Iconography of the Ruthwell Cross

The religious iconography of the Ruthwell Cross is focused on the body of Christ, its salvific nature, and those who touched or held his body and through it were led to salvation. The cross itself is amongst those who held his body, and is thus important multivalently as a living thing, as an object, and as a sign. Similarly, the movement from darkness into light, which both parallels and is a metaphor for the movement from sin to salvation is a key element of the monument’s meaning. While it is possible to begin reading the cross at any point, the original west face of the cross is the one that anyone approaching the monument is likely to have seen first, and Éamonn Ó Carragáin has demonstrated the many spiritual and liturgical reasons that this side would have been read first.¹ That said, it is not enough to read any single side of the monument. The images and texts on all four sides of the monument would have worked together with its original setting and with its audience to bring out the monument’s deeper meanings.

The West Face

The iconography of the west face of the Ruthwell Cross is centred around the eucharist, with each panel displaying the body of Christ to the viewer. The lowest panel depicts the Flight into or out of Egypt. Mary is seated sidesaddle holding the infant Christ at the centre of her lap as if he were placed upon an altar, like the bread and wine of the eucharist, and drawing our attention to him with her left hand. Their still, frontal facing bodies contrast with the profile depiction and seemingly rapid movement of the ass, and the contrast helps to focus our attention on the body of Christ. The carver has in effect created a Virgin and Child image within the larger narrative of the panel, and thus highlighted the role of Mary as bearer of Christ, a role that parallels that of the Cross of the Crucifixion. Mary is dressed in royal robes with an elaborate headdress indicating her exalted status and contrasting with the humble nature of the ass. Her royal attire also parallels the rich gold and jewelled adornment of early medieval reliquaries of the True Cross. The composition of the paired Virgin and Child is taken from traditional icons that would have been familiar to Anglo-Saxon pilgrims to Rome. The very early icon of the Virgin and Christ Child flanked by angels in Sancta Maria in Trestevere is frequently cited in comparison.² An icon of the Virgin and Child that was likely to have been similar to the Trestevere icon is known to have been amongst the icons brought back to Wearmouth-Jarrow from Rome by Benedict Biscop.³ The movement of the ass from right to left, rather than the more usual left to right, may indicate that this is the Flight out of Egypt, even though the Flight Into Egypt was far more common. If this is the case, the bearing of Christ out of Egypt would be symbolic of the spiritual food his body was to provide for the Christian Church (John 2:19-22), a New Testament fulfilment of the manna that fed the Israelites in the desert (Exodus 16).⁴ Such symbolism would be in keeping with the general eucaristic symbolism of this face of the cross, as well as with that of the inhabited vine-scroll on the two narrow sides.

In the panel above the Flight into/Return from Egypt, saints Paul and Anthony stand breaking a loaf of bread between them, their faces turned out slightly towards the viewer. This may well be the earliest surviving image of the scene. The loaf of bread is positioned directly over the Christ Child in the lowest panel and its centre is marked with a cross, both details that underscore the fact that the bread the saints hold is the eucharistic bread, the body of Christ in symbolic form. The panel illustrates a scene from Jerome’s Life of St Paul the First Hermit. Both Paul and Anthony the Abbot had separately sought refuge in the desert, and there lived lives of eremitic solitude. Anthony eventually sought out Paul, wishing to acknowledge his seniority after learning in a dream that he was the better saint. On his way he encountered a number of exotic animals, which indicted that Paul’s monastic desert was also a form of paradise. Each day a raven sent by God had brought Paul a half loaf of bread, but because Anthony was his guest, the raven now brought a whole loaf. The two saints agreed to break the bread between them in an act of cofractio. The rite of cofractio was popular in Columban monasteries, as surviving literary sources from Iona indicate,⁵ and depictions of the two saints are, with the exception of Ruthwell, a product of the Northumbrian church, limited to Ireland and Scotland, the Columban heartland.⁶

According to the Life, after Paul’s death Anthony returned to the monastic life, and the two saints went on to become the symbolic of the eremitic and coenobitic monastic lives. They thus helped to link the contemporary Anglo-Saxon community in its own desert both to the origins of monasticism and to the community of saints depicted on the cross. There are significant differences between the Ruthwell image and the story on which it is based.⁷ The difference between the saints, the one a hermit, the other a monk, was a crucial part of the Life of Paul, but that is not what we see here. In the Ruthwell panel it is impossible to tell which saint is which as the two are dressed identically in what appears to be ecclesiastical dress. It is possible that the source of the image was a depiction of the apostles Peter and Paul, who appeared quite commonly in the art of Early Christian Rome.⁸ It may be that the artist was deliberately copying an image of Peter and Paul in order to connect the founders of the Christian Church to the founders of monasticism, or it may be that an icon of the apostles was simply a convenient source for the composition; however, given Ruthwell’s classicising style and clear reference to Roman liturgical innovations, the former scenario seems most likely. Then again, if the Ruthwell panel is indeed the earliest surviving version of the scene, it may be that the artist simply based the panel on an image with which he was familiar.

