Two further instances only of the ritual use of the material cross need be noticed. The first is the custom, somewhat obscure and perhaps never common, of buryingin graves a metal cross inscribed with a papal absolution. Specimens of these have been found at several places on the Continent, and in England at Bury S. Edmund’s and at Chichester. It may have been a custom cognate to this use of “Crosses of Absolution” to which Cartwright, the Puritan antagonist of Archbishop Whitgift, refers when, in complaining of the contemporary funeral rites, he speaks of “a cross, white or black, set upon the dead corpse.”
The other ceremony, which must not be omitted, is that pathetic part of the solemnities of Good Friday, which used to be known in England as “Creeping to the Cross.” This rite, which consists in kneeling before a crucifix laid before the altar and kissing it, boasts a very early origin. An epistle of Paulinus shows that it was practised in Jerusalem in the fourth century. Alcuin, the friend and adviser of Charlemagne, who was born at York about 740, mentions it; and the Canons of Ælfric in 957 bid the faithful to “greet God’s rood with a kiss.” In 1256, the Bishop of Sarum, Giles de Bridport, enjoined all parishioners throughout his diocese thus to venerate the cross, making an offering according to their ability at the same time, and he even forbade them to communicate on Easter Day unless they had done so. At the Reformation “Creeping to the Cross” proved the ground of much discussion between the more moderate and the extreme men. Those reformers who had become most strongly tinged with foreign Protestantism from frequent intercourse with Geneva clamoured for its abolition, along with other ceremonies which they disliked. There is still extant the order of precedence, which was drawn up to regulate the approach of Henry VIII. and his court to the Crucifix, and a proclamation bythat monarch specifies this rite as one that was to be maintained. In 1546 its abolition was suggested, upon which Thomas Cranmer wrote to the King, “That if the honouring of the cross, as creeping and kneeling thereunto be taken away it shall seem to many that be ignorant, that the honour of Christ is taken away,” for, as he says elsewhere, “we humble ourselves to Christ herein, offering unto Him, and kissing the cross in memory of our redemption by Christ on the Cross.” In 1548, under Edward VI., a royal proclamation announced that no proceedings were in future to be taken against any persons who omitted sundry ceremonies hitherto customary, the “creeping” being one. In 1549, on similar authority, it was forbidden; and Ridley, Bishop of London, in his injunctions to his diocese in 1550, enforced the prohibition. Yet the custom did not at once die out, and in the sister kingdom of Scotland, it was practised, according to a letter from Latimer to Sir W. Cecil, at Dunbar, on Good Friday, in 1568. A somewhat similar ceremony is observed in the Greek Church on Holy Cross Day; a crucifix is placed in a basket of flowers before the altar, and each member of the congregation, after reverently kissing it, takes a flower, and makes an offering in money.
A reference to those Holy Days, which have been specially dedicated to a commemoration of the Cross will appropriately close this chapter, the consideration of altar crosses, roods, and others which serve rather as fitting ornaments of churches than as adjuncts to their ritual, being left to form another section.
The Feast of the Invention (or Finding) of the Cross, which occurs on May 3rd, commemorates, as its nameimplies, the recovery of the True Cross by S. Helena. It is said to have been instituted by Pope Sylvester I., who died in 335, but there is no positive evidence of its observance before the eighth century.
Holy Cross Day, or the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, is held in the West as of less honour than the feast just named, but in the East it is regarded with special reverence. It commemorates, according to some, the apparition of the Cross to Constantine, but according to others the consecration of the Church built by that Emperor to receive the True Cross. It was certainly observed in Constantinople in the days of the Patriarch Eutychius, who died about 582. On this day in 629, the Emperor Heraclius came in solemn pilgrimage to Jerusalem to restore to the Church there that wood of the Cross, which he had recovered from Chosroes; this event added great lustre to the festival, and a memorial of it has since been added to the earlier commemoration.
Both these holy days have been retained in the calendar of the English Church.
The Greek and Ethiopian Churches celebrate on May 7th a miraculous apparition of the Cross at Jerusalem in the year 346.
Not unconnected with the observance of stated days as festivals of the Cross is the custom of dedicating churches under the name of S. Cross, that is, of course, Holy Cross, or Holy Rood. The instance of the famous Abbey and Palace at Edinburgh will at once occur to all; other cases are found at Caermarthen and Bettws-y-Grôg in Wales, and in England at Southampton, Thruxton, Swindon, Malling, and a few other places.
The Cross as an Ornament of the Church and its Precincts.
