The Cross in Ritual, Architecture and Art Part 4

During the Commonwealth, with its temporary establishment of civil marriages, this rite was "solemnized," if one may use the term in such a connection, in Doncaster at the Wheat Cross.

The ancient city of Lincoln is another example of a place once rich in these memorials. Only a well-cross exists there to-day, although its first Bishop, Remigius, built a town-cross, his successor, Hugh de Gren.o.ble, added others, and yet others were erected by Hugh de Wells, all of which, as also an ancient High Cross, have gone.

Amongst the Market Crosses still left to us, a foremost place, if not the first, must be given to that of Chichester. This beautiful structure was reared by Edward Story, bishop of the diocese from 1478 to 1504, who also left an estate, valued at 25 per annum, to keep it in repair, and to provide wine at the Cross annually on S. George's Day. It is an octagon in plan, and covers a s.p.a.ce of some four hundred square feet. Crosses of this type, of which Malmesbury and Salisbury provide other excellent examples, are not only more beautiful, but more useful, than the solid decorated towers or spires, such as the crosses of Coventry and Abingdon, for the wide arches afford both shade and shelter to the market folk in summer heat or wintry rain and snow. A cross which is almost a combination of the solid high-cross and the large covered type is found at Shepton Mallet, having been erected by Walter Buckland and his wife in 1505. Other examples of the covered cross exist at Chipping Campden, in Gloucestershire, and at Cheddar. Even in the narrower scope of the high cross, an attempt was sometimes made to provide at least so much shelter as was possible under the circ.u.mstances, as we see in the open lower story of the b.u.t.ter Cross, at Winchester, and of the curious pentagonal cross at Leighton-Buzzard.

Amid all the bustle of the busy market-place, and perhaps above all times in this hurrying, grasping age, the old market cross stands with its message ever old, yet ever needful, for all who have ears to hear; testifying that there are interests of more moment than buying and selling and getting gain, and by its very antiquity speaking of the frailty of the life of man, so many generations of whom have bargained and chaffered beneath its shadow, and gone out one by one in long procession into the unknown Infinite.

Turning to those public crosses, which were used chiefly, though not quite exclusively, for religious purposes and especially for preaching, S.

Paul's Cross comes first by right both of the importance of its position, and of the prominent part which it has played in the religious history of the country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARKET CROSS, CHICHESTER.]

The original foundation of the Cross at S. Paul's is lost in antiquity, but evidence exists that one, on or near the site of the later one, marked the spot whereon the city folkmote was held before the twelfth century.

The earliest actual mention of the cross is in 1191, when one William Fitz Osbert here delivered an address against the divine authority of the crown. From that time down to the middle of the seventeenth century, a period of about five hundred years, the references to it are frequent and interesting.

It was first used for ecclesiastical purposes in 1285, when the churchyard was enclosed, and began probably to be regarded more distinctly as a cathedral precinct, yet even after this the events connected with the cross are not all strictly ecclesiastical. In 1382 the building was damaged in a severe thunder-storm, and in 1449 it was re-built in "a more splendid style" by Thomas Kemp, Bishop of London. The last preaching at the cross was in 1633, after which the sermons were delivered in the cathedral; and in 1643, by order of the Long Parliament, the cross was taken down. All that now remains of it is the octagon base, which was discovered a few years since, when the churchyard was laid out as a garden; the site will be found, marked out with stones, at the northeast corner of the present cathedral, a portion of the east wall of which rests upon a small part of it.

In its palmy days, S. Paul's Cross consisted of a covered pulpit of stone, surrounded by a low wall, and surmounted by a bold cross on an ogee roof.

When not in use it was closed by a door, and near the opening or window where the preacher took his stand, was, in its latter days, a bracket for an hour-gla.s.s. At the left hand of the structure, against the east wall of the cathedral transept, was a covered gallery of two storeys, known as "the shrowds," in which persons of special distinction were accommodated to hear the preaching; the bulk of the congregation sitting on movable forms or standing between the cross and the church.