The next panel up, the panel at the top of the lower stone, depicts Christ recognized by beasts in the desert, a reference to an episode that took place between Christ’s baptism and temptation. The two beasts bear Christ, as Paul and Anthony bear the bread they break between them, both providing parallels for the Cross of the Crucifixion in the runic poem, which bears Christ’s body both broken and unbroken. The subject of this panel is very rare in early medieval art, and was first recognized as being the subject of the Ruthwell panel by Fritz Saxl and Meyer Schapiro in separate articles.⁹ The inscription around the panel,¹⁰ with its reference to dragons links it with the much more common scene of Christ over the beasts, in which Christ is usually depicted trampling on a dragon and a lion or basilisk. The source text for the inscription is Psalm 90/91:13, ‘You will walk on the asp and the basilisk and tread down the lion and the dragon’. The reference underscores the triumphant nature of Christ, but allows it to be referenced in a much more peaceful, indeed paradisiacal way, which is in keeping with the desert paradise setting of the scene below. These beasts are not identifiable species as such,¹¹ but they are clearly acclaiming Christ rather than threatening or being threatened by him.

The beasts cross their paws at the centre of the stone directly above the bread held by saints Paul and Anthony below, and the Christ Child in the lowest panel below that, continuing the emphasis on the display of Christ’s body in its various forms. Their crossed paws also form the letter chi, the first letter of Christ’s name, mirroring the X of his name (IhS XPS) inscribed directly above his head. In this case Christ is a youthful but lordly and imposing figure who stands frontally looking out toward us with one hand raised in blessing. In his left hand he holds either a scroll or mappa, the latter an imperial attribute. Were we to remove the beasts beneath his feet, we would be left with a standard image of Christ in Majesty.

The Canticle of Habakkuk with its phrase in medio duorum animalium innotesceris (in the midst of two living things you will become known) is key to understanding both the panel and its prominent position on the cross.¹² Firstly, the Christ recognized by beasts panel is by far the largest of the figural panels on the Ruthwell Cross, and drives home not only the importance of recognition and revelation within the overall programme of the monument, but also the fact that every single panel on the cross contains two or more figures between whom Christ is made known in one way or another—just as he would be made known between the viewer and the monument itself. In his commentary on Habakkuk, Bede had related the verse to the moment of the Crucifixion, at which Christ is recognized as human, dying between the two thieves, but also as divine through the events around the Cross recorded by John the evangelist.¹³ Secondly, the verse had well-established liturgical importance. It was part of the Domine audivi chant sung each Friday at Lauds, and had special meaning within the liturgy for Good Friday when at the ninth hour it was paired with the Qui habitat of Psalm 90/91:13. In Rome the papal station for the ceremony was Jerusalem, symbolic of Calvary, and the second Old Testament reading (Exodus 12:1–14) referred to the sacrifice of the paschal lamb.¹⁴ At Ruthwell the ceremony, if it was the same, would have provided a forceful vision of the Crucifixion and established a connection between this panel and the bread of the eucharist held by Paul and Anthony below, the lamb held by John the Baptist above, and, of course, the Child held by Mary in the lowest panel.

At the top of the shaft John the Baptist holds the Lamb of God, symbol of both the sacrifice of the human Christ and the triumph of the divine Christ, as well as of the body of Christ broken and consumed in the eucharist. The Baptist holds the lamb in his left arm and originally pointed to it with the finger of his right hand (now broken away), directing our attention to it as the paws of the beasts in the panel below directed our attention up to the figure of Christ standing above them. The gesture also mirrors that of Mary in the panel at the base of the shaft, who directs our attention to the Christ child with her left hand. The Baptist’s pointing finger had a long and well-established tradition. Augustine noted that unlike the prophets who had gone before him, John did not merely announce Christ but pointed him out with his finger.¹⁵ John stands on what appear to be two globes. Some division about their exact meaning remains as no exact parallels survive. It may be that they are there meant simply to indicate the celestial and/or eschatological nature of the image which bridges the worlds of heaven and earth, or it may be that they signify the fact that John bridged the two worlds of the Old and New Testament (as did Mary at the bottom of the shaft).¹⁶ In either case, his figure reminds the viewer of the Last Judgment, the time at which all would stand before the Lamb.

