The Cross in Ritual, Architecture and Art Part 2

In England this emblem of jurisdiction has on more than one occasion proved a ground of dispute between the archbishops. S. Anselm who ruled at Canterbury from 1093 to 1114, refused to allow the Archbishop of Dublin to use his cross in England. Canterbury and York long maintained a struggle for precedence in the English Church and the point on which it turned was often the right of the one to carry his cross in the province of the other. The quarrel became very bitter towards the end of the thirteenth century, so that we find William de Wickwaine in 1280, the year after his accession to the See of York, complaining to the Pope of violence shewn him while travelling in the southern province. "Adam de Hales," he writes, "an officer of my Lord of Canterbury, rushed like a madman upon my attendants, and scandalously broke my cross in pieces: but thanks be to G.o.d, I soon caused another to be raised and carried. Moreover, most holy father, when I am journeying through the province of Canterbury on business relating to my own see, my Lord of Canterbury forbids food or lodging to be supplied to myself or my attendants on pain of excommunication, exactly as if we were heretics, and places the whole district where I make any sojourn under an ecclesiastical interdict." The contemporary "my lord of Canterbury," was John Peckham. Twenty years later the feud was still rife, and we have Robert Winchelsey, the immediate successor of Peckham, writing to the Bishop of Lincoln, bidding him see that the northern primate did not have his cross carried before him in pa.s.sing through that diocese: he also forbids the laity to kneel to him or to ask his blessing on pain of the Church's censure, and orders that no bell be rung and no service said in any place where he may be. In 1325, William de Melton, Archbishop of York, was appointed treasurer by the King, upon which Walter Raynold, who twelve years before had succeeded Winchelsey, again took up the cause of the dignity of his province, and excommunicated Melton for having had his cross carried in the city of London, in spite of which Melton publicly said Ma.s.s in Westminster Abbey.

In 1354, a compromise was at last arrived at, by which the Archbishop of York might have his cross borne before him throughout the entire province of Canterbury on condition that within two months from so doing he sent to the shrine of S. Thomas a Becket, a gold figure of the value of forty pounds, of an archbishop with his cross, to be brought by the hands of his chancellor, a doctor of laws, or a knight. On the other hand the Archbishop of Canterbury was to enjoy the same privilege in the province of York unconditionally. The two prelates by whom this arrangement was made, were Simon Islip of the southern province, and John de Th.o.r.esby of the northern. The above acknowledgement, or fine, was paid about a century later (in 1452), by Archbishop Booth of York.

The first metropolitan in the English colonies to a.s.sume the cross was the Bishop of Cape Town. A magnificent cross of silver gilt studded with jewels was presented to the See of Canterbury on the enthronement of the present occupant of the Chair of S. Augustine, Dr. Benson. It is modelled on the type of those used by the English Archbishops as early as the time of Chichely (1414), and is adorned with statuettes of a dozen saints.

An archiepiscopal cross, if terminating in a crucifix, is carried with the figure facing the prelate, not as in the case of a processional cross; but one of those anciently used at Canterbury had two crucifixes, one in front and one behind.

The double-crossed staff, suggesting the cross with its superscription, which is heraldically a.s.signed to patriarchs, never came actually into use in the west, although it has been employed in Greece. The triple cross of the Pope is a modern invention, without ritual authority.

From the distinctive sign of an Archbishop's authority to the Pectoral Cross worn by him in common with other bishops, is a natural transition.

It early became customary for a prelate to wear about his neck a reliquary which often contained a fragment of the true Cross, and, as being intended for a religious purpose, was frequently cruciform. From this usage it has been supposed sprang the practice of bishops wearing a cross suspended on the breast, hence called a pectoral cross.

We have instances of its common use long before it began to be reckoned as one of the regular ornaments of a bishop or a mitred abbot. S. Gregory of Tours is said to have worn such a cross, as also did Pope Leo III. in 811, and S. Alphege of Canterbury in 1012; the pectoral cross worn by S.

Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne in 685, is still preserved at Durham, and its design, a curious type of Greek cross, forms the princ.i.p.al charge in the arms of that University. Innocent III. (1198-1216) is the first to mention this as one of the recognised episcopal insignia, and by the fourteenth century special prayers were prescribed to be said on putting it on, with the rest of the episcopal habit. It was about this time also that it became usual for priests, when in their full vestments, to wear the stole crosswise on the breast. In each case the cross-bearing required of a disciple of Christ is symbolized, but in the case of the bishop the breast-plate of the high priest is also alluded to.

In this connection it may be worth while to make pa.s.sing mention of a strange society of early monks referred to by Ca.s.sian, who, with more zeal than knowledge, interpreted the exhortation of our Lord literally, and wore constantly about their necks heavy wooden crosses.

The full and solemn ritual for the consecration of a church, as still used throughout the major part of Christendom, involves a frequent use of the sacred sign. By a law of Justinian, the building of a church might not be undertaken until the bishop of the diocese had visited the proposed site, and fixed thereon with solemn prayer "the precious cross." On the completion of the building, there is made in ashes on the floor a cross of the shape known as S. Andrew's, and twelve crosses are marked on the inside of its walls, and often twelve more on the outside, five more being cut on the slab, or mensa, of the altar. These mural crosses, having during the ceremony of consecration been anointed by the bishop, are afterwards either cut in the stone or traced in colour. One such in colour still exists in the Palace Chapel at Chichester, and in the cathedral are others cut in the walls of two of the chapels: at Salisbury, Ottery, and elsewhere examples of an ornamental character are found, and two of the external crosses may still be seen at Exeter. High upon a b.u.t.tress of the Parish Church of Costock, near Loughborough, in Nottinghamshire, is a stone showing on each of its two exposed faces a cross of an elegant interlaced design, somewhat of the kind usually found in old Irish sculptures. These, however, can scarcely be consecration crosses; the stone is possibly the head of some ancient shaft, as it is almost certainly not now in its original position. These crosses do not occur before the eleventh century.

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 burying in 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 aelfric in 957 bid the faithful to "greet G.o.d'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 by that 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. .h.i.therto 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 name implies, the recovery of the True Cross by S. Helena. It is said to have been inst.i.tuted 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 l.u.s.tre 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-Grog in Wales, and in England at Southampton, Thruxton, Swindon, Malling, and a few other places.

CHAPTER IV.

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 a.s.sumed 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 ma.s.s, 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 c.o.x; 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 ma.s.sive pillar was pierced to find room for the steps.

Each side of this gallery was protected by a bal.u.s.trade, 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 mult.i.tude 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 bra.s.s 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 Ma.s.s 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 bal.u.s.trade. 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 Ma.s.s, and the Pa.s.sion 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:--

"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 a.s.surance 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 doc.u.ments, as well as the state of every ancient screen left to us, clearly show.