The Ruthwell Cross

Standing around twenty feet high, the Ruthwell Cross (located in Dumfries, in the south of Scotland,) is a striking combination of Celtic artistic traditions (intricate vine patterns known as vinescroll, interwoven with zoomorphic figures), Biblical scenes, and Germanic runes and warrior conception of Christ, all bound together in an overtly Christian symbol. A number of other British crosses likewise blend Christian and Pagan cultural and mythic elements, perhaps most notably those at Gosforth, Andreas, and Maughold.  Most significantly, the runic inscription running along the east and west faces of the Ruthwell Cross includes a passage from The Dream of the Rood describing Christ’s mounting of the Rood, and his death thereon;  it has been noted that this passage is one which most emphasizes the Christ Militant of Anglo-Saxon belief.  It also has been argued that this particular selection resonates with the scene of the death of the Norse god Baldr.  The Ruthwell Cross, like the Nunburnholme Cross, was at one point dismantled and partially buried, and its modern reconstruction was imperfectly implemented. Wrought of local red sandstone, The Ruthwell Cross is one of the most famous, complex and controversial Anglo-Saxon monuments to survive. Its purpose, date, original appearance, iconography and meaning are all issues that are still debated by scholars. Though it is frequently studied in connection with the equally famous and complex poem,The Dream of the Rood, the relationship between poem and Cross is far from clear. Both Cross and poem have a well-known, but surprisingly little studied, analogue in the eleventh-century Brussels reliquary cross.

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The Dream of the Rood

The lone manuscript known to contain The Dream of the Rood dates from the tenth century or so, but the Ruthwell Cross itself dates from the height of the Cult of the Cross in Britain—perhaps around the year 700—and therefore some early form of the poem must have, as well. The Dream of the Rood, one of the earliest English poems, survives only in the partial text recorded on the Ruthwell Cross, in a shorter fragment inscribed on the Brussels Cross, and in a complete version located in one of the handful of great Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscripts, The Vercelli Book, which takes its name from its location in the Cathedral library at Vercelli, in Italy.  No one can be sure how a lone Anglo-Saxon manuscript came to rest in this small market town, but its position on the pilgrimage route to Rome may provide a clue.  In any event, this manuscript contains the Old English poems The Dream of the Rood and Elene, both of which deal with aspects of the Anglo-Saxon manifestations of the Cult of the Cross. 

The Cult of the Cross

The Cult of the Cross originated in the eastern regions of the Roman Empire after the Emperor Constantine won a great victory over the Huns at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312;  Constantine was said to have seen a cross in the sky on the eve of battle, and to have heard the words “By this sign you shall conquer.”  Constantine’s mother Helen subsequently was said to have discovered the remains of the True Cross on a visit to the Holy Land in 326, and soon all of Europe was flooded by relics purported to be from that cross.  Popular throughout Europe for much of the middle of the first millenium, the Cult of the Cross found a fertile breeding ground in seventh and eighth-century Britain, where it reached its most tangible form in the shape of ornate standing stone crosses, some 1500 of which are still extant; many more of wood are presumed to have been lost.

The Cult of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon Britain

In 633 Oswald of Northumbria attempted to reenact Constantine’s strategy by erecting a huge cross on the eve of the Battle of Heavenfield, and relics of that cross circulated in the region for many years.  Standing stone crosses became loci for outdoor worship, and by 744 Boniface complained that churches were being eclipsed by these new venues. Anglo-Saxon crosses used figural carving as a means of celebrating, in permanent and public form, the function and identity of the early Anglo-Saxon Christian Church. As Christianity spread throughout Anglo-Saxon England, the medium of stone sculpture and its decorative style also provided a means of peacefully “converting” images and beliefs familiar to native pagan culture into Christian expressions.  The most notable material cultural artifacts relating to the Cult of the Cross in Britain include the Ruthwell Cross, the Bewcastle Cross, the Nunburnholme Cross, the Gosforth Cross and the Gosforth Slab, and the Andreas and Maughold Cross-slabs.  The most notable manuscript texts of the Anglo-Saxon period relating to the Cult of the Cross include two poems included in The Vercelli Book:  The Dream of the Rood, in which the story of the crucifixion is recounted from the point of view of the Cross;  and Elene, the Old English version of the legend of the discovery of the True Cross by Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine.