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entries related to this note:
- Jesse Tree Wood: Trunk, Vine, Leaves, Flowers, and Fruit-Part 5 [Ruthwell Cross]
- Jesse Tree Wood: Trunk, Vine, Leaves, Flowers, and Fruit-Part 6 [Dream of the Rood]
The Ruthwell Cross is usually considered with the Bewcastle
Cross and the Brussels Cross because they all contain Old English runic
inscriptions. I have mentioned both the Ruthwell and Brussels crosses and their
inscriptions that reference the poem Dream of the Rood previously. No point in
repeating. Both the poem and the two stone crosses, Ruthwell and Bewcastle, all
seem to date from the 8th century. The Ruthwell Cross with its
conscious use of sculptural references to Christian iconography and its use of
vine scrolls with flowers, fruit, birds makes Christian the use of motifs that
were previously pagan.
The Ruthwell Cross is a large, seventeen foot, standing
cross, made in Northumbria on the border with Pictish territory in the 8th
century. The cross now stands in a church in Dumfriesshire, south-west
Scotland. The cross lost its tops and horizontal cross bar or transom when the
cross was pulled down and smashed in 1644 during the iconoclasm of the English Civil War because the cross was considered
idolatrous. The cross probably stood
near where it is currently located in Dumfriesshire, Scotland though the lower
carvings suggest that the cross was moved once.
When the cross was re-erected in the 19th century, a new
transom was carved with part of the old top.
In 2014, a Viking hoard of silver, gold, crystal and silk
was found on Church of Scotland land not far from the site of the cross.
(Galloway Hoard). According to the BBC account, the objects in the hoard were
accumulated over a hundred or more years before they were buried. Their origins
include not only Irish silverwork, Anglo-Saxon brooches, but also a Carolingian
silver-copper alloy pot and Byzantine silk.
There are coins, arm rings, ingots, a silver cross, a gold pin that
resembles a crane or heron, among other objects. Apparently buried in the
corner of a wooden building, the trove was buried at two levels. The building is not far from the ruins of a
monastery. But what relationship the
building within its double ditched enclosure had with the nearby monastery is
not known. It seems probable that the Viking building was constructed after the
destruction of the monastery. The hoard was buried in the late 800s or early
900s. Some of the objects such as the silver cross of Irish design, the
Carolingian lidded silver alloy pot (perhaps a ciborium), the Byzantine-style
gold reliquary, and the silk fabric certainly suggest that some of the objects
were looted from a church and/or monastery.
Other objects would have come from high status men and women. The burial
of the hoard could have been linked to unrest as a result conquest on York and
Northumbria in 927 by the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan or Æthelstan. Another hoard from a somewhat later time
period called the Vale of York hoard is more clearly linked to Æthelstan’s northern
victory.
Anglo-Saxon silver
brooch from the Galloway hoard. There is fabric still attached to the broach. http://www.heritagedaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/vik33.jpg
This small pendant with
its Byzantine granulation gold might once have been a reliquary containing a
bone from a saint or some other holy relic. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2016/03/23/vikinghoard/01vikingtreasure.adapt.1190.1.jpg
Another archeological dig just west of Dumfries on Trusty’s
Hill in 2012 revealed a nucleated fort built about 600. Among the buildings on
the site is a metalworking shop where bronze, silver, gold and iron was found.
It is suggested that this was a royal household that controlled the farming,
animal husbandry, and perhaps mining in the wider Fleet Valley. Pictist
language carvings found on and near the site have not been translated.
My point in mentioning the Galloway hoard and the finding of
a royal fort (perhaps even Rheged) is that the Ruthwell Cross was not located
in a distant and obscure backwoods crossroad. [Rheged is generally taken to mean a kingdom in what is now Cumbria. The stronghold found at Trusty's Hill may have represented a center of power in the early 7th century.] Though this area is north of Hadrian’s
wall, there were roads and ports. The
Picts were trading with Ireland and continental Europe. The monks and stone
masons who erected and carved the Ruthwell cross were addressing people with an
established culture, language and writing.
These are hardly backward barbarians even if the name Pict derives of
Latin for painted people. These people were literate, cultured, and a political
elite. The conversion of the social and political elite to Christianity was the
pattern for conversion from paganism that was well established in Ireland and
by the Gregorian mission to Kent.