The panel also makes reference to the Agnus Dei chant, which had been introduced to Northumbria from Rome in the early eighth century: ‘Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis’ (Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us).¹⁷ The chant was a prayer for mercy from those who would one day stand before the Lamb. It was recited during the breaking of the eucharistic bread, and was thus also a reminder of the sacrifice made by the Lamb on behalf of humankind, and the breaking of Christ’s body at the time of the Crucifixion. The chant was also an important part of the baptismal liturgy, a point to which we will return below. As a multivalent image of sacrifice and rebirth, judgment and mercy, and the triumph of Christ at the final judgment, the panel provides a fitting culmination to the sequence of panels on this face of the cross-shaft, as well as a transition to the baptismal focus of the panels on the east face of the cross. All that remains of the inscription surrounding the panel is ‘[…] [A]DORAMVS (we adore), and across the lower border ‘VT NON CVM […]’ (so that not with), in the lower section of the left border. Its source remains a mystery, and this has led to suggestions that it may have been part of a liturgical text in use at Ruthwell.¹⁸ This is supported by the first person plural voice of the phrase, something that is unique amongst the Ruthwell inscriptions. All the other Latin inscriptions are in the third person, and the runic poem is in the first person singular voice of the Cross. If it is indeed the case that the words come from a text unique to Ruthwell, the inscription would have worked to bind the community to both the Lamb and the monument, especially during the singing of the Agnus Dei chant.

The evangelist symbols in the four arms of the crosshead would have continued the eschatological message of the Agnus Dei panel. The only two to survive are Matthew and John, but their presence indicates that Mark and Luke would have been carved at the end of the two arms of the transom. It is impossible to be certain exactly what was originally depicted at the centre of the crosshead, although an Agnus Dei in glory has been speculated.¹⁹ What we can be certain of is that it was either an image or a symbol of Christ, as in Early Christian art the four evangelists are rarely, if ever, depicted surrounding anything else. The composition of the evangelist symbols around an image or symbol of Christ is always an eschatological image. At Ruthwell the surviving evangelists hold books, so it is reasonable to assume that all four would have done so originally. The human evangelists are accompanied by their symbols, symbolic of the divine inspiration under which the evangelists wrote, and the artist has emphasised this by depicting the evangelists facing or speaking with their symbols—in fact John’s eagle reaches for and Matthews symbol points towards the books that the two hold. The fragmentary remains of an inscription around the John panel indicate that each evangelist would have been surrounded by the opening words of his respective gospel. Together the human evangelists also represent the harmony of the four separate gospels that they wrote (and which they hold), a harmony which can be extended metonymically to the harmony of the four sides of the cross and the words and images that cover them.

Just above the Agnus Dei panel is Matthew with his symbol the winged man. Of the four gospels his devotes the most attention to the genealogy, birth, incarnation and human nature of Christ. When arranged in a cruciform pattern, as they were at Ruthwell, he is usually depicted nearest the earth of the four evangelists. Matthew is traditionally said to have written his gospel from the word of Christ. John, on the other hand, is the author of the most mystical of the gospels, and is said to have written his gospel from the word of God via the Holy Spirit.²⁰ He is the only evangelist believed to have been able to look directly into the face of God. His symbol, the eagle, was the only bird believed able to look directly into the sun, and was thus, like the evangelist, the closest to heaven. Duncan’s restoration of the cross placed John and his symbol at the top of the east face of the monument, but when the top fragment of the Ruthwell crosshead is turned round, as it originally was, he would have been in his usual place above the other evangelists. It is also appropriate that John capped this side of the cross because the Agnus Dei chant that is so important to the meaning of the Agnus Dei panel is taken from John 1:29, in which John sees Jesus walking toward him and exclaims ‘Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccatum mundi’ (Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world). His image thus helps to unite the meaning of the crosshead with that of the shaft below.

