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At Once Elitist and Popular: The Audiences of the Bewcastle and Ruthwell Crosses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Éamonn Ó Carragáin
Éamonn Ó Carragáin*
Affiliation:
University College, Cork
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Extract

The Bewcastle and Ruthwell Crosses are the finest sculptured monuments to survive from early eighth-century Northumbria. For what audiences were they designed: clerics, monks or lay people? Of the two monuments, it is likely that the Bewcastle Cross is the earlier. Its designer wished to commemorate a number of benefactors of his or her community, whose names were inscribed on a panel of runic inscriptions on the west face (they are, unfortunately, now largely illegible: see figs 1 and 2). He or she was the first to introduce a number of highly significant theological ideas into Northumbrian sculpture. The Ruthwell designer, who did not set out to commemorate any individuals, expanded and developed theological ideas found in embryo on the Bewcastle Cross (figs 3 and 4). The Bewcastle and the Ruthwell Crosses, both, are best understood in terms of the theological and liturgical interests of Bede’s scholarly circle, in particular of Bishop Acca of Hexham, Bede’s bishop and patron; and of Bede’s friend and correspondent Bishop Pehthelm of Whithorn. Hexham lies east of Bewcastle, and Whithorn west of Ruthwell: I would date Bewcastle within the episcopacy of Acca, i.e. between 709 and 731; and Ruthwell a little later, say between 732 and 740 (the year Acca died). In this period the abbot of Wearmoudi-Jarrow was Hwætberht (abbot 716–c.750). Hwætberht was known as ‘Eusebius’ to his scholarly friends, presumably because of his interest in Eusebius of Caesarea, Constantine and the cult of the Cross. Rosemary Cramp and Richard Bailey have convincingly related the beautiful cross-slab at Jarrow to the abbacy and patronage of Hwœtberht. In his account of King Oswald’s victory, in the sign of the Cross, at Heavenfield, Bede implies that the Cross was, for the Northumbrian aristocracy and the clerics associated with them, the primary symbol of the Christian Faith.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 42: Elite and Popular Religion , 2006 , pp. 18 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006

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References

1 Rosemary Cramp, County Durham and Northumberland, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture 1, 2 vols (Oxford, 1984), 1: 112–13; 2: pl. 95, fig. 518, and pl. 96, figs 519–20; Bailey, Richard N., England’s Earliest Sculptors (Toronto, 1996), 49.Google Scholar

2 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.2, in Venerabile Bedae Opera Historica, ed. Charles Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford, 1896), 1:128.

3 Bede, Historia Abbatum, 18, in Venerabilis Bedae Opera Historica, ed. Plummer, 1: 383.

4 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III. 2, ed. Plummer, 1: 130; Bailey, England’s Earliest Sculptors, 50.

5 Bailey, Richards and Cramp, Rosemary, eds, Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture 2 (Oxford, 1988), 1: 61–3.Google Scholar

6 Orion’s fourth statement of this position is a good place to begin, as it contains references to his three earlier articles: Orton, Fred, ‘Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments: Some Deprecation of Style; Some Consideration of Form and Ideology’, in Brown, George Hardin and Karkov, Catherine E., eds, Anglo-Saxon Styles (Albany, NY, 2003), 31–67.Google Scholar

7 See the courteous but devastating assessment of Orton’s work by Bailey, Richard, ‘Innocent from the Great Offence’, in Karkov, Catherine E. and Orton, Fred, eds, Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (Morgantown, WV, 2003), 93–103 Google Scholar; and the discussion of Orton’s treatment of the early antiquarian evidence in Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London and Toronto, 2005), 63, n. 10 (on Ruthwell); 30 and 68, n. 106 (on Bewcastle).

8 A number of scholars have interpreted the Bewcastle falconer panel as a portrait of John the Evangelist: see the survey in Bailey and Cramp, eds, Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands, 69–70. In recent years, scholarly consensus has swung back to a royal portrait: the decisive studies in changing the consensus were Kitzinger, Ernst, ‘Interlace and Icons: Form and Function in Early Insular Art’, in Spearman, R. Michael and Higgitt, John, eds, The Age of Migrating Ideas: Early Medieval Art in Northern Britain and Ireland (Edinburgh and Stroud, 1993), 3–15 Google Scholar; and Bailey, , England’s Earliest Sculptors, 66–8.Google Scholar

9 Phil. 4:3; Luke 10:20; Rev. 3:5, 5:1-10, 20:12, 21:27, 22:19; for the Old Testament background, see Dan. 7:10, 12:1.

10 Bailey and Cramp, eds, Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands, 62–3.

11 On the religious significance of Anglo-Saxon vine-scroll patterns, see Bailey, England’s Earliest Sculptors, 52–7.

12 See Éamonn Ó Carragáin, ‘Christ over the Beasts and the Agnus Dei: Two Multivalent Panels on the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses’, in Paul E. Szarmach, ed., Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture (Kalamazoo, MI, 1986), 377–403.

13 For discussion, see Bailey and Cramp, eds, Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands, 66.

14 Psalm 18 (19), Douay version, which preserves the identification between Christ and the sun found in the Vulgate: ‘In sole posuit tabernaculum suum; et ipse tanquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo, Exsultavit ut gigas ad currendum viam’.

