The Cross as an Ornament of the Church and its Precincts.
A very natural sequence from the custom, which, as we have seen, early
arose of using the sign of the cross in almost all forms of blessing, was
the fancy for making articles of church furniture cruciform, or of marking
them with a cross. As a matter of fact the only place where the sacred
sign might not be placed was on the floor, lest anyone should trample on
it; an exception to this rule, in the blue cross on the ground at the west
end of Durham Cathedral, was intended as a boundary, and is therefore an
exception only in the letter, not in the spirit, since it was assumed that
no one would step on or over it.
Scarcely had Christianity achieved its victory over the empire than
churches began to arise, which proclaimed by their shape the faith to the
service of which they were dedicated. Those built by Constantine himself
at Rome, the ancient S. Peter's, S. Paul-without-the-walls, and S. Maria
Maggiore, were all cruciform, as also was the splendid Church of the
Apostles which he built at Constantinople; and this ground-plan, whether
the form chosen were the Greek or the Latin Cross, began, especially in
cathedrals and other large churches, to supplant the simple parallelogram
of the basilica.
Evagrius tells us that the church which enshrined the pillar on which S.
Simeon Stylites practised his austerities was "constructed in the form of
a cross, adorned with colonnades on the four sides." S. Edward the
Confessor is reputed to have been the first to introduce cruciform
churches into England, in the erection of his famous abbey at Westminster.
The same historian just named, Evagrius, who wrote in the sixth century,
records that Chosroes, who, though a heathen, had a Christian wife, gave
to Gregory, Patriarch of Antioch, among other things, "a cross to be fixed
upon the holy table;" and Sozomen, earlier still, refers to "crosses lying
upon the altar." The primitive ages, however, knew nothing, unless in an
exceptional case, of any permanent ornaments upon their altars, yet a
cross seems to have been sometimes hung above, or placed beside them, in
very early days. In this, as in other matters already dealt with, the
suggestion rather than the representation of the Saviour's sacrifice
probably came first in the development of Christian art. Thus S. Paulinus
of Nola, writing about the year 400, describes a cross in front of an
altar erected by S. Felix; it had beside it the Alpha and Omega, around it
a crown or nimbus, and a white lamb was placed beneath. The cross did not
become an indispensible ornament of the altar until the tenth century, and
down to the fourteenth century it was invariably brought in, with the two
candles, by acolytes immediately before mass, and removed at its
conclusion.
The Venerable Bede gives one of the earliest, if not absolutely the first,
mention of an altar cross in England, when he relates how Paulinus, when
forced in 633 to retire from Northumbria into Kent, took with him "a large
gold cross and a golden chalice dedicated to the use of the altar." S.
Cuthbert a little later erected one in his oratory at Lindisfarne, and
Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, speaks in one of his verses
of "a cross at the altar gleaming with plates of gold and silver, and
decked with gems." Coming to later times, it is on record that Ethelwold,
Bishop of Winchester from 1006 to 1014, gave a splendid gold cross to the
altar of S. Etheldreda in the cathedral, and that S. Margaret of Scotland
presented to a church a crucifix, on which was a figure of pure gold.
The foreign Protestants, whose interference was so manifest in most of the
extremer courses taken by the English Reformers, held very strong views as
to the unlawfulness of altar crosses, and especially of crucifixes.
Writing from Zurich on March 20th, 1560, Peter Martyr says, "to have the
image of the Crucifix upon the holy table at the administration of the
Lord's Supper, I do not count among things indifferent, nor would I
recommend any man to distribute the sacraments with that rite, ... neither
Master Bullinger nor myself count such things as matters of indifference,
but we reject them as forbidden." "Master Bullinger" speaks for himself in
a letter of May 1st, 1566. "I could never approve," he says, "of your
officiating, if so commanded, at an altar laden, rather than adorned, with
the image of Him that was crucified." The matter was thought sufficiently
important to form the subject of a conference, as we learn from a letter
written by Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, to Peter Martyr. "This controversy
about the Crucifix," he writes, "is now at its height.... A disputation
upon this subject will take place to-morrow. The moderators will be
persons selected by the council. The disputants on our side are the
Archbishop of Canterbury and Cox; and on the other, Grindal, the bishop of
London, and myself." The discussion took place in the spring of 1560, and
apparently resulted in favour of the Protestants, although the sympathies
of the Queen, as we learn from a letter addressed by Sampson, Bishop of
Worcester, to Martyr, were on the other side.
