor of Murray’s Quire, a funerary chapel that was not technically the property of the church.⁹ Nineteenth century scholars would debate why the original orders of the Church were not carried out, and who was responsible for the delay, attributing the then minister, the Rev. Gavin Young, and/or the church’s patrons, the Murrays of Cockpool, with a desire to preserve and protect the monument—but this may be more a matter of modern desires and sensibilities than historical reality. The shaft remained in its partially buried position until some time between 1760 and 1782 when it was moved to the garden of the manse. The monument as a whole remained fragmented until Henry Duncan began its reconstruction in 1802. The Ruthwell Cross was the first monument to be scheduled under the Ancient Monuments Act of 1882, and was moved indoors into a specially built apse on the north side of the church in 1887.

Antiquarian Accounts of the Cross

Modern interest in the Cross began with two trips to Ruthwell in 1599 and 1601 by Reginald Bainbrigg, head master of the grammar school at Appleby, and a member of the local gentry. Bainbrigg was collecting both Roman stones from Hadrian’s Wall and material for a new edition of William Camden’s Britannia, a historical and topographical survey of Britain and Ireland. His primary interest was in the runes, but he also provided a valuable record of the Cross before its destruction at the time of the Reformation. He wrote:

I encountered a cross of wonderful height which is in the church at Ruthwell. It has on it beautiful images telling the story of Christ. It is wonderfully decorated with vines and animals, and on the two sides, ascending from the base towards the top, and then opposite, descending from the top towards the base, it is incised with foreign letters which however are disappearing. The inscription is of this kind.¹⁰

His is the only description of the cross standing within the pre-19th-century church at Ruthwell that survives. As noted above, it is possible that the building was of Anglo-Saxon date, but no archaeological work has been done on Ruthwell Church that could either prove or disprove this.¹¹ Early descriptions of the church that survived into the nineteenth century at Ruthwell suggest that it may well have been an Anglo-Saxon structure, but a church does not necessarily indicate a monastic community.¹²

Perhaps because the main part of the shaft had been only partially buried and used as a pew inside the church, there was sporadic, largely local, antiquarian interest in the monument between the time of its burial and that of its rediscovery. Dr. George Archibald (1646–1715), a Dumfries physician, recorded that the monument was broken into two pieces and lying within Ruthwell Church. He described it as having been ‘a pillar of stone reaching from the bottom of the church unto the roof, and on it cut the portraiture of our Saviour with Beams encircling his head, and beneath his feet: “Supra Serpentem et Draconem Conculabo,” and underneath is the effigie of Peter and Paul between whom is “Petrus et Paulus fregerunt panem in deserto.” Many other Draughts and Letters, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew have been there, but time and ill using hath abras’d them … said to have been erected by the Saxons having progressed no farther into this country than that place, and that thereafter by Christians inscribed with sculptures and characters’.¹³ Archibald was clearly mistaken in some of the details of his interpretation, but then he was far more interested in salt making at Ruthwell than he was in the cross.

At about the same time William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle and a student and teacher of Old English at Oxford, became interested in the cross. He visited Ruthwell first in April 1697, at which time he had made a transcription of the Latin and runic inscriptions, which he shared with Edward Lhuyd and George Hickes. Hickes published the transcripts in his Linguarum veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus.¹⁴ On 5 July 1704 he returned in order to check the accuracy of his transcriptions and described the state of the cross in more detail in his diary. The shaft (he called it the “pedestal”) of the cross was lying in Murray’s Quire, one piece he estimated to be about 2 ½ yards long, and the other about five feet long. In addition, there were some “little Fragments” sitting on top of the pedestal, and he discovered some further fragments under some of the table stones (large burial slabs set on pedestals) in the churchyard. Like Archibald, Nicolson commented on the great height of the cross, even though it was broken and lying in pieces. He also recorded a local story that apparently remained current in various tellings and retellings throughout the eighteenth century. In Nicolson’s account, however, the cross takes on miraculous qualities.

The common Tradition of ye Original of this stone is this: It was found, letter'd and entire, in a Stone-Quarry on the Shore (a good way within ye Sea-mark) call'd Rough-Scarr. Here it had lain long admir'd, when (in a Dream) a neighbouring Labourer was directed to yoke four Heifers of a certain Widow y liv'd near him; and when they stop'd with yir Burthen, there to slack his Team, erect ye Cross & build a Church over it: All which was done accordingly. I wonder'd to see a Company of Modern Presbyterians (as ye present parishoners profess ym selves to be) so steady in this Faith; and even to believe, yet further, yt the Cross was not altogether so long (at its first erection) as was afterwards: But that it miraculously grew, like a Tree, till it touched the Roof of the Church.¹⁵