The North Face

Moving sun-wise around the cross, the next face encountered is the north face with its vine-scroll and the first half of the runic poem. The breaking of the poem into two halves neatly parallels the breaking of bread by Paul and Anthony on the west face of the cross, as well as the breaking of Christ’s body (which the bread symbolizes and the poem describes) on the Cross of the Crucifixion. The inhabited vine-scroll is a multivalent image that has its source in art of the Mediterranean world. It would have been popularized in Anglo-Saxon England both by the monumental mosaics that pilgrims would have seen in Rome, amongst other places, and through the importation of portable luxury objects such as ivories, or even reliquary crosses. At Ruthwell the vine was a symbol of both the tree-of-life cross and of Christ the true vine of John 15:1–6. The vine with its fruits and berries could then be both the body and blood of Christ and the Cross covered with the body and blood. The beasts that inhabit the vine-scroll are meant to represent the faithful moving their way from darkness to salvation (or from earth to heaven) through belief in the death and resurrection of Christ and the saving power of baptism and the eucharist. It was the blood and water that poured from Christ’s side at the Crucifixion that gave life to the Cross and those that followed it.²¹ In the Old English runic poem that surrounds the vine-scroll the Cross of the Crucifixion, a wooden cross (here a gallows, galgu, a masculine noun in Old English), speaks, and the vine-scroll would have acted as a visual prompt helping to unite in the mind the stone of the Ruthwell monument with the wood that spoke from within it.

With its missing letters reconstructed, the first half of the poem on this side of the cross reads: (across the top) + ondgere; (down the right side) dæ hinæ god almeittig · þa hewalde on galgu gistigamodig fore allæ men bug … ahof ic riicnæ kyniŋc · heafunæs hlafard hælda ic ni dorstæ bismærædu uŋket men ba ætgadre ic wæs miþ blodi bistemid bigoten of þæs gumu sida… (Almighty God stripped himself when he wished to mount the gallows, brave in the sight of all men. I dared not bow. I [raised aloft] a powerful king. The Lord of heaven I dared not tilt. Men insulted the pair of us together. I was drenched with blood [begotten from that man’s side].) This half of the poem ends with the statement that the Cross was covered in Christ’s blood. According to medieval tradition, the blood that soaked into the wood of the Cross meant that it partook of Christ’s substance. It thus became an animate living being, able to reproduce itself and to speak. It also meant that the saving power of Christ was transferred to the Cross, the two in a sense became one.²²

The movement of the reader/viewer around the cross is also a key part of its iconography. Standing beneath the right arm of the cross any one who knew the poem would realize that he or she was here placed in the position of Mary (or Ecclesia born from the wound in Christ’s side) or perhaps in the position of the spear-bearer who was cured of his blindness and converted when Christ’s blood fell on his eyes. They would, in other words, be on the side on which they would, be drenched with blood were they participants in the actual Crucifixion. However, the poem asks readers to envisage themselves not only as participants in the Crucifixion but also as the Cross itself. As the poem is read or recited the words ‘I dared not bow’, ‘I raised aloft a powerful king’, ‘I was drenched with blood’ would be spoken either silently within the mind or aloud. While the cross shows us figures holding the body of Christ on the west side of the shaft, it is only here in reciting the poem that it directs us to become one of those figures.

The opening verses of the poem also provide a transition between the two broad faces of the cross, so that having first shown us eucharistic imagery and then been drenched with the blood (and water) form Christ’s side, having participated in a symbolic eucharist and baptism of sorts, the east face of the shaft then displays scenes that have a predominantly baptismal significance, but it also begins to ask the viewer not only to touch or hold, but to internalize the body of Christ. As Ecclesia is born from Christ’s side, the viewer is spiritually reborn beneath the vision of Christ’s side, or brought to light, like the blind spear-bearer—something that would have been experienced quite literally if the cross were encountered lit by the rays of the rising sun. However, to fully understand the iconography, emotion and drama of this side of the Ruthwell Cross it is necessary to know the contents of the poem, and it is likely that only those who were already part of the Ruthwell community, or highly literate guests, would have understood its words. It was necessary, in other words to be already amongst those on their way to salvation, for as Paul wrote: ‘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’ (1 Corinthians 1:18).

The East Face

The focus of the east face of the cross is on baptism. Rather than placing Christ’s body at the centre of each panel, there is a space or gap at the centre of each panel, the space in which miracles happen and Christ is revealed or recognized. The emphasis on what is happening between two figures is conveyed visually by the more active poses of the figures in each of the panels, when compared to those on the west face, and verbally by the more active voice of the inscriptions that accompany each of the panels.