The directing force in this iconoclastic movement was evidently Genevan,
and it would appear to have been Genevan only, for it is well known that
the Lutheran Churches of Germany retain the Crucifix above the altar. In
England, also, the attempt was only temporally successful. At the
coronation of Charles I. a crucifix was placed on the altar, and the use
of at least a cross is now practically universal.
Without question the most striking cross used in the decoration of a
church is the great Crucifix, or rood, placed on the chancel screen,
generally with the figures of the Blessed Virgin and S. John the
Evangelist as supporters. Naturally an ornament of this kind presupposes
not only a certain fearlessness on the part of the church in publicly
displaying her sacred symbols, but also a command of the resources of
wealth and an advanced state of art. We are therefore quite prepared to
find that the rood was not a very early addition to the adornment of a
church. We read, indeed, of some comparatively early instances in which
the figure of the Crucified Lord was painted on the ceiling of the choir,
or of the apsidal sanctuary; an example of which exists in Ravenna, in
which the Saviour is robed in eucharistic vestments, and is accompanied by
S. Michael and S. Gabriel. The cross upon the screen, however, is not
traced further back than the eighth century, and the rood with its full
complement of figures and lights can claim only a mediaeval date.
It lies beyond the scope of our subject to discuss the development of the
choir-screen, from the curtains once hung before the altar to the broad
and solid gateways of carved stone, built beneath the chancel arch, or
even further west. Eventually these became a universal feature in church
architecture; of wood usually in parish churches, of stone in the larger
collegiate churches, in abbeys, and in cathedrals. Fine examples exist in
England; at York, Lincoln, Exeter, Wells, Canterbury, Bristol, Southwell,
Ripon, Christchurch (Hampshire), Tattershall (Lincolnshire), and
elsewhere; but the parish churches, which had timber screens, have
naturally not been successful in preserving for us so many examples as we
have of the more solid erections, though we have, even of them, many of
which we may be proud.
When complete these screens had a broad gallery or loft at the top, access
to which was obtained by a winding stair at one, or sometimes at each,
end. In several places, as at Lavenham (Suffolk), S. Martin's, Stamford
(Lincolnshire), Wells (Norfolk), and Long Melford (Suffolk), the external
turret which contained this stair still remains; in other cases, as at
Alford in Lincolnshire, a massive pillar was pierced to find room for the
steps.
Each side of this gallery was protected by a balustrade, and on the
western side, fronting the nave, stood the rood, a crucifix often of
life-size, or even larger, the cross being decorated with the
apocalyptical emblems of the evangelists at the four extremities, and
richly painted; a tree of life and glory to us, though to the Redeemer a
tree of shame and death. On either hand stood figures of the Madonna and
of S. John the Divine, and sometimes beneath the cross a smaller effigy of
the patron saint of the church was placed. On great festivals a multitude
of lights blazed along the rood-loft, which, with all its accessories,
became the most impressive object in the church.
A few examples of early rood-screens, with or without the loft, may be
quoted. A wooden screen, surmounted by a cross, was erected at Tyre by
Paulinus, and a stone one, said to date from the fourth century, still
stands at Tepekerman; and a third has been preserved from the time of
Justinian in the church of S. Catherine, on Mount Sinai. The Church of the
Apostles, Constantinople, had a screen of brass gilt, and S. Sophia's a
jewelled one, which was copied at Novgorod, Kieff, and elsewhere in the
East, in the eleventh century.
The uses to which these elevated platforms were put were many and various.
Those portions of the more solemn services which it was specially desired
that the people should all hear were often declaimed from their summits.