A verynatural 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 goldcross 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 nottraced further back than the eighth century, and the rood with its full complement of figures and lights can claim only a mediæval 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 lifeand 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 theGradual 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 £6 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:—
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 destructionwith 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 outthe 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 allin 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 aY, 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 à 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, asimple 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.
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 thebest 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 mediæval England generally served as substitutes for the oriental palm.
Public Crosses.
That“the ages of faith” considered religion foreign to no department of life, is in nowise more strikingly shown than by the public use of the emblem of Christianity. Our forefathers held it as the fittest of all ornaments, not for the Church only, but for every place where Christian men were found. Over five thousand crosses, it is said, existed at one time in the public places of England;—in the obscure village churchyard and the busy mart, the lonely highway and the crowded city thoroughfare.
Precisely how many of these now remain, it would be difficult to say; but certainly only a small proportion exists in anything like the original state. Some have survived as mere shafts, beautiful still in many cases, but shorn of almost all meaning by the loss of the one member that gave them a being and a name. In other cases an unsightly stump, a useless flight of steps, a few worn stones, an ancient place-name, or a bare tradition, keep alive the memory of the Cross, now desecrated or destroyed.
The ceaseless beating of the tide of time is responsible for much of this decay, which the local authorities, in carelessness or ignorance, have been guilty in too many instances of watching without attempting to retard; and in not a few cases the whole structure has at last been taken down simply to avoid the cost and trouble of needful repair.
Modern improvements in the streets of our towns havecost us several examples that could ill be spared. It would be as foolish as futile to decry the opening out of narrow thoroughfares to the sweet influences of sun and air, or to grumble when growing towns make due provision for growing traffic; yet one cannot but regret the many ancient landmarks that these changes have swept away, nor can one doubt that, had a proper appreciation of their worth been felt, some means might have been found to preserve most of them.
But after all it was the bigotry of the Puritan epoch which robbed us of the greater part of our public crosses, just as it was the narrow views imported into the Reformation movement from foreign sources that were chiefly answerable for the disappearance of our roods and other church crosses.
Some method of classification being needful in treating of the various kinds of crosses, one has been adopted here which is practically useful, rather than strictly accurate. Churchyard crosses, included in the preceding chapter, form a division sufficiently distinct; others, which specially commemorate some person or event, as do the Eleanor Crosses and that at Neville’s Cross, near Durham, will compose another class to be considered in the next chapter, as memorial crosses. In our present one attention is called to those which were public, in the exclusive sense of being used for public purposes, such as markets, royal proclamations, and preaching; and finally, under the names of roadside and boundary crosses, will be included many stone crosses which cannot be grouped under any of these heads.
It is confessed that this classification is not scientific, inasmuch as the classes are not in all cases mutuallyexclusive. No doubt several of the market crosses, besides serving the usual purposes of such structures, enshrined the memories of departed worthies; and unquestionably many village and roadside crosses were originally erected as preaching places for the brothers of some neighbouring monastery, or for the use of itinerant friars.
For practical purposes, however, the above division of the subject will be found to serve.
To notice every cross of this public sort which has at some time adorned the streets and market-places of Great Britain, even if it were possible, would be after all the compiling of a mere tedious catalogue. It will be more interesting to take a few of the more important ones as types, referring to the others as occasion may arise.
For such a purpose no example can suit us better as illustrating the secular and civil uses to which these structures were put than the Market Cross, or “Mercat Croce,” of the northern capital. This venerable erection might indeed be truly named, borrowing an American expression, the “hub” of Scotland, round which for centuries has revolved the history, not of Edinburgh only, but of the whole kingdom.
It seems not improbable that the original of this cross belonged to the class of well-crosses to be referred to hereafter, and may have been placed there by the earliest teachers of the faith in the district, an old well existing not far from the present site under the name of the cross-well. But no certain allusion to a cross standing here is found before the year 1436, when we read of the assassins of King James I. of Scotland meeting their punishment “mounted on a pillar in the Market Place in Edinburgh.” Nearlythree hundred years before this, however (in 1175), William the Lion ordered that “all merchandisis salbe presentit at the mercat and mercat croce of burghis,” which may well be taken to imply that the first burgh in the kingdom was not at that time without its “croce.” Our next reference is in a Charter of S. Giles’ Church, dated 1447, in which occur the words “ex parte occidentali fori et crucis dicti burgi,” and its use as a Market centre is clearly defined in a letter from James III. to his citizens, written in October 1477, in which he orders “all pietricks, pluvaris, capones, conyngs, checkins, and all other wyld foulis and tame to be usit and sald about the Market Croce and in na other place.”