Numerous antiquaries followed in Nicolson’s footsteps throughout the eighteenth century, though none added significantly to our knowledge of the monument. Alexander Gorden published an illustrated description of the cross in his 1726 Itinerarium Septentrionale, or a Journey thro Most of the Counties of Scotland and those in Northern England,¹⁶ describing the monument as an obelisk broken into three parts. Thomas Pennant described the cross as ‘an obelisk of a great height now lying in three pieces …. when entire it was probably about twenty feet high exclusive of pedestal and capital … it originally consisted of two pieces. Tradition says that the Church was built over this obelisk long after its erection, and as it was reported to have been transported by angels, it was probably so secured … least it should take another flight’. He also described and measured the sockets that were used to secure the pieces of the cross together, and noted seeing some further fragments, including the current capstone with its two eagles and the lower fragment of the John the Baptist panel with the image of the feet standing on globes.¹⁷ Pennant believed that the carvings on the different sides of the cross were produced by different hands at different times, the narrow sides with the vine-scroll by the Saxons, and the figural carvings by the Danes, who had either defaced earlier Saxon carvings, or found the broad sides of the monument left uncarved. According to James Hewison, the information Pennant published was supplied to him by the then minister of Ruthwell, the Rev. Andrew Jaffray.¹⁸

The floor of the church at Ruthwell was paved between 1760 and 1782, and the lower stone raised from Murray’s Quire and placed in the garden of the manse adjoining the church. During the 1780s the Society of Antiquaries of London commissioned a report on the cross with engravings by Adam de Cardonell and commentary by Richard Gough. Gough had never visited Ruthwell, so his commentary depended on Cardonell’s drawings and first-hand description of the fragments. Cardonell’s drawings, however, were themselves based on drawings of the cross included in Gordon’s Itinerarium Septentrionale of 1726 which were highly inaccurate;¹⁹ nevertheless, from this point on the manner in which the three known fragments of the shaft fitted together was established with some certainty. The top arm of the missing cross-head, with John and his symbol and the eagle seated on a branch was wrongly thought to cap the vine-scroll on the narrow sides of the cross. The commentary was the first to note the runes inscribed around the panel with the eagle perched on a branch that now caps what was originally the east side of the cross, and to place the fragments of the feet of John the Baptist and the women in the Visitation/Martha and Mary panel atop the shaft.²⁰

And finally in 1792, John Craig, minister at Ruthwell 1783–98, published his account of the cross. He described Ruthwell Church as ancient, long and remarkably low. He described the cross as lying in fragments in the churchyard rather than within the church itself:

In the Churchyard of Ruthwell a very curious ancient monument appears although now broken into two or three fragments, which however have all been preserved. The whole when entire seems to have had the form of an obelisk, and was about 18 feet long, and the side of each square is ornamented with figures in relieve descriptive of sacred story. Our Saviour is represented in various attitudes, and at the bottom of one of the sides his crucifixion is discernible: the borders on each of the sides are inscribed with runick characters much more ancient perhaps than the figures sculptured upon the stone. Tradition says that the obelisk, in remote times, was set up at a place called Priestwoodside near the sea, in order to assist the vulgar by sensible images to form some notions of religion, but was drawn from thence by a teem of oxen belonging to a widow, and placed in the church-yard …²¹

More serious study of the cross began with the Reverend Henry Duncan, minister at Ruthwell 1798–1823. Duncan expanded on what his predecessor Craig had written about the cross, noting that Priestwoodside was now Priestside, and lay nearer the sea than Ruthwell Church. He added that the tradition of the cross having been drawn to the church by oxen was still common, and supplied some additional details.

The pillar is said to have been brought by sea from some distant country, and to have been cast on shore by shipwreck; and while it was in the act of being conveyed in the manner described, into the interior, the tackling is reported to have given way, which was believed in that superstitious age, to indicate the will of heaven that it was to proceed no further. It was accordingly erected, if we are to credit the report, on the spot where it fell, and a place of worship was built over it, which became the parish-church of Ruthwell. It is not improbable that this tradition may bear some vague reference to the period when the alteration took place in the form, and perhaps also in the object, of the column, at which time its site may possibly have been changed. It is remarkable that the remains of an ancient road, founded on piles of wood leading through a morass to the Priestside (which is a stripe of arable land inclosed between this morass and the shore of the Solway Firth), were in existence in the last thirty or forty years.²²

More importantly, Duncan began reconstruction of the cross. Duncan is often credited in the scholarship with finding several of the fragments of the cross under the table stones in the churchyard but, as noted above, Nicolson claims to have done the same at a much earlier date. It is possible that either Duncan discovered further fragments, or perhaps that Nicolson had replaced some or all of the stones he found for safekeeping. Whatever the case, it is certain that in Duncan’s time further fragments were discovered buried in the churchyard. He notes in particular the discovery of the top of the shaft of the cross (the stone with John the Baptist and the Visitation/Martha and Mary panels) during the digging of an especially deep grave.²³ In 1802 he had the fragments of the cross assembled and began erecting the monument in the garden of the manse. In 1823, when the transom of the cross had still not been found he commissioned a local mason to assist with the design and carving of the transom that we see today.²⁴ It was at this point that the capstone was placed above the transom the wrong way round. It was also during reconstruction that cement was used to bind a break in the stone beneath the torsos of Christ and the blind man in the panel depicting Christ Healing the Man Born Blind. The cement was used to extend the folds of the draperies of both figures over what was originally a straight line across the blank section of this panel.²⁵