At High Mass the Gospel was read thence, a custom which survived in France
until the great Revolution. Public notice of the Church's feasts and fasts
was given from the loft, and there the lessons were read. Down to the time
of the introduction of pulpits at about the thirteenth century, sermons
were preached there. The fine screen, referred to above, in Tattershall
Church is corbelled out into a pulpit, and has desks for books designed in
the stone balustrade. On occasions of special solemnity antiphons were
sung and prayers said there, such as the Gradual and Alleluia, the
Prophecies before the Epistle at the Christmas Midnight Mass, and the
Passion on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. At Constantinople the Emperors
were crowned in the rood-loft, as also were the French Kings till the time
of Charles X. in the cathedral at Rheims. Altars were sometimes erected on
these screens, and generally one or more was set against their western
face.
In England certain roods obtained special celebrity, and became the
objects of pilgrimage from all parts of the country; and in some cases the
temptation to attract the people at almost any cost proved too much for
the ecclesiastics in charge of them, and led to practices which, if truly
reported, no one would wish to defend. Such was the Rood of Grace at
Boxley Abbey. Archbishop Warham, in a report on the monastic houses,
presented to King Henry in 1512, pleads for the preservation of this abbey
because the place is "so much sought for from all parts of the realm
visiting the Rood of Grace." The foundation was, nevertheless, condemned,
and its revenues were granted in the thirty-second year of Henry VIII. to
Sir Thomas Wyat. In dismantling the abbey church, the movements of the
figure on the rood which, it is alleged, were ascribed to a miracle, were
found to be controlled by concealed machinery. "When plucking down the
images of the Monastery of Boxley," writes the commissioner Jeffrey
Chambers to Thomas Cromwell, "I found in the image of the Rood of Grace
... certain engines and old wires and sticks." The whole affair was
carried off, and on Sunday, February 24th, 1538, was exhibited to the
people at S. Paul's Cross by Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester, after his
sermon. It is only fair to add that it has been claimed that this
mechanism was not employed for deception, but that the figure was intended
for use in miracle plays. It is a partial support of this view that no one
seems to have proceeded against either in the ecclesiastical or the civil
courts in connection with the matter, which must surely have been the case
had the charge of deception been sincerely made and actually believed.
Other famous roods were the "Rood of Winchester and the very cross at
Ludlow," there was also a noted one at S. Saviour's, Bermondsey, and
another at Chester. The last-named, however, was not in the church, but on
the spot called from it the Roodee, or Roodeye. It was here that the
football was annually presented to the Mayor for the Easter game at
Chester. At Durham was preserved the "Black Rood of Scotland," a silver
crucifix which was blackened by the smoke of the innumerable tapers burnt
before it, after it was placed in the northern cathedral.
Charges such as that made concerning the Rood at Boxley were, whether true
or false, only too readily welcomed as an excuse for an attack on all
roods at the Reformation. That one case in special seems, indeed, to have
been made the most of in the controversy. Calfhill refers to it in his
answer, published in 1565, to Martial's book in defence of the Cross; and
Peterson, Finch, and Partridge, all English Protestants in correspondence
with Geneva, allude to it in their letters.
A general destruction of roods took place in the autumn of 1547, when
Heylin tells us "the image of Christ, best known by the name of the rood,
together with the images of Mary and John, and all other images in the
church of S. Paul, London, were taken down, as also in all other churches
in London." At All Hallows, Staining, the loft itself was pulled down, and
the "roodloft hangings" sold for 12s. in 1550.
Under Queen Mary the work of destruction was of course stayed, and in some
cases the damage was even repaired. Thus, at the church just named, a new
crucifix was purchased in 1554 at the cost of L6 3s., and the parishoners
of S. Pancras, Soper Lane, were warned in October, 1555, that their rood,
with all its figures, was to be reinstated by Candlemas. The parish
accounts of S. Helen's, Abingdon, for the same year, contain several
entries concerning a similar restoration:--
"Payd for making the roode and peynting the same, 5 4
For making the roode lyghtes, 10 6
Payed for peynting the roode, of Mary and John,
and the patron of the Church, 6 0"
Entries of a like kind are to be found in the accounts of S. Mary Hill,
London, for the same year, and in those of S. Giles's, Reading, for 1558.
