The Cross as an Ornament of the Church and its Precincts.

A very natural sequence from the custom, which, as we have seen, early arose of using the sign of the cross in almost all forms of blessing, was the fancy for making articles of church furniture cruciform, or of marking them with a cross. As a matter of fact the only place where the sacred sign might not be placed was on the floor, lest anyone should trample on it; an exception to this rule, in the blue cross on the ground at the west end of Durham Cathedral, was intended as a boundary, and is therefore an exception only in the letter, not in the spirit, since it was assumed that no one would step on or over it.

Scarcely had Christianity achieved its victory over the empire than churches began to arise, which proclaimed by their shape the faith to the service of which they were dedicated. Those built by Constantine himself at Rome, the ancient S. Peter’s, S. Paul-without-the-walls, and S. Maria Maggiore, were all cruciform, as also was the splendid Church of the Apostles which he built at Constantinople; and this ground-plan, whether the form chosen were the Greek or the Latin Cross, began, especially in cathedrals and other large churches, to supplant the simple parallelogram of the basilica.Evagrius tells us that the church which enshrined the pillar on which S. Simeon Stylites practised his austerities was “constructed in the form of a cross, adorned with colonnades on the four sides.” S. Edward the Confessor is reputed to have been the first to introduce cruciform churches into England, in the erection of his famous abbey at Westminster.

The same historian just named, Evagrius, who wrote in the sixth century, records that Chosroes, who, though a heathen, had a Christian wife, gave to Gregory, Patriarch of Antioch, among other things, “a cross to be fixed upon the holy table;” and Sozomen, earlier still, refers to “crosses lying upon the altar.” The primitive ages, however, knew nothing, unless in an exceptional case, of any permanent ornaments upon their altars, yet a cross seems to have been sometimes hung above, or placed beside them, in very early days. In this, as in other matters already dealt with, the suggestion rather than the representation of the Saviour’s sacrifice probably came first in the development of Christian art. Thus S. Paulinus of Nola, writing about the year 400, describes a cross in front of an altar erected by S. Felix; it had beside it the Alpha and Omega, around it a crown or nimbus, and a white lamb was placed beneath. The cross did not become an indispensible ornament of the altar until the tenth century, and down to the fourteenth century it was invariably brought in, with the two candles, by acolytes immediately before mass, and removed at its conclusion.

The Venerable Bede gives one of the earliest, if not absolutely the first, mention of an altar cross in England, when he relates how Paulinus, when forced in 633 to retire from Northumbria into Kent, took with him “a large gold cross and a golden chalice dedicated to the use of the altar.” S. Cuthbert a little later erected one in his oratory at Lindisfarne, and Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, speaks in one of his verses of “a cross at the altar gleaming with plates of gold and silver, and decked with gems.” Coming to later times, it is on record that Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester from 1006 to 1014, gave a splendid gold cross to the altar of S. Etheldreda in the cathedral, and that S. Margaret of Scotland presented to a church a crucifix, on which was a figure of pure gold.

The foreign Protestants, whose interference was so manifest in most of the extremer courses taken by the English Reformers, held very strong views as to the unlawfulness of altar crosses, and especially of crucifixes. Writing from Zurich on March 20th, 1560, Peter Martyr says, “to have the image of the Crucifix upon the holy table at the administration of the Lord’s Supper, I do not count among things indifferent, nor would I recommend any man to distribute the sacraments with that rite, ... neither Master Bullinger nor myself count such things as matters of indifference, but we reject them as forbidden.” “Master Bullinger” speaks for himself in a letter of May 1st, 1566. “I could never approve,” he says, “of your officiating, if so commanded, at an altar laden, rather than adorned, with the image of Him that was crucified.” The matter was thought sufficiently important to form the subject of a conference, as we learn from a letter written by Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, to Peter Martyr. “This controversy about the Crucifix,” he writes, “is now at its height.... A disputation upon this subject will take place to-morrow. The moderators will be persons selected by the council. The disputants on our side are the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cox; and on the other, Grindal, the bishop of London, and myself.” The discussion took place in the spring of 1560, and apparently resulted in favour of the Protestants, although the sympathies of the Queen, as we learn from a letter addressed by Sampson, Bishop of Worcester, to Martyr, were on the other side.

The directing force in this iconoclastic movement was evidently Genevan, and it would appear to have been Genevan only, for it is well known that the Lutheran Churches of Germany retain the Crucifix above the altar. In England, also, the attempt was only temporally successful. At the coronation of Charles I. a crucifix was placed on the altar, and the use of at least a cross is now practically universal.

