Ruthwell Cross
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The Ruthwell Cross is an important Anglo Saxon cross, dating back to the eighth century. This cross is remarkable for its runic 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 in 1664, but it was restored in 1818 by Henry Duncan. It now rests in Ruthwell church.
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[edit] Destruction and restoration
This cross used to stand in the church at Ruthwell; it escaped injury at the time of general destruction 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 altarless 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 early medieval motif of Paul and Anthony breaking bread in the desert as probably "founded on some Popish tradition".
[edit] Runic inscription
There are carvings upon it of 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.
At each side of the vine-tracery the runes 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 (viz., they are to be categorized as Anglo-Saxon Futhorc) 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 reading,
- ᛣᚱᛁᛋᛏ ᚹᚫᛋ ᚩᚾ ᚱᚩᛞᛁ ᚻᚹᛖᚦᚱᚨ / ᚦᛖᚱ ᚠᚳᛋᚨ ᚠᛠᚱᚱᚪᚾ ᛣᚹᚩᛗᚳ / 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."
is due to a revised reading of Kemble's in an 1842 article. 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.
[edit] Literature
- Brendan Cassidy (ed.), The Ruthwell Cross, Princeton University Press (1992).
- Richard J. Kelly (ed.), Stone, Skin and Sliver, Litho Press / Sheed & Ward (1999)
Taken by Ron Waller, August 2006 in Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire. The figure of Christ dominates the front of the cross and He is dressed in the traditional post resurrection manner; the figure prone before Him is possibly Mary Magdalen.