Then came the revived iconoclasm of the days of Elizabeth. Reading pulled
down for 4d. in 1560, what had cost 40s. to put up two years before. John
Rial spent three days in destroying the rood at S. Margaret's,
Westminster, in 1559, and was paid 2s. 8d. for his services; and
"carpenters and others, taking down the rood-loft and stopping the holes
in the wall where the joices stood" at S. Helen's, Abingdon, received in
1561, the sum of 15s. 8d.
But the unaccountable hatred which the fanaticism of the time felt towards
these sacred symbols, was not satisfied with their mere removal; nothing
less than their destruction with every mark of violence and indignity was
enough. Crucifixes were brought to Smithfield and to S. Paul's Churchyard,
and there broken to pieces and "burnt to ashes, and together with these in
some places copes, also vestments, altar-cloaths, etc." The rood with its
images from S. Andrew's Holborn, was burnt to ashes, and that from S.
Margaret's, Westminster, was destroyed by "cleaving and sawing" it.
Such rage and violence towards the effigy of the Saviour reads more like
an account of the ribald and blasphemous paganism of the French
Revolution, than a record of the acts of men claiming a burning desire for
pure religion. Who can picture a sincerely Christian devotion hacking and
hewing at the statue of the Redeemer?
Amongst the magnificent roods destroyed about this time must be reckoned
that at S. Mary Hill, London, the figures from which were sold in the
reign of Edward VI. The cross was of wood, plated with silver gilt, and
the images of silver, and at the base of the cross was a crystal engraved
with the Holy name, and the five wounds of the Lord were marked with
rubies.
It was, perhaps, in the hope of making assurance doubly sure that the
ecclesiastical commissioners on the 10th October, in the third year of
Elizabeth, ordered the removal of all rood-lofts. "It is thus decreed and
ordered, that the rood-lofts as yet being at this day aforesaid
untransposed, shall be so altered that the upper parts of the same, with
the soller (loft), be quite taken down unto the upper parts of the vaults
and beams, running in length over the said vaults, by putting some
convenient crest upon the said beam, towards the church." That this order
was fully carried out the visitation questions of Archbishop Grindal and
other similar documents, as well as the state of every ancient screen left
to us, clearly show.
It must not, however, be imagined that England has been alone in losing
these objects of art and of devotion. Rood-screens, once as commonly found
in France as amongst ourselves, are now as commonly absent from the
ordinary parish churches, although in many instances suspended crucifixes
have to some extent filled their place. The lust for destroying, which was
such a passion of the Revolutionary era in that country, is largely
answerable for this. The great Abbey of S. Ouen, at Rouen, once possessed
a splendid rood-loft, ascended by twin circular stairs; it was pierced by
brass gates of elaborate design, and surmounted by a crucifix whose top
stood sixty feet from the pavement. It was defaced in 1562 by the French
Protestants, or Calvinists, and destroyed by the revolutionary faction in
1791. The Cathedral of Alby still has a fine loft similar to the one which
existed at Rouen, and Louvain has one also of great dignity.
In recent years an extraordinary revival of rood-screens, adorned with all
their proper and ancient images, and even provided with lofts, has taken
place in England. Amongst well-known London churches, S. Peter's, Eaton
Square, has recently been adorned with a fine metal screen surmounted by a
cross and the figures of six angels, and S. Paul's, Knightsbridge, with a
complete rood-screen; but instances of this are now indeed common. As an
illustration of the revival of the loft, together with the other details
of the ancient screen, amongst village churches in the single county of
York, Womersley, Cantley, and Sledmere have all in recent years been thus
enriched. Certainly few architectural features add more solemnity and
dignity to a sacred building than a well-proportioned and well-designed
screen, crowned by the representation of the Great Sacrifice.