No data remain from which to reconstruct with any certainty the ancient cross in the original form. The “pillar of the cross” now standing is the same as that named in the earliest historical notices of the structure, perhaps even the very one that was first set up, but whether it stood at the outset on an elevated platform as it now does and long has done, or whether it surmounted a flight of steps in the way usual in England, cannot be determined. In the reign of James III. great improvements were made in Edinburgh. The church of S. Giles, for instance, was enlarged and made collegiate, and its independence of all but papal jurisdiction was guaranteed by a Bull; it seems therefore not improbable that the same royal patron of the arts added at that time dignity to the city cross by building the lofty stone platform from which it could more unquestionably dominate the market. In 1555 some alterations were made in the structure, which are described as “bigging the rowme thereof,” which has been thought to imply that the open circles, which probably first supportedthis platform, were filled in so as to form the “rowme.” The following extracts from the accounts of the city treasurer at any rate imply that the enclosed base, entered beneath by a door, was standing shortly after this date. In 1560 we read “Item for ane band to ye Croce dur,” “Item for mending of ye lok of ye Croce dur;” and again in 1584, “5 Julii, Item, ye sam day given for ane lok to ye Croce duir, and three keyis for it.” An old birds-eye view of the city as it appeared in 1647 shews the main outlines of the building to have been then very similar to what we see it to-day.
This type of cross was peculiarly Scottish. A similar one remains in good condition at Prestonpans, and another very fine one at Aberdeen; Perth and Dundee had similar ones now unfortunately destroyed, and the capital itself had a second cross of like design in the Canongate. It may have been that the metropolitan cross was accepted as the model for the other burghs of the kingdom.
The treasurer’s accounts cited above, give evidence also of the early erection of another feature peculiar to the Edinburgh cross, namely the surmounting of it with the national emblem. In 1584, is an entry, “Payit to David Williamson for making and upputting of the Unicorn upon the head of the Croce.”
In the year 1617, the “ald croce,” was taken down and “translated by the devise of certain mariners of Leith, from the place where it stood past the memory of man to a place beneath in the High Street.” The stone for building the new substructure was “brocht frae the Deyne,” and on the 25th March “the Croce of Edinburgh was put upon the new seat;” the total cost of its removal and re-erectionbeing £4486 5s. 6d. (Scots). Amid the Puritan violence of the Protectorate, the cross was defaced, among other things the Royal arms were torn down, and “the crown that was on the unicorn was hung upon the gallows by these treacherous villains;” as a consequence the city accounts show payments for repairs to Robert Mylne, a descendant of John Mylne, who had been one of the “Master measones” at the re-erection. At this time the cross, or some part of it, perhaps the heraldic carvings, was adorned with colour, a sum being given “to George Porteous for painting the Croce.”
On March 13th, 1756, the Market Cross of Edinburgh was demolished. Some of the carved medallions which had decorated it passed years later into the hands of Sir Walter Scott, by whom they were built into a wall at Abbotsford, where they now are. The pillar, which was allowed to fall and break in the course of demolition, was acquired by Lord Somerville, who set it up near his house at Drum. The site was marked out with stones, and a plain stone pillar “was erected on the side of a well in High Street, adjacent to the place where the cross stood, which, by act of Siderunt, was declared to be the Market Cross of Edinburgh from that period.” But even this was not allowed to remain long, the chief argument for the removal both of it and of its great predecessor being the alleged obstruction which it offered to traffic.
Efforts were made from time to time to persuade the city fathers to restore a structure so long and so intimately bound up with the national history, and at last “the pillar of the cross” was brought back to Edinburgh, and placed upon a pedestal within the railings of St. Giles’ Church.So matters were allowed to remain until 1885, when by the generosity of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, then Member of Parliament for Midlothian, the original pillar was re-instated on a new and imposing base of the ancient type. The following translation of the Latin inscription which appears on one of its eight faces, and which is dated the day whereon it was formally handed over to the Corporation, appropriately closes the record of the changes through which it has passed: “Thanks be to God, this ancient monument, the Cross of Edinburgh, devoted of old to public functions, having been destroyed by evil hands in the year of our salvation, 1756, and having been avenged and lamented in song both noble and manly by that man of highest renown, Walter Scott, has now by permission of the city magistrates been rebuilt by William E. Gladstone, who through both parents claims a descent entirely Scottish. November 23rd in the year of grace 1885.”