Duncan presented his study of the cross to a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in Edinburgh on 10 December 1832. It was the result of years of handling, drawing, modeling, and attempting to piece together the surviving fragments. He had also read the earlier descriptions of the monument, and noted where and why they were in error. The earliest accounts of the monument, those made before it was pulled down and buried, describe it as a cross.²⁶ Later accounts, those made between its destruction and Duncan's reconstruction, generally describe it as a pillar, column or obelisk,²⁷ presumably because the cross-head had become separated from the shaft so a pillar, column or obelisk was indeed what was seen at the time. Duncan, however, was convinced that the Ruthwell monument was not a harmonious whole, that it was originally a column or obelisk, and had become a cross only when the top stone was added to the original column at some later date. Similar to Pennant, he believed the origins of the monument to be in the Insular world, and he saw the Insular culture that had begun the monument as superior to the foreign-influenced culture that had completed it. Duncan focused much of his attention on the narrow sides of the shaft. The vine-scroll he felt to be particularly beautiful and free in its upward curling movement. So unlike the rest of the monument’s panels was it that he admitted to having originally mistaken it for pre-Christian work. He believed that both the figural panels of the broad sides and the vine-scroll of the upper stone were inelegant in comparison, and much inferior in workmanship. He concluded that the vine-scroll of the upper stone could only have been the work of a later artist attempting to imitate the earlier scroll of the lower stone.²⁸ Language too distinguished the narrow sides from the broad. Duncan ascribed the alphabets to two different periods of history, the Latin, along with the inferior art of the figural panels providing evidence of a later remodeling of the monument that changed its essential nature.²⁹

Duncan also looked closely at how the different parts of the monument fitted together, and was the first to offer a coherent reading of the cross’s iconographic programme, reading first up the original east face and then up the original west face. However he was unable to identify the figures in the Paul and Anthony panel, and had a great deal of trouble with the upper stone, on which he was only able to make sense of the Agnus Dei panel. He commented on the difference in colour between the upper and lower stones, and saw this as added proof that the upper stone was a later addition and came from a different quarry than the lower stone. There is, as we now know, no reason to believe that the two stones are necessarily from different quarries, as differently coloured veins of the same stone can exist within a single quarry. One of the most telling areas of the monument was the border at the top of the lower stone's vine-scroll. Duncan observed that the border ‘divides the vine work on the Runic sides into two compartments and awkwardly interrupts its elegant convolutions—an intrusion which can only be satisfactorily accounted for by supposing that, on its original formation, the pillar at this point was made to terminate’.³⁰ He also pointed out that the inscriptions on the upper stone were oriented differently.³¹ Duncan ended his study by speculating on the monument's patron(s) and the reasons for which it might have first been erected. Here too he saw conflict and tension, speculating that the original column (i.e. the monument with vine-scroll and runic text but without figural panels or Latin inscriptions) had first been erected by a community of monks in order to record the ravaging of church lands by ‘some powerful chieftain’, who later repented and donated gifts to the church.³²

Duncan’s study was accompanied by a short paper on the runes by Mr. Repp, who believed they were a later addition to the monument. He completely misread them, interpreting them as recording Viking donations to the church. John Mitchel Kemble was the first to transcribe and interpret the runes correctly, publishing his reading in two papers of 1840 and 1844. In the first paper he identified the runes as Anglo-Saxon rather than Viking,³³ and read the columns of runes in the correct order, although he failed to understand the content of the poem.³⁴ In the second, written after had been supplied with a copy of Benjamin Thorpe’s 1836 edition of the Vercelli Book, he became the first to establish a connection between the Ruthwell verses and the poem The Dream of the Rood preserved in the late tenth-century Vercelli Book.³⁵

Daniel Haigh was the first scholar to devote himself to a detailed comparison of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses, which he recognized as connected in style and iconography.³⁶ He corrected several of Duncan’s identifications of the panels—the John the Baptist with the Agnus Dei, Visitation (though he missed the Martha and Mary reference), and Paul and Anthony panels. He also suggested that the iconography of the cross might be linked to liturgical practice. Haigh was also interested in the historical date and context of the cross. He was the first to suggest that the Bewcastle Cross commemorated King Alcfrith of Northumbria (d. 664), and that both it and Ruthwell could therefore be dated to the 660s. Because of its early date and connection to Northumbria, Haigh suggested that the runic poem might be the work of the poet Caedmon, and read ‘Cadmon me fawed’ (Cædmon made me) in the runes along the margins of the panel with the bird perched on a vine-scroll at the top of the cross.³⁷ Somewhat bizarrely Haigh also believed that the shaft of the Ruthwell Cross had first been erected at Bewcastle, and had ben stolen by ‘an army of Danes or Scots’, and cast up on the Solway shore during a storm.³⁸ By the end of the nineteenth century the idea that the cross was in some way a foreign work had become a popular legend both locally and amongst antiquarians. It was dispelled by James Barbour, a local architect and archaeologist, who wrote in the Transactions and Journal of Proceedings of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society for 1899–1900, that the legend was simply ‘a common way of accounting for the presence of works without a history, and possessing merit superior apparently to any effort of local skill’. He went on to demonstrate the local origins of the monument, concluding that the stone itself came from a local quarry and that it followed that ‘in all probability the Cross was sculpted and first set up in the vicinity where it stands’.³⁹