The marking with a cross by engraving, embroidery, or otherwise of almost
all articles used in the sacred offices, calls for little comment, being
largely a matter of taste merely. It has long been usual to enrich the
stole and maniple with three crosses, one in the centre and one at each
end; most of the linen used at the altar is also similarly marked. The old
English chasubles usually had a cross on the back in the form of a =Y=,
the Continental ones have a Roman Cross. The "Imitatio Christi" refers to
these chasubles, and explains their form thus: the priest "has before him
and behind him the sign of the cross of his Lord, that he may continually
bear in mind Christ's Passion. Before him he bears the cross on his
chasuble, that he may diligently look at the footsteps of Christ, and
fervently endeavour to tread in them. Behind him on his back he is signed
with the cross, that he may meekly endure for Christ's sake any trials
which others may bring upon him." This passage has a literary interest in
that it has been imported into the controversy concerning the disputed
authorship of that famous book of devotion. The work has been ascribed to
Gerson, Chancellor of Paris, as well as to Thomas a Kempis; but Cardinal
Garganelli argued that neither the Frenchman or the German could have
written it, but that the honour belongs to Gerson, Abbot of Vercelli; one
of his arguments being that the Italian vestments only had the cross both
on front and back, those used elsewhere bearing it behind only.
The curious "dissembled" cross, the fylfot, early used with various
mystical meanings by the faithful, became a not uncommon form with which
to impress church bells in some districts, especially in Yorkshire,
Lincolnshire, and Derbyshire. It is alleged to have been thought a charm
against lightning.
The cross has long been used in two very natural ways outside the fabric
of the church. As the church in the midst of the clustered houses is
itself a setting forth of the faith, so it follows, almost as a matter of
course, that it should uprear the symbol of that faith as prominently as
possible. Thus the tall spire, the church's finger, heavenward pointing,
holds aloft a cross. At Amiens is an example dating from 1526,--a long
life for a piece of metalwork in so exposed a position. The stone crown
which caps the tower of S. Giles's, Edinburgh, originally had a bold cross
above it, as shewn in old engravings.
The other use referred to, is the erection of churchyard crosses. Standing
in "God's acre," surrounded by the heaving "turf in many a mouldering
heap," where rest those who have died in faith, and sleep in hope,--what
can be more natural than the symbol of the Christian's faith, the anchor
of his hope? That this has been felt to be the case is abundantly shown by
the use of this form in memorials of the dead, as in the shape or the
adornment of tombstones and sepulchral slabs. In an illuminated copy of
the English pre-Reformation Offices, preserved by a Lancashire family, is
a painting of an English graveyard of the fifteenth century, where we see
the tall stone cross reared amidst the simple wooden crosses which mark
the several graves.
One of the most striking examples of the churchyard cross now left in the
country, stands on the south side of Somersby Church, in Lincolnshire. It
has a tall octagonal shaft, with an embattled capital rising from a square
base to a height of fifteen feet. The cross, which is protected by a
slight embattled canopy or gable, has on the one side a crucifixion, and
on the other the Madonna with the Holy Child. It is supposed to date from
about the middle of the fifteenth century. Other crosses, somewhat similar
in design, though none more light and graceful in construction, are found
in several places. At Cricklade are two examples, one in S. Mary's
churchyard, and the other in S. Sampson's; each consists of a tall shaft,
mounted on steps, and crowned with tabernacle work. The niches in S.
Mary's cross are filled with figures, but those of S. Sampson's have been
despoiled of theirs. The latter of these two is not strictly a churchyard
cross, having been removed in recent times from the main street of
Cricklade to its present site. Another of these tall crosses is found in
Bitterley churchyard, Shropshire; the shaft is octagonal, and the
tabernacle with its crucifixion is a good example of its kind. At Ampney
Crucis, near Cirencester, is a very bold and solid specimen, the
tabernacle of which is larger, in proportion to its shaft, than those
already described. S. Ives and Lanteglos in Cornwall have interesting
crosses in their churchyards. In each case the cross had been taken down
and buried near the church, perhaps by some pious souls anxious to
preserve them at the time when so many of their fellows were ruthlessly
destroyed. They were rebuilt some forty years ago. The S. Ives cross,
which is ten feet six inches in height, is the plainer, the massive shaft
being, as is often the case, a simple unadorned hexagon, while the
alternate faces of the example at Lanteglos, which is of about the same
height, are elaborately carved. The almost cubic head of each is cut into
niches, containing a crucifixion and the figures of saints. Other
instances of churchyard crosses in Cornwall are found at S. Buryan, S.