The Ruthwell cross includes texts in Latin that would have
been understood by the clergy and runes by literate Anglo-Saxon monks and
probably the Picts. The Old English runes on the Ruthwell Cross are quite
different from Pictish runes that has not been translated. The Latin verses appear on the sides of the
cross with biblical carvings, now north and south, though these would have been
the east and west faces. The Old English
runic writing appears of the sides of the cross with vine and animals, that are
now east and west sides of the cross, though these should be the north and
south faces.
The north and south
faces contain lines of poetry in Runes that are close to the Dream of the Rood
as we have it from a late 10th or early 11th century
manuscript in the Vercelli book. The
Dream of the Rood poem does not call the Cross of Jesus a Tree of Life as does Cynewulf’s
Elene. The date of Cynewulf’s Elene is
uncertain, perhaps 9th or 10th century. Elene is a
retelling of Helen’s search for and finding of the True Cross written in West
Saxon and some Angle. In any case, Éamonn
Ó Carragáin has made a
strong argument for the interpretation of the Latin verses, runes, carvings and
the vine scrolls with leaves, flowers and fruit as representing Baptism and the
Holy Eucharist.[i] The vines and fruit represent the Garden of
Eden and the Holy Eucharist (and by extension the sacrificial death of Jesus
for our sins) for Christians. For the pagan
Picts, their belief in sacred trees or the presence of spirits in the tree,
would easily understand the scrolled vines as representing something sacred. The
vine-tree links heaven and earth, the spiritual and the concrete for both
pagans and Christians. As such, it would have been a useful tool for conversion
to Christianity of the pagan tribes of Northumbria.
Detail of north (now east) face of
the Ruthwell Cross. From the Visionary
Cross Project.
The runic
inscription is in the Old English language. It reads: (across the top) [+
ond]gere; (down the right side) dæ hinæ god almeittig · þa hewalde on galgu
gistigamodig f[ore] [allæ] men [b]ug … [ahof] ic riicnæ kyniŋc · heafunæs
hlafard hælda ic ni dorstæ [b]ismærædu uŋket men ba æt[g]ad[re i]c [wæs] miþ
blodi bist[e]mi[d] bi[got][en of þæs gumu sida]… Translation: ‘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].
Detail of south (now west) face.
The runic
inscription is in the Old English language. It reads: (across the top)
[+k]ris[t] wæs on; (down the right side) rodi hweþræ þer fusæ fearran kwomu
æþþilæ til anum ic þæt al bi[h][eald] s[aræ] ic w[æ]s · mi[þ] so[r]gu[m]
gi[d]rœ[fi]d h[n]a[g]…; (down the left side) miþ s[t]re[l]um giwundad alegdun
hiæ [h]inæ limwœrignæ· gistoddu[n h]im [æt] [his] [li][c]æs [hea]f[du]m
[bih]ea[ld]u[n h]i[æ þ]e[r]… Translation: + 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].
These stone crosses would have been painted. It is fun to
imagine the vines and leaves in green, colored flowers and fruit. I wonder how
the birds and creatures would have been painted? The biblical scenes on the cross would have
been painted as well, making interpretation of scenes and symbols much easier
than now when the stone is so worn. The painted high cross at the National
Heritage Park is not as colorful as the Ruthwell cross would have been.
The painted
high cross at National Irish Heritage park. http://www.irishheritage.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Monastery-224x300.jpg
In summary, it seems as though the Ruthwell Cross stands at
a special point in time when the green vine scrolls at are carved on the stone
cross bring to mind not just the symbolism of the wooden cross as an instrument
of death and sacrifice, but also the cross as green and living Tree of Life.
That phrase was not yet applied to the Cross of Jesus in the early 8th
century, as far as I am able to discern. It seems clear to me that the idea of the cross as having a life of its own and being a force for giving life-sustaining salvation is already firmly established even if the words Arbor vitae or Lignum vita were not yet applied to the concept.
Next I plan to write a bit about the Bewcastle Cross. The
Bewcastle Cross and the Ruthwell Cross both share curious carvings of Jesus
Christ with his hands in front standing
on the snouts of two fantastic animals without sword or spear.
[i] Éamonn Ó Carragáin. Ritual
and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the
Rood Tradition. (2005) London: The British Library.
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