At around the same time that Haigh was studying the cross and proposing a connection with the poet Caedmon, the German scholar Franz Dietrich proposed a connection with the poet Cynewulf. Dietrich believed that the Ruthwell Cross was a work of the late eighth century and had been erected as a memorial to Cynewulf, bishop of Lindisfarne (737–82). This Cynewulf, he wrongly believed, had composed Ruthwell’s runic poem, as well as The Dream of the Rood, and Elene.⁴⁰

John Dinwiddie, minister at Ruthwell 1890–1936, is important for his work on both the history of the monument and of Henry Duncan.⁴¹ His Handbook has gone through multiple editions, and an abridged form of the original is still available for purchase at Ruthwell Church. Dinwiddie is largely responsible for popularizing the view that Gavin Young had deliberately ignored the orders of the 1640 Act anent the demolishing of Idolatrous Monuments, and had done all that he could to preserve and protect the cross.⁴² In staunch opposition to any idea that the cross was the work of foreigners, Dinwiddie’s book forged a centuries-long Scottish nationalist history for the monument that retroactively made Ruthwell a site of Celtic Christianity. He was quite dogmatic about the monument being a product of the Celtic Church and a symbol of the Scottish nation, even if the designers and/or craftsmen and/or models for the figures might have been Anglo-Saxon.⁴³ No doubt in part due to his own staunch Presbyterianism he saw the monument as a protest against the Romanizing stance of the 664 Synod of Whitby and the Northumbrian King Oswiu (r. 642–70), as well as the post-Whitby Northumbrian Church. ‘The church of St. Columba and St. Aidan’, he argued, ‘became a protecting Church. It was the first Protestant Church in the British Islands’. The Church of Rome, on the other hand, was ‘an imported and alien Church’.⁴⁴ The Ruthwell Cross could be shown to be a product of the seventh century, espousing the views of the Celtic Church against those of Rome, proclaiming its origins in its own voice. Where Daniel Haigh and George Stephens had read ‘Cædmon made me’ in the runes along the margins of the panel with the bird perched on a vine-scroll at the top of the cross,⁴⁵ Dinwiddie read ‘Colman made me’ (Colman me fawed), identifying Colman as Bishop Colman of Northumbria, the ‘last Celtic bishop of the Northumbrian Church’, and the bishop responsible for leading dissenting monks back to Iona after the Synod of Whitby.⁴⁶ Dinwiddie also believed that Ruthwell went on to surpass Iona in its adherence to the true faith. In 714 Iona had aligned itself with the Roman Church and hence the Romanizing ways of Northumbria, while Strathclyde (including Dumfriesshire) alone remained true to its origins. He concluded that there was good reason to believe, therefore, that ‘our great Cross at Ruthwell provided a rallying point for the steadily diminishing adherents to the rule of the Mother Church of Iona’.⁴⁷ Dinwiddie's views neatly aligned the origins of the monument in Scottish nationalism and protest with the local values of the community during the Protestant Reformation, the period in which the monument was buried and preserved for the nation, as well as with the period of Scottish nationalism and protest in which he wrote. The Ruthwell Cross and its Story was first published in 1927, and was thus contemporary with the foundation of dedicated nationalist parties such as the Scots National League and the Scottish National Party.

Dinwiddie’s Scottish nationalism was matched by that of a generation of English scholars responding to a series of foreign publications that questioned what had now been accepted as a seventh-century date for the cross. The Danish philologist and antiquary Sophus Müller argued that the cross dated from around the year 1000,⁴⁸ while the American Albert S. Cook argued first for a date in the mid-tenth century, but subsequently came to the view that the cross to be as late as the mid-twelfth century.⁴⁹ They were to be followed in their late dating by the Italian architectural historian G. T. Rivoira (who also saw Lombard influence on the cross),⁵⁰ and the American art historian Charles Rufus Morey.⁵¹ Not surprisingly, British scholars of the closing years of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth would fight to uphold Ruthwell’s position as one of the earliest and most learned medieval works of art and poetry.

The Cross in the 20th and 21st Centuries

With the rise of Art History and Archaeology as serious scholarly disciplines during the nineteenth century, twentieth century scholarship turned to a more scientific and a more holistic study of the Ruthwell Cross. Twentieth-century scholars were interested in developing a coherent reading of the monument’s style and iconography that took both back to their origins in the relationship between Anglo-Saxon England and the Celtic and Mediterranean worlds; in identifying the workshop that produced the monument, its date, and the historical circumstances in which it was produced; in understanding the cross’s relationship to the liturgy; in understanding the cross as a work of sculpture, and in understanding its relationship to the larger corpus of Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture.

Both the Reverend George F. Browne, Disney Professor of Art and Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and Gerard Baldwin Brown, Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh, led the charge against the late dating of the cross by foreign scholars. Both also followed in the footsteps of Daniel Haigh by studying the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses together. Browne’s views on the cross were expressed in his Rede lecture, delivered to the University of Cambridge in May 1916 and published that same year.⁵² Browne affirmed a late seventh-century date for the Ruthwell Cross, associating it particularly with the reign of King Ecgfrith of Northumbria (r. 670–685) and the expansion of the Northumbrian kingdom. He found sources and parallels for its carvings in both Northumbria and Italy, but not in twelfth-century Scotland—as Cook had attempted to argue.⁵³ Browne was also interested in exploring the differences between the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses, which he enumerated in some detail.