15 Pseudo-Augustini Quaestiones Veteris et Noui Testamenti CXXVII, ed. Alexander Souter, CSEL 50 (Vienna, 1908), Quaestio iv, p. 100: ‘omnia propriis locis et temporibus gessit Salvator’. The unknown author of this treatise is referred to in modern scholarly discussion as ‘Ambrosiaster’.

16 See Hurley, Michael, ‘Born Incorruptibly. The Third Canon of the Lateran Council, AD. 649’, The Heythrop Journal 2 (1961), 216–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 See Chadwick, Henry, ‘Theodore, the English Church and the Monothelete Controversy’, in Lapidge, Michael, ed., Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence (Cambridge, 1995), 88–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Die älteste erreichbare Gestalt des Liber Sacramentorum anni circuii der römischen Kirche (Cod. Pad. D 47, fol. 11r-100r), ed. L. C. Mohlberg, Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen und Forschungen 11–12 (Münster-im-Westfalen, 1927), 29–30; transl.: ‘Pour your grace into our minds, we beseech thee, O Lord: that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an angel may, by his Passion and Cross, be brought to the glory of his resurrection, who with you [lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit for ever and ever, Amen]’.

19 For an analysis of the Vatican Mass for 25 March, see Éamonn Ó Carragáin, ‘Rome, Ruthwell, Vercelli: The Dream of the Rood and the Italian Connection’, in Vittoria Dolcetti Corazza, ed., Vercelli tra Oriente ed Occidente, tra tarda antichità e Medioevo (Alessandria, 1999), 51–100; for the history of the ‘Gratiam tuam’ prayer, see idem, ‘The Annunciation of the Lord and His Passion: a Liturgical Topos from St Peter’s on the Vatican in The Dream of the Rood, Thomas Cranmer and John Donne’, in Jane Roberts and Janet Nelson, eds, Essays in Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Dr Lynne Grundy (London, 2000), 339–81.

20 Bede, Historia Abbatum, 6, ed. Plummer, 1: 369.

21 Stephen, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, 56: The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, ed. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927), 122–3.

22 See Nordhagen, Per Jonas, The Frescoes of John VII (AD 705–707) in S. Maria Antiqua in Rome (Rome, 1968)Google Scholar.

23 Life of Bishop Wilfrid, 56, ed. Colgrave, 122–3.

24 Life of Bishop Wilfrid, 60, ed. Colgrave, 128–33.

25 On the political importance of the papal theme of service to Mary, see Eric Thunø, Image and Relic: Mediating the Sacred in Early Medieval Rome, Analecta Romana Institua Danici, Supplementum 32 (Rome, 2002), 29–38.

26 The Old English text of the Ruthwell poem is edited and discussed in Éamonn Ó Carragáin, ‘The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem in its Iconographie and Liturgical Contexts’, Peritia 6–7 (1987–88), 1–71.

27 Augustine, Sermon 51:18 (PL 38–9, 343); Sermon 215:2 (PL 38–9, 1073); Sermon 291:5-6 (PL 38–9, 1318–19); the theme is discussed in Kim Power, Veiled Desire: Augustine’s Writings on Women (London, 1995), 181–2, 293.

28 See Éamonn Ó Carragáin, ‘Between Annunciation and Visitation: Spiritual Birth and the Cycles of the Sun on the Ruthwell Cross: a Response to Fred Orton’, in Karkov and Orton, eds, Theorizing, 131–87.

29 See Veelenturf, Kees, ‘Irish High Crosses and Continental Art: Shades of Iconographical Ambiguity’, in Hourihane, Colum, ed., From Ireland Coming: Irish Art from the Early Christian to the Late Gothic Period and its European Context (Princeton, NJ, 2001), 83–101.Google Scholar

30 Adomnán, Vita Columbae, 1:44, trans. Sharpe, Richard, Adomnán of Iona: Life of St Columba (Harmondsworth, 1991), 147 Google Scholar, discussed by Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 153–60.

31 The controversy is examined in Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 257–9.

32 For good discussions of the theory and practice of inculturation, see Chupungco, Anscar J., Liturgical Inculturation: Sacramentals, Religiosity, and Catechesis (Collegeville, MN, 1992), 13–31 Google Scholar; and especially Luiselli, Bruno, La formazione della cultura europea occidentale, Biblioteca di cultura Romanobarbarica 7 (Rome, 2003)Google Scholar.

33 North, Richard, Heathen Gods in Ola English Literature (Cambridge, 1997), 287–94.Google Scholar

34 O’Reilly, J., ‘The Art of Authority’, in Charles-Edwards, Thomas, ed., After Rome (Oxford, 2003), 1401–89, at 153.Google Scholar

35 For a fine analysis of how Anglo-Saxon high crosses were appreciated on various levels by the original audiences, and also by modern scholars, see Hawkes, J., ‘Reading Stone’, in Karkov, and Orton, , eds, Theorizing, 5–20.Google Scholar

36 Orton, ‘Rethinking’, 53.