Many were the Scottish sovereigns who were greeted by their people at this, the heart of their capital. When James IV. brought home his bride, Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. of England, a fountain at the Cross ran wine for all to drink, and a similar rejoicing took place when the ill-fated Mary, in 1561, made her public entry into the city from “Halyrud hous,” and again in 1590, when her son James VI. introduced his Queen, Anne of Denmark to the citizens.
Of the many national and civic proclamations which have been made from Edinburgh Cross, two stand out conspicuous in the history of the whole island of Great Britain. The first, in 1513, was a summons for a general muster of the Scottish army for the invasion of England before thefatal field of Flodden; and the second was in 1603, when the Lyon King-at-arms announced from that spot the death of Elizabeth of England, and the consequent union of the crowns of the two countries.
Such part as the cross has played in the religious history of Scotland, is mostly concerned with the progress of the Reformation in the north. In 1555 John Knox was burnt in effigy there, having gone to Geneva instead of answering a summons to appear before the Bishops. In 1565 a Roman Catholic priest, for the enormity of having said mass on Easter Day at Holyrood, was “tyed to the cross, where he tarried the space of one hour, during which time the boys served him with his Easter egges;” and again on the following day “he was set upon the Market Cross for the space of three or four hours, the hangman standing by and keeping him,” while the populace again as on the former occasion displayed their godly zeal and christian charity. In that stormy time for Scotland, the reigns of Charles II. and his brother James, when politics and religion were so strangely and unfortunately intermingled, that while the one party claimed to be punishing rebels, the other felt that it was suffering martyrdom, many, including the Duke of Argyle and a hundred other persons of all ranks, suffered death in Edinburgh, in most cases at the “Mercat Croce.”
England provides more than one instance in which, as in the case of Edinburgh, the present generation has in some sort replaced the town cross, hastily or heedlessly destroyed by a former age.
Bristol once possessed a handsome market cross of the fourteenth century, containing, in niches, statues of severalEnglish Kings, the whole work gorgeous in vermilion, and blue, and gold. So late as 1633, the citizens, to preserve it, enclosed it with a railing and regilt it, at the same time adding a new storey with four more statues. Yet in 1733, on the declaration of some neighbouring tradesman that it was a danger to his life and property, it was entirely pulled down. Re-erected at private cost on College Green, it was actually demolished a second time, a public subscription (to the disgrace of Bristol) defraying the charges. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, having acquired the fragments, rebuilt it in his park at Stone Head, and a subsequent age has replaced it on the Green with a copy of the original, once so scornfully flung away.
Glastonbury, again, has, by the recent erection of a new cross, made some reparation for its careless treatment of an old one. Its ancient market cross was one of the most curious in the country; substantial, simple, and unadorned, offering ample accommodation and shelter beneath its wide arches, and with a certain quaint attraction in its curious gables. On showing signs of decay, its past services to the market folk were so far from pleading for it, that it was abandoned to the plundering of local builders, who coveted its time-honoured materials, and not a recognizable vestige now remains. Its modern successor is, as one expects of a nineteenth century erection, perfectly conventional, consisting of a column with canopied niches, surmounted by a short spire.
Gloucester boasted a market cross from the days of Richard III. to the year 1750—an hexagonal tower-like structure garnished with statues, but, like Edinburgh Cross, it was condemned as an obstruction, and, less fortunatethan its comrade in misfortune, has found no one to rebuild it.
Another town in which the exigencies of modern business have been supposed to require the removal of a famous relic of the past is Coventry, whose cross must in its day have been one of the most ornate in the country. This cross, which Sir William Hollis reared in 1541 in the place of an earlier one, was built on similar lines to one at Abingdon, which has also disappeared. In form it was a hexagonal spire, some sixty feet in height, on a series of four steps, covered with a mass of tracery and carving, and containing a number of figures beneath canopies. It was lavishly gilded, and so solicitous were the authorities of preserving its gleaming bravery untarnished, that a fine was imposed on any one who should presume to sweep the “cheepinge,” or market, without first watering it to lay the dust. In 1668, it was repaired and regilt at a cost of £276, but barely a century later it was razed to the ground, and its memory is only kept alive by the presence of a few of its statues and some other fragments, preserved variously in the neighbourhood. Abingdon Cross was “sawn” down by the Puritan soldiery of Waller’s army, and the same brainless bigotry robbed Chester of its High cross. Holbeach had a cross of unique plan, consisting of a column supported by a pentagonal platform raised on arches, which has disappeared; as also has one at Leicester, and a boldly designed market cross at Ipswich, which must have been both useful and ornamental.