Gerard Baldwin Brown devoted volume 5 of his The Arts in Early England to the two crosses along with other monuments of Northumbrian art,⁵⁴ and also discussed them in the context of the larger corpus of Anglo-Saxon sculpture in volume 6 of the same series.⁵⁵ Brown surveyed earlier studies of the monument and was clear that the stone for the cross was of local origin, noting as well that Duncan had used local stone similar in colour to both the lower and upper stones in his restoration.⁵⁶ He was also intent on countering earlier arguments that the Ruthwell cross was either wholly or in part the work of foreign sculptors, pointing out that examples of superb and inferior workmanship existed side-by-side in the same panel—e.g. in the panel with Mary Magdalene at the feet of Christ, in which the figure of Christ would be an example of excellent work, while the hand of the Magdalene would be an example of inferior work.⁵⁷ Brown saw both Ruthwell and Bewcastle as a part of the cult of the cross that developed after King Oswald of Northumbria raised his wooden cross at the Battle of Heavenfield (634), dating them to within forty or fifty years of the battle. He believed they were the work of one school of sculptors, and that Ruthwell had been carved first and Bewcastle almost immediately thereafter (previous studies had tended to see Bewcastle as the earlier of the two monuments),⁵⁸ although he was also clear that there were many differences between the two crosses. Brown provided a detailed panel-by-panel description of Ruthwell, and, as a professor of fine art, he was the first to focus on the sculpture as a work of art, detailing the artistic merits (or lack thereof) of each panel. He firmly believed that Ruthwell at its classicising best (the figures of Christ, for example) was the artistic equal of Hellenistic or of French Gothic sculpture.⁵⁹

The date, palaeography and content of the Ruthwell (and Bewcastle) inscriptions received detailed attention in three separate chapters of the book, two of them written by Blyth Webster, Professor of English Literature at the University of St. Andrews.⁶⁰ Webster provided a transcription, transliteration, and translation of the runes, and discussed the poem’s origins, content and authorship. He assessed the cases for either Caedmon or Cynewulf as author, dismissing both possibilities. While authorship could not be determined, there was more evidence for the date of composition. Webster believed that the metrical and linguistic evidence, combined with the range of the texts with which the author could be shown to have been familiar indicated a date no later than the later seventh or early eighth century.⁶¹ Brown concluded that the combined art-historical, literary and historical evidence indicated that Ruthwell had to have been a product of the violent Northumbrian expansion into the British region of Strathclyde during the reigns of the Northumbrian kings Oswiu and, most especially his son, Ecgfrith, and that it was meant to symbolize the triumph of the Cross.⁶²

Brown also sketched out what he saw as the development of the free-standing stone cross, from its supposed origins in wooden crosses, like Oswald’s cross, through an increasingly complex series of three-dimensional monuments. He believed that different types of crosses may have had different functions—some memorial, others marking sacred sites, others commemorating important events, and so on. Building on his work, the archaeologist W. G. Collingwood became the first scholar to attempt a systematic survey of the Northumbrian crosses, placing them in a series, and seeing them as phases in a larger process of artistic development.⁶³ He compared the cross with surviving sculptural fragments from nearby Hoddom, arguing that Ruthwell may have been a cell of Hoddom, and the cross the product of a Hoddom workshop. He also used the Hoddom evidence to suggest a date for Ruthwell in the later eighth century.⁶⁴ The possible connection between Hoddom and Ruthwell (and perhaps a cluster of other monasteries) has been accepted by many contemporary scholars.⁶⁵ Collingwood had intended to extend his survey beyond Northumbria, and his work thus laid the foundations for the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, but it also marked the beginning of a tendency to consider the art historical or archaeological aspects of the cross separately from the inscriptions. The Ruthwell poem, and the Ruthwell Cross became largely separate objects of study.

Two of the most important studies of the Ruthwell Cross were published by scholars who never actually traveled to Ruthwell to see the original monument, Fritz Saxl and Meyer Schapiro. Saxl and Schapiro are also credited with beginning the serious study of Ruthwell’s iconography. Both scholars wrote during World War II, and were forced to work from photographs and drawings as travel to England was out of the question. Saxl focused exclusively on the figural panels, their overall iconographic program, and their relationship to Mediterranean art.⁶⁶ Both he and Schapiro stressed the need for the viewer to move around the cross in order to fully understand its message—even if that did, for Saxl, mean ignoring the vine-scroll as well as the poem. Saxl offers a strictly iconographic reading of the cross, tracing the subjects of the panels back to multiple biblical texts, scriptural commentaries and saints’ lives. He was the first to recognize that the central panel of the west face of the cross represented not Christ treading on the beasts, but Christ recognized by beasts. He was also the first to bring out the multivalency of panels such as that of Christ recognized by Beasts by showing how it referenced both Psalm 90/91:13 and Eusebius’s commentary on the psalms. He began with the original west face of the cross, reading its two central panels as relating to the desert and monastic life, while the corresponding panels on the east face related to revelation and the recognition of the divine. The two sides were united by the base, with its Crucifixion and (possible) Nativity signifying the beginning and end of the life of Christ and the salvation of mankind. On the basis of comparison with the fragmentary Anglo-Saxon cross-heads preserved at Durham Cathedral, Saxl believed that the centre of the original cross-head depicted the Lamb of God (west face) and the institution of the Church in Rome (east face).⁶⁷ This made particular sense as he believed the cross dated from the period after the last quarter of the seventh century, and reflected Northumbria’s turn away from the Irish Church to embrace the Church of Rome after the Synod of Whitby.