We start again at the bottom of the shaft with the Annunciation. As on the west face, we begin with a panel devoted to the Virgin Mary, here accepting her role as bearer of the Christ Child, just as the Cross accepted that role in the first half of the runic poem. This is one of the most classicizing of all the panels on the Ruthwell Cross. Both Gabriel and Mary are tall elegant figures, and the artist has conveyed the miracle in progress through the subtle movement of each figure. The angel’s fluttering drapery overlaps the left border of the panel indicating both that he has just entered the space inhabited by the Virgin, and that he has entered from a space of elsewhere, an otherworldly space. The Virgin draws back from Gabriel, pulling her robes around her with her left hand and slightly bowing her head, both movements suggestive of her humility and acceptance of Gabriel’s words and her role in the incarnation of Christ. Again, her movement, as well as her humility are emphasized by the way in which her halo and the edge of the sleeve that covers her left arm protrude beyond the border of the panel. The movement of the two figures and the emotion expressed by Mary capture perfectly the words of the surrounding inscription, ‘INGRESSVS ANG’ (across the top border), and ‘TE … BE’ (down the left border). This can be reconstructed as ‘Ingressus angelus ad eam dixit ave gratia plena dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus’ (Entering the angel said to her: ‘Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women’, Luke 1:28). Luke 1:28 was also sung as part of the chant during Mass on 25 March, the traditional date of both Christ’s conception and death.

The rod that Gabriel holds, virga in Latin, refers both to the Virgin, the virga that came out of the root of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1–5), and to the tree of the cross, another connection to the vine-scroll growing up the narrow sides of the Ruthwell Cross, as well as to the Crucifixion below. The Crucifixion panel is a later addition to the cross, probably added when the monument was raised from its original position and moved inside a church. The style of the carving is ninth century so it seems most likely that that is when the move occurred. On a fundamental level the addition of the Crucifixion lessens the visionary nature of the monument. Before its addition, the cross presented a riddle, and the viewer had to unravel the meaning of its multiple texts and images, most especially the runic poem, in order to answer it. The addition of the Crucifixion panel, provided the answer in advance, and pictured materially what the monument had asked its audience previously to picture within their own minds. On the other hand, it also made the meaning of the monument accessible to a greater number of people, albeit in a less personal way. It was no longer absolutely necessary to be able to read the runic poem in order to understand the crucial role of the Crucifixion to the overall message of the Ruthwell Cross. If the hole in the centre of the Annunciation panel was indeed a relic cavity, and if it held a relic of the True Cross, the connection between Mary and the Cross and the immediacy of the voice of the Cross in the runic poem (for those who knew it) would have been that much the stronger. The Crucifixion panel itself seems to show Christ between the spear-bearer, Longinus, and the sponge-bearer, Stephaton, but it is extremely damaged, so it is possible that the flanking figures were Mary and John the Evangelist. The two disks above the arms of the cross represent the sun and the moon turning their faces away at the moment of Christ’s death.

The juxtaposition of the Crucifixion and the Annunciation not only brought together images of Mary and the Cross, the birth and death of Christ, the two events were also believed to have taken place on the same day, the 25th of March. The date corresponded with the spring equinox, the time of year when the light of the sun triumphed over the darkness of night.²³ The 25th of March always fell within Lent and so at Ruthwell the triumph of the sun would have been physically manifest to the community gathered around the cross, particularly in those years when the 25th coincided with Good Friday.

The Annunciation panel also relates to both the panel on the opposite side of the cross, the Flight Into/Return from Egypt, and the panel above it, the Healing of the Blind Man. In the former we see the Christ Child held in front of Mary’s womb, the fulfilment of the promise of the Annunciation. Here Mary is also presented dressed as a queen, a foreshadowing of her future position as Queen of Heaven, and a complement to the humble Mary of the Annunciation. Between the two panels to the north and south is the vine-scroll with its fruit, symbolic in this context of both the fruit of Mary’s womb, and the Cross that bears that fruit along with Mary.

Between the Annunciation and the healing of the blind man is a flat area of stone that was deliberately left blank. It may once have included an inscription, perhaps painted on, or it may have been left blank for some other reason. If it did carry an inscription we now have no way of knowing what it might have been. As Ó Carragáin notes, however, the blank space does mark the Annunciation panel below as different from the rest of the panels on the monument, and indicates that this part of the monument was of special importance to the designers of the cross.²⁴ If the hole in the middle of the Annunciation was a relic cavity, and if it is contemporary with the erection of the cross, it may be that the inscription drew attention to its presence, but this is mere speculation.