Here at various times were heard such famous leaders of the religious thought of the nation as Fisher, Latimer, Gardiner, Ridley, Coverdale, Tunstall, Bonner, Grindal, Scory, Jewell, King, "the king of preachers,"

according to the opinion of James I., Hooker, "the judicious," Donne, Dean of S. Paul's, and Laud, who, as Bishop of London, was the last of the famous preachers to occupy this celebrated pulpit. Several of the sermons delivered here have become historical, or were connected with events that have helped to make history. On September 12th, 1557, "Dr. Standyche did preach at the shrowds for the winning of the battle of St. Quentin," the lord mayor and the aldermen being present in state. Jewell, Bishop of Salisbury, preached a sermon on March 30th, 1560, which became known as "the Challenge Sermon," from the fact that it was largely composed of a number of theses, which he defied the Roman controversialists to prove from the Fathers or from Holy Scripture. Another discourse that acquired a name had been preached here by Latimer in 1548; this was the "Sermon of the Plough," which treated in a quaint and characteristic manner of the seed and the husbandry of "G.o.d's plough-land." Queen Elizabeth came to S.

Paul's Cross in full state on September 8th, 1588, to hear another bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Piers, preach in commemoration of the overthrow of the Armada. On this occasion eleven ensigns taken from the Spanish fleet were exhibited, previous to their being displayed on the following day on London Bridge. On March 24th, 1619, the cross was draped in black in memory of the death of Anne of Denmark, the queen of James I., who had died early in the month; and in April, King, Bishop of London, delivered a sermon there at a solemn thanksgiving for the king's recovery from severe illness. In 1629 a muttering of the coming storm was heard at S. Paul's Cross, when, on the Sunday before Whitsunday, two papers were found attached to it addressed to King Charles I., who was warned of the wrath of heaven against him, and bidden, "Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou must be no longer _Stuart_."

The Cross, however, was not used for sermons only. Being a place centrally situated and resorted to by large numbers of people, it was deemed a suitable one for the performance of acts of public penance. In 1441, Roger Boltyngbroke, who was found guilty of the sin of necromancy, sat on a chair by the Cross during sermon time, surrounded by his magical appliances, and afterwards openly abjured his dark arts. A more notable penitent was Mistress Jane Sh.o.r.e, who came here "out of all araie, save her kertle onlie," and with a taper in her hand, in May, 1483. John Hig, "alias Noke, alias Jonson"--a suspicious character obviously--stood bareheaded and barefooted, with a f.a.ggot on his shoulder, all through the preaching at the Cross on Good Friday, in 1528, as a penance for certain "d.a.m.nable and erroneous opinions" which he confessed to having "erroneously and d.a.m.nably said, affirmed, believed and taught." A similar penance was performed in 1532 by a barrister of the Middle Temple, James Baynham by name, who seems to have been a singularly weak and vacillating creature. Having professed Protestantism, he recanted; again recalled his recantation, and was burned at Smithfield. In 1534, Elizabeth Barton, "the holy maid of Kent," who professed to have had divine revelations condemning the divorce of King Henry VIII., was compelled to stand on a high scaffold over against the pulpit, together with some half-a-dozen priests and monks, who had expressed belief in her prophesyings. This probably mistaken, but certainly well-meaning and pious nun, was hanged at Tyburn on April 21st, 1534.

In November, 1554, five men did penance here by standing during the sermon with lighted tapers in one hand and rods in the other; in March, 1556, a man, for transgressing the rules of Lent, stood with the carcase of a pig on his head and another in his hand; and in August, 1559, a "minister" did penance for "marrying a couple that were married afore-time."

The custom, common in past days, of formally destroying a book by way of condemning its publication, has several times been ill.u.s.trated at S.

Paul's Cross. Many of Luther's works were burnt at a sermon preached there by Fisher on May 12th, 1521; and Tyndale's translation of the New Testament, after another sermon by the same bishop, Cardinal Wolsey being present also, in 1530. In 1613, some books by a Jesuit named Suarez, whose works were said to be "derogatory to Princes," were burnt at the Cross, and the writings by Pareus, concerning the people's authority over princes, were similarly treated in 1622.