Saxl, like others before him, saw the hands of two masters at work in the Ruthwell panels, the more accomplished (‘a great artist’) of the two working in a style closer to that of the Mediterranean models.⁶⁸ But Ruthwell was not as classicizing a monument as Bewcastle was, and Saxl used stylistic comparisons between the two crosses and the figural styles of Early Christian Rome, Ravenna, and other Mediterranean centres, to suggest that Bewcastle was closer to its Mediterranean models and was purer in its classicism, and must therefore be earlier in date than Ruthwell.⁶⁹ He also discussed the probable role of Early Christian ivory panels in the design and meaning of the two monuments.

Schapiro began his 1944 article by observing that the central subject of the Ruthwell poem, the Crucifixion, seemed to have little pertinence to the sculpted images—the Crucifixion, while present, being relegated to the base of the cross.⁷⁰ His paper was clearly in the process of publication at the time that Saxl’s appeared, as he believed that no one else had attempted an integrated reading of the religious themes of the monument. Schapiro, however, was interested more in the ways in which the Ruthwell panels differed from other representations of the same subjects and, as a Marxist art historian, he was interested in the social structures and pressures reflected in the cross. Like Saxl, he saw the Christ over the Beasts panel as central to the meaning of the cross, and read its message as one of peace and submission as well as eremitic monasticism. The taming of animals and desert settings of this and the other panels of the west face he connected with the submissive beasts and wilderness settings of the Lives of Anglo-Saxon saints such as Kentigern, Guthlac and Cuthbert, as well as with motifs in Celtic poetry, such as the poetry of Columbanus. He linked the form of the cross and the iconography of several of its panels with the Life of Kentigern (d. 614), ‘the apostle of Strathclyde’, who is recorded as having been a hermit, as having washed the feet of lepers with his tears and dried them with his hair, as having had power over animals, and as having erected stone crosses.⁷¹ Schapiro agreed with Browne, Brown and Saxl that the cross dated from the late seventh century and could be linked to the political expansion of the Northumbrians under Oswiu and Ecgfrith into Strathclyde, yet it could also be linked to pre-Whitby Lindisfarne, and this created a tension between the Northumbrian and Celtic elements of the cross. He was one of the first to note that the scene of Paul and Anthony breaking bread was far more common in Irish and Scottish sculpture than it was in Northumbrian sculpture—though of course he did not have accurate dates for his comparative material, most of which is now known to post-date Ruthwell. He concluded that

To account for the complex nature of the Cross, with its Anglian poem on Celtic soil, its imagery of self-denial in a robust and richly decorated form, we may imagine hypothetically that there existed in Ruthwell in the second half of the seventh century a religious community of Britons and Anglian settlers, ruled by Northumbrians who belonged to an older generation that owed its Christianity to the teachings of Aidan and Columba and its ecclesiastical privilege in hostile Strathclyde to the power of the Northumbrian king.⁷²

The Ruthwell Cross was a powerful rejection of the Roman form of Christianity and of the decision made at Whitby.

A key study of the Ruthwell Cross has been provided by the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture began publication in 1984 with the purpose of recording and illustrating all of England’s surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon sculpture. Ironically, because the Ruthwell Cross is located in Scotland it has not been included in the Corpus, even though it is one of the most important Anglo-Saxon sculptures. Nevertheless, the Corpus has created a classification (or common vocabulary) for monument types, elements of Anglo-Saxon sculpture (such as cross-heads) and elements of sculptural motifs (such as vine-scroll), and has thus had a profound impact on the way scholars talk about Ruthwell. Ruthwell is also discussed in a chapter on ‘The Bewcastle Cross and its Context’, and in the catalogue entry for Bewcastle, in volume 2 of the Corpus.⁷³ Much of the Corpus study centred on similarities and differences in the style and iconography of the two monuments, and what these might reveal about date. Rosemary Cramp observed that some of the figures at Ruthwell were far more animated than those at Bewcastle, although the style and form of the Bewcastle figures are more consistent. This, she believed, might indicate that Ruthwell was carved after Bewcastle at a time when the figural repertoire of the sculptors had been more fully developed, although ultimately she felt that it was equally possible to argue that Ruthwell was carved first and the only thing that could be concluded with certainty was that they were the work of the same generation of sculptors.⁷⁴

Many scholars have published important papers on individual panels of the Ruthwell Cross, on its inscriptions, on its relationship to Bewcastle, and on various aspects of its style, iconography or religious meaning. See in particular the work of Robert Farrell,⁷⁵ Kristine Haney,⁷⁶ George Henderson,⁷⁷ David Howlett,⁷⁸ Ernst Kantorowicz,⁷⁹ Ray Page,⁸⁰ and Barbara Raw.⁸¹ But there are a handful of recent collected essays and monographs that are particularly important, and the work of a handful of contemporary scholars that have been particularly influential on Ruthwell scholarship. The first of these is The Ruthwell Cross, edited by Brendan Cassidy, and based on the proceedings of a colloquium held at Princeton in 1989.⁸² The purpose of the colloquium was to bring together scholars from different disciplines whose combined work on the exegetical, archaeological, epigraphical and historical knowledge could provoke a truly interdisciplinary discussion. Robert Farrell considered the cross from an archaeological perspective, providing an outline of how it was likely to have been disassembled in the seventeenth century, and how Duncan went about reassembling it in the nineteenth century.⁸³ Farrell was also part of a Durham-based team that was hoping to provide a new study of the cross, and his paper provided information on the team’s research and photography. His paper also demonstrated that some of the early reproductions and descriptions of the cross were misleading or inaccurate, and emphasized that the cross must be studied ‘as it exists at present’.⁸⁴

Douglas MacLean assessed the various arguments surrounding the date of the cross, arguing that its Celtic elements were often overlooked, but were crucial to any attempt at establishing its date.⁸⁵ The bulk of his paper focuses on the historical evidence and the interaction of Northumbria with the British kingdom of Rheged (in which Ruthwell was originally located) in the years surrounding the marriage of Riemmelth of Rheged with King Oswiu of Northmbria.⁸⁶ Mac Lean concludes that when the style and iconography of the cross are considered in the context of Northumbria’s expansion into Rheged, it could only have been created between 731 and 750 by a team of stonemasons trained at Jarrow.

David Howlett suggested that Biblical Style consisting of statement and restatement lay behind the design of the Ruthwell Cross. (So, for example, each of the figural panels relates to the panel directly above it as well as to the panel directly opposite it.) He argued that ‘the reliefs, languages, words, meters and scripts, roman and runic, have been arranged by parallelism and chiasmus, ordered by measure and number and weight’.⁸⁷ Howlett provides a detailed analysis of each of the inscriptions surrounding the figural panels, arguing that the inscription at the top of the east side can only be read as ‘Martha [and] Mary, meritorious ladies’, and that the panel cannot, therefore, be interpreted as the Visitation. He also supported the view, first made by Dream of the Rood scholars, that the verses inscribed at the top of the east face (where the runic inscription dægisgeaf survives) might be reconstructed as the lines that are now lines 52b–55b of The Dream of the Rood written in Old Northumbrian dialect: Þystro hæfda / bewrigen miþ wolcnu Waldendæs hræw / scêadu forþeode / wann under wolcnu wœpdæ gisgæft (Darkness had covered with clouds the shining light of the Lord’s corpse. A shadow went forth, dark under the clouds. All of creation wept).⁸⁸ He too suggested a date of around 731, linking the Ruthwell poem to the episcopacy of Pecthelm of Whithorn.

In a 1982 study of the cross Paul Meyvaert had suggested that early interpretations of the panel at the top of the west face of the cross were correct, that it depicted God the Father rather than John the Baptist holding the Lamb of God.⁸⁹ He provided further support for his argument in his contribution to the colloquium volume.⁹⁰ Here Meyvaert also questioned whether the present alignment of the upper stone, with its Lamb and Martha and Mary panels,⁹¹ is the correct one, and proposed that they were assembled the wrong way round during reconstruction of the cross. The panel with Martha and Mary should really sit above the panel with Christ over the beasts, and the panel with the Lamb over Mary Magdalene at the feet of Christ. Such an arrangement would provide theological unity, with the west face being devoted to the Church (Ecclesia), and the east face to the monastic life (Vita Monastica).⁹² He also discussed the history and structure of the church at Ruthwell, proposing a possible reconstruction of what the original church might have looked like, and where within it the cross might have been situated. Meyvaert concluded with some thoughts on when and by whom the cross might have been carved, suggesting that the historical, iconographic, and theological evidence all pointed to it having been carved by a monk raised in the Lindisfarne tradition at some point in the opening decades of the eighth century.⁹³

The scholar who has published the most extensively on the Ruthwell Cross over the last forty years is Éamonn Ó Carragáin. So extensive is the bibliography of his research that we will limit ourselves here to discussion of a few key publications. A full list of his publications is included in the project’s general bibliography. Ó Carragáin was the first to demonstrate how deeply connected with the liturgy the images and inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross were. In particular, he was the first to explore the way in which the cross reflected liturgical innovations associated with both Rome and with Wearmouth-Jarrow.⁹⁴ In 701 Sergius discovered a gem-covered reliquary of the True Cross in the sacristy of St Peter’s in Rome and had it translated to the altar of the Lateran Basilica, an event that reenacted the Invention of the Cross by the empress Helena, and the donation of gold and jeweled reliquaries of the Cross by her son Constantine (on which, see below), and reinvigorated the cult of the Cross in the West.⁹⁵ The event took place while Ceolfrith, abbot of Wearmouth, and his successor Hwætberht were in Rome. The two may or may not have been actual witnesses to the translation, but they certainly brought news of the event back to Northumbria, as Bede wrote about it in the historical chronicle added to the end of De Temporum Ratione.⁹⁶ It was also under Sergius that the ‘Agnus Dei’ chant was introduced, an innovation that Ó Carragáin argued was central to the meaning of the John the Baptist with the Agnus Dei panel at Ruthwell. Far from being apocalyptic, as Meyvaert had argued, the panel was symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice and his presence in the Eucharist. It was a hopeful image of Christ’s mercy, and of fulfillment. Finally, Sergius was credited with introducing a unified cycle of four Marian feasts that Ó Carragáin connected both with the iconography of the Annunciation and Visitation at Ruthwell, and with the importance of light in understanding the cross and its message. Christ’s birth in December marked the point at which the hours of daylight began to lengthen, while John’s birth in June marked the point at which they began to decline. Equally important were the Spring Equinox and Good Friday, the date at which Christ was conceived, and hence began to grow in Mary’s womb, as well as the time at which he died, and the Autumn Eqiuinox, which could be associated with the conception of John the Baptist in October. The cycle of the sun, which was so important to the iconography of the cross, extended also to the way in which viewers are directed to move around the cross, reading its texts and images. A traditional reading of the cross should begin at the west face with its eucharistic imagery, behind which the sun rose in the morning continue on to the north and the first half of the runic poem, which describes Christ ascending the cross; proceed to the east face with its baptismal imagery, behind which the sun would set; and finish at the south face, on which the poem speaks of Christ’s descent from the cross.