The figures in the healing of the blind man panel are the only ones on the cross in which the entirety of at least one of the figures has not been depicted. The blind man is shown in profile, but Christ’s body is turned towards us in three-quarter perspective so that our attention is focussed on him and the miracle taking place between the two figures. He originally held a rod in his right hand, as indicated by the trace of an incised diagonal line still visible on the stone of the background. The inscription around the panel gives a very basic summary of the action of John 9:1–7: ET PRAETERIENS ⋅ VIDI[T] (down the left side) {HOMINEM CAECVM} A NATIBITATE ⋅ ET S{ANAVIT EVM} (down the right side) (And passing by he saw a {man blind} from birth and {healed him}). John 9:1–38 was one of the lections read to the catechumenate during Lent. The image of the blind man given sight provided a metaphor for the rebirth and true vision that came with baptism and faith in Christ and his miracles. The panel also relates to that of the depiction of Paul and Anthony on the west face of the cross, the subject of which is also a miracle—the miraculous delivery of bread by the raven—and an example of the constant faith of those who truly believe.

The largest panel on this face of the cross is that of Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet with her tears and drying them with the hairs of her head. It corresponds to the panel of the beasts recognizing Christ in the desert on the west face, both being scenes in which Christ’s divine nature is recognized or, put another way, scenes in which those who had previously not believed are brought to the light of true belief. As in that panel, the figure of Christ is immobile and frontal, a dramatic change from the profile or three-quarter active poses of all the other figures on this face, and one that indicates the importance of this panel to the overall message of this side of the cross. Yet the carving in several parts of this panel (the Magdalene’s hair and right arm and hand, Christ’s legs) is very clumsy compared to the classicizing elegance of the carving in the other panels, especially the Anninciation. Ó Carragáin has argued that this has been done deliberately in order to increase the dramatic intensity of the episode,²⁵ but most scholars would agree that it is simply the work of a lesser artist. In its composition the panel looks forward to the end of the poem on the south side of the shaft in which, having raised aloft the body of Christ, the rod bows down afflicted with sorrows.

The fact that the designers of the cross have chosen to parallel the position of a woman with that of dumb beasts has presented a problem for modern feminist scholarship,²⁶ and demonstrates that the cross is not quite the egalitarian monument it is sometimes made out to be. Read solely within the context of this face of the cross it provides an image of a woman brought to the light of belief to parallel that of the man born blind below; however the Mary Magdalene panel is also a powerful image of repentance. She was a sinner, and this was not said to have been the case with the blind man. In John 9:3 Christ makes it clear to his disciples that neither the blind man nor his parents were sinners. A woman is thus the sole figure on the cross made to stand for the entire group of sinners.²⁷ The implication is that like Mary Magdalene we are born sinners and must be brought to penitence. Like both Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary we are also humble before God and in awe of the mystery of the incarnation. Sinners, like those undergoing baptism, were a special focus of the liturgy during Lent. Sinners were ritually expelled from the church on Ash Wednesday, and did penance until they were readmitted on the morning of the Thursday of Holy Week, their re-admittance paralleling the admittance of the catechumenate. In Rome, Luke 7:37–8,²⁸ the text from which the inscription around this panel was taken was sung during ceremonies later that day, so it may be that this was also the case at Ruthwell.

The inscription, significantly does not name the woman—indeed, with the exception of the inscription accompanying the Martha and Mary/Visitation panel, none of the inscriptions on this side of the cross names the individuals depicted, something that may have been done in order to promote the identification of the community with the penitence and belief of those represented in these panels. Gregory the Great was clear that the woman who was a sinner was Mary Magdalene, and in this he was followed by Bede.²⁹ But Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, was also said to have anointed Christ’s feet with perfume and dried them with the hair of her head (John 11:2). The panel may, then, have allowed for a double identification of the woman at Christ’s feet, opening the reading of the panel to include those who were not necessarily penitents. It would also have provided a neat transition to the upper panel of the shaft with its depiction of Martha and Mary/Elizabeth and Mary.

The panel at the top of the east shaft of the Ruthwell Cross is the most problematic of all. The composition is that of the traditional Visitation scene, in which Mary pregnant with Christ and Elizabeth pregnant with John the Baptist meet and embrace (Luke 1:42). Both Elizabeth and John recognize the divinity of the child in Mary’s womb, so once again the importance of the panel is what is actually taking place between the two women and their unborn children. The scene also fits in with the theme of recognition or revelation that runs through all the panels on this face of the cross. As John will go on to baptize Christ, it also provides a fitting culmination for the baptismal theme.