A notice of the Cross in the reign of Edward III. gives us a curious insight into the ideas of episcopal duty at the time. Michael de Northbury, Bishop of London from 1354 to 1362, acted as a p.a.w.nbroker for the benefit of the citizens of that city, and if at the year's end the pledges were not redeemed, notice was given by the preacher, after his sermon at the Cross, that they would be sold in fourteen days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE READING CROSS, ST. PAUL'S, LONDON.]

Amongst the incidents of a secular character which centred in this time-honoured erection, we find a pleasing ill.u.s.tration of the friendly relations which subsisted between the King and his subjects in bygone days; for it seems to have been customary for the monarch, before going abroad, to come down to S. Paul's Cross, and there to bid them farewell.

So came, at any rate, Henry III., both in 1257 and in 1261, before pa.s.sing into France.

The gatherings round the spot were not always of so friendly a nature.

Under Queen Mary, religious feeling ran so high as to lead to serious disturbances. Dr. Bourne, chaplain to Bonner, was interrupted by shouting and uproar for attacking Ridley in a sermon on August 13th, 1553, and a dagger was flung at him, which stuck into a post of the Cross. On the following Sunday, about one hundred and twenty halberdiers were present, and peace was preserved; but in June of the next year, Dr. Pendleton was fired on whilst preaching and nearly struck by a pellet "of tyne."

No other preaching cross attained to the name and fame of that of S.

Paul's, yet they were not uncommon in the country. In the Green Yard at Norwich was one of wood, with leaded roof and a cross of the same metal; Worcester also had one. Remains of a preaching cross may be seen near the church in Iron Acton, in Gloucestershire, a graceful structure originally, now lamentably mutilated; and at Disley, in the same county, is another, also in ruins. A still better example is the Blackfriars' preaching cross at Hereford, a hexagonal enclosure with open arches, above which is the stump of what was once the sacred emblem.

The Puritans, although such advocates of preaching, evidently had a strong prejudice against these open-air pulpits. That at Iron Acton bears to this day marks of the violence used in the attempt to destroy it, and most of our English preaching crosses have, like our most famous example, wholly disappeared.

In this last half century, the English people have woke up once more in a wonderful way to an appreciation of life in the open air. Never were outdoor sports and games so generally followed; and "garden-parties" and "garden-meetings" are amongst our most modern inventions. Parks and pleasure-grounds are now demanded almost as a public right; and no "exhibition" can look for success that does not provide ample accommodation for its patrons to listen to music under the open skies. In the face of all these signs of the times, is it too much to hope that the Church may be touched with the same feeling--surely a healthy and a desirable one; and that we may yet see on summer's evenings the congregations choosing to sit or stand about the preaching cross in the churchyard, rather than sit, involuntarily listless, at the best with difficulty attentive, in the heat of a crowded, and often ill-ventilated church?

CHAPTER VI.

Memorial Crosses.

The sign of our salvation having come to fill so large a place in Christian art, it would naturally be expected that in memorials in any way connected with religious feelings it would be employed, and above all in the monuments of the dead laid to rest in hope of a joyous resurrection through the victory of the Cross. As a matter of fact, our earliest Christian cross-forms are the disguised crosses of the catacombs, and in spite of every outbreak of bigotry against other uses of the symbol, it has never been entirely abandoned for such purposes. Preaching crosses and market crosses might fall into ruin, and roods and crucifixes be wantonly destroyed, but the Cross, carved in stone or cut on stone above the grave, is found in all ages, though not so frequently in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as before or since.

The first cross said to have been raised in the Kingdom of Northumbria, was that wooden one which S. Oswald, the King and Martyr, planted with his own hands on the eve of the battle of Hevenfelth in 635. This, originally a sign of the cause for which Oswald sought to reclaim his realm, became a memorial of the Christian victory, and was still preserved as such in the time of the Venerable Bede, who tells us that "the place is shown to this day, and held in great veneration."

Another memorial of battle was the famous Neville's Cross, near Durham, erected to mark the spot where Ralph Neville, in October, 1346, defeated the Scottish invaders. This, according to ancient accounts, was a singularly dignified structure, with a crucifixion beneath a stone canopy at the top, and a series of figures at the base, the whole being raised on half-a-dozen steps.

