The Ruthwell Cross is an important Anglo-Saxon cross, also known as a preaching cross, dating back to the eighth century, when Ruthwell was part of the kingdom of Northumbria. Anglo-Saxon crosses are closely related to the contemporary Irish high crosses, and both are part of the Insular art tradition. The Ruthwell cross features the largest figurative reliefs found on any surviving Anglo-Saxon cross - which are virtually the largest surviving Anglo-Saxon reliefs of any sort - and is also unusual for its runic alphabet inscription, which contains excerpts from The Dream of the Rood, an Old English poem. It is 18 feet (5.5 metres) high. The cross was smashed by Presbyterian iconoclasts in 1664, but was restored in 1818 by Henry Duncan. In 1887 it was moved into its current location in Ruthwell church, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, when the apse which holds it was specially built.

Destruction and restoration

The Ruthwell Cross used to stand in the church at Ruthwell, which was built around it; whether it stood in a churchyard or by itself when first erected is unclear. It escaped injury at the time of general destruction during the Reformation in the sixteenth century, but the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland ordered the "many idolatrous monuments erected and made for religious worship" to be "taken down, demolished, and destroyed". It was not till two years later, however, that the cross was taken down when an Act was passed "anent the Idolatrous Monuments in Ruthwell". It was shattered, and some of the carved emblems were nearly obliterated, and in this state the rood was left where it had fallen, in the altar-less church, and was used, it appears, as a bench to sit upon. Later on it was removed from the church and left out in the churchyard. In 1818, Henry Duncan collected all the pieces he could find, and put them together, adding two new crossbeams (the original ones were lost), and having gaps filled in with little pieces of stone.

Duncan's restoration is questionable. He was convinced to be reconstructing a "Popish" (Roman Catholic) monument, and based his work on "drawings of similar Popish relics". Duncan dismissed the rare early medieval motif of Paul and Anthony breaking bread in the desert as probably "founded on some Popish tradition".

Runic inscription

The cross features carvings that depict various events in the life of Jesus, on the north and south sides. On the top-stone, north, is a representation of Saint John with the eagle, and on the top-stone, south, is St John with the Lamb of God. On the east and west is carved a vine in fruit, with animals feeding. The remaining inscriptions are modern additions (1823).

At each side of the vine-tracery runic inscriptions are carved. The runes were first described around 1600, and Reginald Bainbrigg of Appleby recorded the inscription for the Britannia of William Camden. Around 1832, the runes were recognized as different from the Scandinavian futhark (categorized as Anglo-Saxon runes) by Thorleif Repp, by reference to the Exeter Book. His rendition referred to a place called the vale of Ashlafr, compensation for injury, a font and a monastery of Therfuse.

John Mitchell Kemble in 1840 advanced a reading referring to Mary Magdalene. The better known Dream of the Rood inscription is due to a revised reading of Kemble's in an 1842 article. The inscription is translated as:

ᛣᚱᛁᛋᛏ ᚹᚫᛋ ᚩᚾ ᚱᚩᛞᛁ ᚻᚹᛖᚦᚱᚨ / ᚦᛖᚱ ᚠᚢᛋᚨ ᚠᛠᚱᚱᚪᚾ ᛣᚹᚩᛗᚢ / ᚨᚦᚦᛁᛚᚨ ᛏᛁᛚ ᚪᚾᚢᛗ

Krist wæs on rodi. Hweþræ'/ þer fusæ fearran kwomu / æþþilæ til anum.

"Christ was on the cross. Yet / the brave came there from afar / to their lord."

Kemble's revised reading is based on the poem of the Vercelli Book, to the extent that missing words in each are supplied from the other. Its authenticity is disputed and may be a conjecture inserted by Kemple himself: O'Neill (2005) notes Kemble's "almost pathological dislike of Scandinavian interference in what he sees as the English domain". Kemble himself notes how the inscription may be "corrected" with the help of the Vercelli Book.

Gallery

See also

• Bewcastle Cross

References

Literature

• Brendan Cassidy (ed.), The Ruthwell Cross, Princeton University Press (1992).
• Richard J. Kelly (ed.), Stone, Skin and Sliver, Litho Press / Sheed & Ward (1999).
• Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the 'Dream of the Rood' Tradition, The British Library and University of Toronto Press (2005).
• Jane Hawkes & Susan Mills (eds.), Northumbria's Golden Age, Sutton Publishing Ltd (1999).
• Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, County of Dumfries, (1920).

External links