Levan, Gwinear, S. Erth, Sancreed, S. Paul, Illogan, Lelant, Cury,
Ludgran, Gulval, and a few other places. These, for the most part, are
roughly hewn crucifixes, of from four to six feet in height; but those at
Sancreed and at S. Erth are taller, the latter being a ruder specimen of
the type found at S. Ives and Lanteglos, and the former a crucifix of a
primitive sort with some simple designs cut on the body of the cross. A
good example of the characteristic Cornish cross, of little height and
decorated with an interlaced pattern resembling wicker-work, is in the
churchyard at S. Columb.
One of the best known crosses in the country is the one in the churchyard
of the little village of Eyam, in Derbyshire, celebrated for its tragic
experience of the plague. It is a fine specimen of a Saxon cross, with
scrolls on the shaft, and figures in the arms and on the centre. It had
long lain in fragments in a corner near the church, when John Howard, the
philanthropist, seeing it, got it rebuilt; to him, therefore, it may be
considered a lasting and fitting memorial. Bakewell, in the same county,
has another cross originally of the same type, but now much mutilated.
A very curious example of the Runic cross stands in the churchyard at
Nevern, in Pembroke. On a tall and substantial shaft, which slightly
tapers towards the top, is placed a small cross surrounded by a circle,
the whole being covered with interlaced carvings of a semi-barbaric kind.
A very curious form of churchyard cross is seen at Romsey Abbey, a fine
late Norman building; a large crucifix of antique type is let into the
outside wall of the south transept; the feet of the Redeemer lie side by
side, and above is the Father's hand--marks of antiquity as we have seen.
[Illustration: EYAM CROSS, DERBYSHIRE.]
All over the country, remains of ancient churchyard crosses exist. At
Dindar, and at North Petherton, in Somersetshire, are graceful shafts from
which the tabernacled heads have disappeared; at Crowle, in Lincolnshire,
is a short shaft on steps, which now supports a sun-dial; at Bebbington,
in Cheshire, the base alone is left. And so the catalogue of battered
fragments might be continued, through every county in England. In their
perfect state, these churchyard crosses often witnessed to the artistic
feeling of our ancestors, and always to their sincere faith; are we driven
to draw as a moral from their ruins, that we have fallen as far behind
them in the latter, as it will hardly be denied we have in the former?
In recent years something has been done to repair the losses of the past
in this respect. It has been pointed out above that several of the crosses
as we have them now, such as those at Eyam, at S. Ives, and at Lanteglos,
are the carefully rebuilt fragments of antiquity. But besides these, some
new churchyard crosses have recently been erected, proving the revival of
the ancient feeling of their fitness. Quite recently the old base of a
cross at East Brent, in Somersetshire, has been crowned with the addition
of an impressive stone crucifix, intended as a memorial of the long
incumbency of the late Archdeacon Denison. At Harburton, in Devonshire, is
a new cross, designed after the best ancient type, with a tabernacled
head surmounted by a short crocketed spire; the carvings represent, on the
four sides, the Crucifixion, the Epiphany, and S. Andrew, and S.
Bartholomew. Hickleton Churchyard, in Yorkshire, and other places, have
also had crosses re-erected in them in recent years; as at Broadwood
Widger, near Launceston, where an ancient cross has been recovered from
secular use, and placed in the churchyard.
The churchyard crosses, besides exciting the devotion of the faithful, as
they passed amid the sleeping dead to prayer, were often used as fitting
places for the performance of penances, and hence were sometimes called
"Weeping Crosses." Another name, "Palm Crosses," marks the fact that the
Palm Sunday procession in passing round the church made a station at the
churchyard cross, which was for the nonce adorned with palm-branches, or
more strictly with yew or willow, which in mediaeval England generally
served as substitutes for the oriental palm.