Unity, the cycle of birth and death, and the womb of Mary were central to Ó Carragáin’s reading of the cross. He therefore did not accept Martha and Mary as the subject of the panel at the top of the east face of the cross. It was the Visitation,⁹⁷ although he later came to accept that some subtle reference to Martha and Mary might have been incorporated into the panel’s inscription, which might have originally read something like ‘[Mary and] Martha, Mary the Mother [of Christ]. Ladies’.⁹⁸ He was equally adamant about the importance of the poem and the inhabited vine-scrolls on the narrow faces of the cross. The vine-scrolls furthered the imagery of life and growth, as well as the eucharistic symbolism of the cross. Their fruit represented Christ’s body and blood, and hence they were intimately connected to the poem with its description of the breaking of Christ’s body during the Crucifixion. He also argued against scholars who had been intent on claiming that the runic poem would have been difficult, if not impossible to read,⁹⁹ showing that the arrangement of the runes in horizontal rows down the side borders could be paralleled in Roman works of art, and that this way of reading was likely to have been familiar to an Anglo-Saxon monastic audience.¹⁰⁰ He was also clear that the cross was neither a monument to the Celtic nor Roman churches, but one which brought the two into harmony with each other.

One of the more heated disputes of the last twenty years has been over whether the cross was carved in one campaign or not,¹⁰¹ and whether it was originally designed as a cross, questions that appeared, as we have seen, in earlier antiquarian work on the cross. In keeping with his emphasis on the unity of all aspects of the cross, Ó Carragáin argued that, while it may be the work of two generations of sculptors, it was definitely designed as a unity, and it was definitely intended from the start to be a cross. The lower stone, complete with its runic poem, may have been erected first, but the upper stone was added shortly thereafter.¹⁰² Fred Orton has been the most convincing voice for the alternative point of view: that the cross was originally an obelisk or pillar, and only became a cross with the later addition of the cross-head.¹⁰³ His work has focused on a close reading of the language of the earlier antiquarian accounts of the monument, as well as on a close study of the stone used for both the cross and its reconstruction, as well as the way in which the remaining fragments have been put together.

Orton was equally interested in the way in which Ruthwell and Bewcastle had increasingly come to be studied together, and thus brought into a relationship of false similarity. His work has therefore also been concerned with expressing just how dissimilar the two monuments are, and this has again involved a close and systematic reading of the two monuments as sculpture and of the language used to speak about them. The way in which later twentieth-century archaeological and art historical scholarship had been concerned with the classification of monuments and their decoration, for example, has led to our accepting both Ruthwell and Bewcastle as crosses, despite the obvious formal and stylistic problems of the former, and the complete lack of a cross-head for the latter. Similarly, iconographic analysis, which by its very nature looks for shared sources and relationships of similarity, had led to an emphasis on shared forms, images and meanings, despite universal agreement that the monuments had been erected to serve very different purposes.

Finally, Orton was interested in the materiality of the monument, in terms of its presence within the church and its presence within the larger landscape. In fact, stone aside, it has no obvious relationship with its current location, as, again, the early legends and antiquarian accounts made clear. It is huge, imposing, it speaks with different voices that are not always easy to understand. It is an insistently Northumbrian sculptural statement made in British territory, a monument that was, and is, divisive.¹⁰⁴

Orton’s work is symptomatic of the interests that emerged in the study of Anglo-Saxon England around the turn of the twenty-first century. Scholars have become less concerned with source study and more concerned with what the Ruthwell Cross reveals to us about Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards such things as gender, voice, materiality, and landscape.¹⁰⁵ New digital technologies and virtual imaging now offer us the possibility of answering questions, some new, and some of which have plagued scholarship on the Ruthwell Cross since study of the monument began: How was it originally constructed? What is the relationship between the upper and lower stones? Was it carved in one campaign? What might it have looked like painted? What might it have looked like with the sun passing across its faces? Can we read some of the lost words or letters of its various inscriptions? At the same time, they reveal to us how fascinated we remain with going back to the monument itself, and how necessary it is to do so.