Ó Carragáin has highlighted the maternal imagery of the panel, indeed of this side of the cross as a whole, connecting it both with the Annunciation and with the catechumenate growing within the womb of the church.³⁰ Those undergoing baptism or penitence would be spiritually reborn and would, in turn, carry Christ within their hearts, allowing faith in and love for him to grow, as he himself grew in Mary’s womb.³¹ The combination of the reference to the unborn mortal Christ and John both looks forward to and complements the image of the triumphal figure of the adult John the Baptist with the Agnus Dei at the top of the west shaft of the cross. The connection between the two panels would have been made even more explicit by the singing of the Agnus Dei chant by the clergy during the baptismal ceremony. The celebration of the Baptist’s nativity in June complemented that of the nativity of Christ in December and, as noted above, the two together marked the days at which the light of the sun began to lessen and those at which it began to grow respectively. The representation (or implied presence) of the two at the top of the broad faces of the Ruthwell Cross thus also signalled the culmination of the symbolism of lightness and darkness and the role of the sun’s course in understanding the message of the cross.

The fragmentary inscription in the border above the women, indicates that the panel cannot be understood simply as a Visitation. It’s meaning must be extended to include the sisters Martha and Mary. The inscription reads, […] marþ[a] (left border); mar[ia] m[…]r + (top border); dominnæ c[…] (right border). The words have been translated as ‘Martha and Mary worthy women’.³² Martha and Mary were the female representatives of the active and contemplative lives, and their representation here complements that of Paul and Anthony, the male representatives of the same two parts of the monastic life. According to Luke 10:38–42, Christ visited the house of the sisters, and while Martha busied herself with preparations, Mary sat listening at his feet. As Christ explained, Mary had chosen the better part, though both roles were necessary. The lection was one of the alternative readings for the feast of the Dormition of the Virgin on 15 August, so would have related to the overall Marian iconography of the cross. Mary of Bethany’s devotion in anointing Christ’s feet (John 11:2) also looks forward to the anointing of Christ’s body by Mary Magdalene after it is taken down from the cross. Her anointing of Christ takes place not long before his death. Her image at the top of the cross-shaft would thus relate to the Annunciation, during which the Virgin also recognized Christ’s death, and to the second half of the poem on the south side of the cross, which recounts the moment of Christ’s death.

As was the case with the west side of the crosshead, it is impossible to be certain exactly what would have been depicted at the centre of the east face of the cross-head. A baptismal scene, especially a baptism of Christ, would make sense, and parallels for such an image have been cited in three surviving crossheads now in Durham Cathedral, but these are all of early eleventh century date.³³ Nor can we be certain what would have been depicted in the two cross-arms of the transom. If there was a baptismal scene at the centre then accessory figures like those in the transom of the Durham crossheads are a possibility. One of the crossheads (Durham 5) has an eagle in the upper arm, which has again been cited as a parallel for the eagle that originally capped the east face of the Ruthwell Cross, but these are very different sorts of eagle. At Durham, the eagle sits on a straight horizontal perch and is flanked by images of the sun and the moon. At Ruthwell the eagle sits on a growing branch and the sun and moon are absent.

Most scholars will agree that the eagle in the upper arm of the cross should be read together with the bowman in the bottom arm of the cross. Most would also agree that the eagle is a symbol of Christ’s victory over death demonstrated in the Resurrection and Ascension. The branch with its fruit on which he is perched echoes in miniature the vine-scroll of the narrow sides of the cross, and is likely to be a reference to the Cross of the Crucifixion as the tree-of-life. Moreover, it is represented bending down, as the cross in the second half of the poem will bend down to deliver Christ to the hands of men. The eagle lifts its right leg as if preparing to take flight, an apt symbol of Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension. In the lower arm, just above the Martha and Mary/ Visitation panel, a bowman is about to release an arrow from his bow, directed upwards seemingly in the direction of the eagle. It is just possible that he was aiming at something originally in the missing transom of the crosshead, but again we cannot be at all certain about that. Ó Carragáin believes that the archer with his arrow is either a warning of the Judgment to come and the need to prepare for it, or an apotropaic figure protecting the community with his drawn bow.³⁴ His interpretation is based largely on the belief that the object hanging from a strap around the archer’s shoulder is a gospel book in a book satchel, but this is highly speculative, and there are no convincing visual parallels for such an image. Given the fact that the figure is a bowman, it is far more likely that the object is a quiver full of arrows. This would not necessarily negate Ó Carragáin’s reading of the panel, but it is equally not necessary to look for textual sources for the image outside of the Ruthwell Cross itself. In the second half of the poem, the half to which readers would now turn if moving around the cross in a sun-wise direction, the Cross describes itself as wounded by arrows before it bends down to the hands of men. It is perfectly possible then to see the image as representative of the arrows that wounded the cross, that brought forth the blood that covered it and allowed it to speak, and that played a role in the death of Christ that preceded the Resurrection and Ascension symbolized by the eagle about to take flight from its bending branch in the arm of the crosshead above.