The greater number of our memorial crosses, however, preserve the memory, as was above indicated, of persons rather than of events; and amongst the earliest of these is a very ancient example of the so-called runic type in the Parish Church of Leeds. It is curiously wrought with human figures, difficult now to name with any certainty, and with several fine specimens of the varied and intricate scrolls so popular with the early stone-carvers of the north. It is supposed to be a monument to Onlaf G.o.dfreyson, who died about 941.

Travellers in the Alps will be familiar with the memorials, pathetic in their simplicity, of those mountaineers and wayfarers who have met sudden destruction beneath the overwhelming avalanche; ever and anon the rustic cross of wood is met with, marked with the initials of the dead and with the letters "P. I.," or perhaps the words in full, _Perit ici_. Spain, too, has her wooden crosses scattered along her most lonely roads and hillsides, or by the forest pathway; memorials, these, however, of more sombre tragedies, telling where the brigand or the highwayman struck down his victim.

The great type of the permanent memorial cross amongst us in England has been supplied by the devotion of Edward I. to his Queen Eleanor, and any land might well have been proud of the splendid series of crosses which he raised to her memory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORTHAMPTON CROSS.]

Queen Eleanor died at Hardeby, in Nottinghamshire, on November 28th, 1291, her husband being at the time in the north, entering upon a Scottish campaign. The body was embalmed; and as the solemn procession, which the King joined ere its start, made its slow way to Westminster, a spot was chosen at each halting place, on which a monument was to be raised. The total number of these is not quite certain, but the following is probably a complete list of them, namely:--Lincoln (where those parts of the body removed in the embalming were buried in the Minster), Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony-Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, S. Alban's, Waltham, West Cheap, and Charing. All have now disappeared except those at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham; and these three survivors, singularly enough, ill.u.s.trate three distinct styles of construction, the ground plan of the first being a triangle, of the second an octagon, and of the last a hexagon.

With so many crosses varying so largely in design it is probable that there were several architects, but not many names have come down to us; John de la Battaile is said to have designed the one at Northampton, and Pietro Cavallini the Waltham one, Alexander of Abingdon, and William de Ireland executing the work. All the existing crosses have several statutes of the Queen, so that we may conclude that this was a feature common to the whole series; and all were adorned with the arms of England, Castile, and Ponthieu. The design in each case is beautiful, and the detailed carving, whether in the diapering of the surface, or its enrichment with flowers, crockets, and other architectural features, both elaborate and exquisite. Charing Cross, the cross of "the beloved Queen" (cher reine), the last of the series, more nearly approached the Northampton Cross than either of the other two which remain, but its plan was hexagonal. Not a trace or a description of the original condition of most of the other crosses has been handed down to us.

Geddington Cross is in a singularly perfect state, wanting only its upper member with the actual cross. That at Northampton is similarly truncated.

In the reign of Queen Anne a new cross, quite out of keeping with the rest of the design was placed upon the latter by the local justices of the places, who also adorned its faces with sundials; these have happily been again removed. Waltham Cross, which had become seriously decayed, was restored early in the present century, and again more carefully and satisfactorily in 1887 as a memorial of the jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEDDINGTON CROSS.]

The Cheapside Cross was renewed in 1486 by the citizens of London, and again in 1600. In the excitement of the religious ferment of the following century it was a great sufferer, all the images on it being broken in 1581, and again, "with profane indignity" in 1596. Its final destruction took place in 1643 under an order of the Long Parliament, which decreed the demolition of all crosses. Both this and, it would appear, the earlier attacks upon it, were the work of a fanatical minority merely, which could command but little popular sympathy, for Sir Robert Harlow, who had charge of the work of destruction, brought with him to the city a troop of horse and two companies of foot to protect the workmen from the rage of the citizens. The Cross at Charing was probably removed at the same time. Of the fate of the others we have no record; some perhaps crumbled with decay, and were neglected, others doubtless met a fate similar to that of their London sisters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PURITANS DESTROYING CHEAPSIDE CROSS.]

The Waltham Cross has proved the most suggestive to architects of subsequent times; amongst other instances the Crimean Cross, near Westminster Abbey, has been formed on its design. Sir G. Gilbert Scott drew inspiration from the Northampton Cross for the erection of the Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford; and near Sheffield is one which perhaps follows, though at an immense distance, the type at Geddington. This is the memorial to the four hundred victims, of the terrible epidemic of cholera which visited Sheffield in 1832. This cross, the foundation-stone of which was laid by James Montgomery, the poet, is chiefly interesting as one of the earliest instances of the reviving taste and feeling for this specially appropriate form of monument. Another Memorial Cross, whose n.o.ble size and dignified proportions, when compared with the one last named, give ample evidence of the artistic growth which has accompanied this growth of feeling, is the S. Andrew's Cross, at Plymouth.

Two crosses of a different type to the Eleanor crosses are those at Newark and at Wedmore. The first, which consists of a tall shaft on a flight of bold, hexagonal steps, was erected by the d.u.c.h.ess of Norfolk, as a memorial of her husband, John Viscount Beaumont, who fell at the battle of Towton Moor in 1461. The present head of the cross is modern. The Wedmore Cross, sometimes called "Jeffrey's Cross," commemorates the unfortunate country-folk of Somersetshire, who fell in Monmouth's rebellion, or were butchered by the brutal Jeffreys afterwards.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROSSES AT SANDBACH, CHESHIRE.]

Probably, could we but decipher the allusions intended by their sculptures, we should find that most of our ancient carved crosses were originally memorials. Almost certainly the two shafts at Sandbach, in Cheshire, are such. These, which are amongst the most valuable relics of early art in this country, dating probably from the eighth, or even from the seventh century, were broken into many pieces and scattered over the district as doorsteps, gate-posts, and what not, until collected and most carefully restored by Colonel Forde, the lord of the Manor. The larger of these two columns, each of which has lost its cruciform head, is covered with sculptures of sacred subjects taken from the New Testament; we have the annunciation of S. Elizabeth, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the trial and crucifixion of our Lord, the apocalyptic emblems of the four evangelists, and other sacred scenes and persons. The carvings on the smaller cross are of a secular character, and are supposed to represent events connected with the marriage of Peda, King of Mercia, to Alchfleda, daughter of Oswy, King of Northumbria, and his baptism, on which as a condition that marriage depended; most of the work is now inexplicable, referring to scenes of which all other records are lost. The stones of which these columns are composed are of the hardest and most durable sort, and a perfect enthusiasm of destruction must have been required to tear them down and break them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IONA CROSS.]

The Scottish island, the famous home of S. Columba, has several note-worthy examples. They are of the so-called runic design, covered for the most part with very elegant carvings, and form the most interesting series of relics left to us in that cradle of northern Christianity. None of them date back so far as the days of the great Abbot, whose name is so interwoven with the history of Iona, yet they are very ancient and characteristic. Gathered about Reilig Odhrain, the burial-place of the isle, they bear eloquent testimony to the sanct.i.ty of the spot, to which kings and chieftains were brought for sepulchre even from far off Norway.

One of these, and perhaps the most familiar, stands on three roughly-hewn steps overlooking the sea; its ornamentation consisting of a series of circles. Abbot Mackinnon's Cross is now headless; the shaft is covered with a scroll beautifully designed of conventional leaves, and bears an inscription, recording the date of its erection, 1489. S. Martin's Cross is near the ruined cathedral, and is also carved in graceful scrolls in which the figures of snakes and other creatures are introduced.

Monasterboice, or the Monastery of Boethius, a bishop who died in 521, situated in county Louth, has a number of crosses, several of which are in excellent preservation. The Great Cross, as it is called, stands twenty-two feet in height, and is on the south side of the church. A second example, which is also near the church, has been described as "the most beautiful specimen of Celtic stone-work now in existence," this is the Cross of Muiredach. It is covered with carvings of scriptural scenes, and bears on the front the inscription (in Erse), "Pray for Muiredach, by whom this Cross was made." The venerable builder was Abbot of Armagh, and died in 923 or 924. Drumcliff, near Sligo, and many other places in Ireland also possess most interesting crosses.