The South Face

There is no significant difference between the inhabited vine-scroll of the north and south faces of the cross, so the analysis of the iconography of the scroll on the north face given above, applies to that on the south face as well. There is, however, a significant difference in the iconography of the poem and the way that the verses inscribed on this side of the cross situate the viewer/reader. With its missing letters reconstructed the poem on this side to the cross reads: (across the top) +krist wæs on; (down the right side) rodi · hweþræ þer fusæ fearran kwomu æþþilæ til anum ic þæt al biheald saræ ic wæs · miþ sorgum gidrœfid hnag…; (down the left side) miþ strelum giwundad alegdun hiæ hinæ limwœrignæ· gistoddun him æt his licæs heafdum bihealdun hiæ þer… (+ Christ was on the cross. But eager ones came hither from afar. Noble ones came together. I beheld all that. I was terribly afflicted with sorrows. I bowed [to the hands of men], wounded with arrows. They laid him down, limb-weary; they stood at the shoulders of the corpse. They looked upon the Lord [of heaven]…).

This half of the poem opens with the triumphant statement ‘Christ was on the cross’, rod, a feminine known that complements the masculine cross as gallows of the verses on the north side. The central lines of this part of the poem then turn to the private internal struggle of the Cross, which is sorrowful (like the Virgin Mary or the penitent Magdalene), wounded and bowing down (like Mary Magdalene or the branch on which the eagle perches on the east face of the cross). In reading the poem either aloud or silently to ourselves we too become, like the Cross, afflicted with sorrows and wounded by arrows. On the north side we were covered with the redemptive blood of Christ, but on the south side we suffer and bleed. The Cross also tells us ‘Ic þæt al biheald’ (‘I beheld all that’). It is a witness to the Crucifixion at the same time that it is a participant in it. The inscribed poem also records its words here on the left side of the cross. Standing here on the left side of the Ruthwell Cross, the poem also invites the viewer to become a witness in reciting the words it speaks and in looking at the imagery of the cross. It places the viewer in the position of John the Evangelist whose role as witness would become so prominent a feature of late Anglo-Saxon crucifixion scenes.³⁵ Of course in order to understand what the Cross in the poem is saying, in order to become a witness along with it, a reader would have to have been literate in runes and in Old English, or at the very least have been part of an audience to which they might have been read outloud. Those who were not were, at least temporarily and certainly until they had undergone baptism (to return to the message of the east face), excluded from the saving power of the Cross.

The Political Message to the Monument

Up to this point we have been focussing on the religious iconography of the Ruthwell Cross, and certainly the religious message would have been uppermost in the thoughts of those who designed and erected the monument. It is certainly the aspect of the monument on which most scholars focus. But the cross also had a political meaning and a political message. For the Northumbrian Church and the Ruthwell community that was a part of it, it was a triumphant message. The Ruthwell Cross was a vexillum, a military banner in the spiritual war against paganism, heresy, and evil. It was war gear. This was a message that went back to the days of Constantine and his vision before and victory under the sign of the Cross at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. It became part of the origin story of the Northumbrian Church when King Oswald raised a wooden cross before his troops and went on to victory at the Battle of Heavenfield in 633/4. Through monuments like the Ruthwell Cross it also became part and parcel of the Church’s expansion into the previously British territory of Rheged. For those unable to read or understand the cross and the multiple languages through which it spoke, it was a towering impenetrable monument in the landscape. If you stand in the pit and look up towards the top of the cross today you can still get some idea of just how imposing a monument it can be.

The cross, and several of the stories depicted on it, also tell of flight or exile, and thus figure into the constant telling and retelling of the migration myth, based on the story of Exodus, that was so much a part of Anglo-Saxon culture and Anglo-Saxon origin legends.³⁶ The Virgin and Child are shown fleeing either into or out of Egypt. Paul and Anthony flee into the desert in order to practice their faith. The metaphor of exile was at the heart of Insular monasticism. In taking up the religious life one was exiled from home and family (at least that was the ideal), and took up life in the monastic desert. But the conquest of that desert through faith, the turning it into a spiritual paradise, as Anthony finds the land he travels through to meet Paul a literal paradise, or as Christ brings the animals of the desert to a recognition of Christian paradise, or as the abundance of the vine-scrolls is a symbol of the paradise to come, was also key to the monastic life. Ruthwell was itself a monastic desert paradise in a former British wasteland.