Without question the most striking cross used in the decoration of a church is the great Crucifix, or rood, placed on the chancel screen, generally with the figures of the Blessed Virgin and S. John the Evangelist as supporters. Naturally an ornament of this kind presupposes not only a certain fearlessness on the part of the church in publicly displaying her sacred symbols, but also a command of the resources of wealth and an advanced state of art. We are therefore quite prepared to find that the rood was not a very early addition to the adornment of a church. We read, indeed, of some comparatively early instances in which the figure of the Crucified Lord was painted on the ceiling of the choir, or of the apsidal sanctuary; an example of which exists in Ravenna, in which the Saviour is robed in eucharistic vestments, and is accompanied by S. Michael and S. Gabriel. The cross upon the screen, however, is not traced further back than the eighth century, and the rood with its full complement of figures and lights can claim only a 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 life and glory to us, though to the Redeemer a tree of shame and death. On either hand stood figures of the Madonna and of S. John the Divine, and sometimes beneath the cross a smaller effigy of the patron saint of the church was placed. On great festivals a multitude of lights blazed along the rood-loft, which, with all its accessories, became the most impressive object in the church.

A few examples of early rood-screens, with or without the loft, may be quoted. A wooden screen, surmounted by a cross, was erected at Tyre by Paulinus, and a stone one, said to date from the fourth century, still stands at Tepekerman; and a third has been preserved from the time of Justinian in the church of S. Catherine, on Mount Sinai. The Church of the Apostles, Constantinople, had a screen of brass gilt, and S. Sophia’s a jewelled one, which was copied at Novgorod, Kieff, and elsewhere in the East, in the eleventh century.

The uses to which these elevated platforms were put were many and various. Those portions of the more solemn services which it was specially desired that the people should all hear were often declaimed from their summits. At High Mass the Gospel was read thence, a custom which survived in France until the great Revolution. Public notice of the Church’s feasts and fasts was given from the loft, and there the lessons were read. Down to the time of the introduction of pulpits at about the thirteenth century, sermons were preached there. The fine screen, referred to above, in Tattershall Church is corbelled out into a pulpit, and has desks for books designed in the stone balustrade. On occasions of special solemnity antiphons were sung and prayers said there, such as the Gradual and Alleluia, the Prophecies before the Epistle at the Christmas Midnight Mass, and the Passion on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. At Constantinople the Emperors were crowned in the rood-loft, as also were the French Kings till the time of Charles X. in the cathedral at Rheims. Altars were sometimes erected on these screens, and generally one or more was set against their western face.

In England certain roods obtained special celebrity, and became the objects of pilgrimage from all parts of the country; and in some cases the temptation to attract the people at almost any cost proved too much for the ecclesiastics in charge of them, and led to practices which, if truly reported, no one would wish to defend. Such was the Rood of Grace at Boxley Abbey. Archbishop Warham, in a report on the monastic houses, presented to King Henry in 1512, pleads for the preservation of this abbey because the place is “so much sought for from all parts of the realm visiting the Rood of Grace.” The foundation was, nevertheless, condemned, and its revenues were granted in the thirty-second year of Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Wyat. In dismantling the abbey church, the movements of the figure on the rood which, it is alleged, were ascribed to a miracle, were found to be controlled by concealed machinery. “When plucking down the images of the Monastery of Boxley,” writes the commissioner Jeffrey Chambers to Thomas Cromwell, “I found in the image of the Rood of Grace ... certain engines and old wires and sticks.” The whole affair was carried off, and on Sunday, February 24th, 1538, was exhibited to the people at S. Paul’s Cross by Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester, after his sermon. It is only fair to add that it has been claimed that this mechanism was not employed for deception, but that the figure was intended for use in miracle plays. It is a partial support of this view that no one seems to have proceeded against either in the ecclesiastical or the civil courts in connection with the matter, which must surely have been the case had the charge of deception been sincerely made and actually believed.

Other famous roods were the “Rood of Winchester and the very cross at Ludlow,” there was also a noted one at S. Saviour’s, Bermondsey, and another at Chester. The last-named, however, was not in the church, but on the spot called from it the Roodee, or Roodeye. It was here that the football was annually presented to the Mayor for the Easter game at Chester. At Durham was preserved the “Black Rood of Scotland,” a silver crucifix which was blackened by the smoke of the innumerable tapers burnt before it, after it was placed in the northern cathedral.

Charges such as that made concerning the Rood at Boxley were, whether true or false, only too readily welcomed as an excuse for an attack on all roods at the Reformation. That one case in special seems, indeed, to have been made the most of in the controversy. Calfhill refers to it in his answer, published in 1565, to Martial’s book in defence of the Cross; and Peterson, Finch, and Partridge, all English Protestants in correspondence with Geneva, allude to it in their letters.

A general destruction of roods took place in the autumn of 1547, when Heylin tells us “the image of Christ, best known by the name of the rood, together with the images of Mary and John, and all other images in the church of S. Paul, London, were taken down, as also in all other churches in London.” At All Hallows, Staining, the loft itself was pulled down, and the “roodloft hangings” sold for 12s. in 1550.

Under Queen Mary the work of destruction was of course stayed, and in some cases the damage was even repaired. Thus, at the church just named, a new crucifix was purchased in 1554 at the cost of £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 destruction with every mark of violence and indignity was enough. Crucifixes were brought to Smithfield and to S. Paul’s Churchyard, and there broken to pieces and “burnt to ashes, and together with these in some places copes, also vestments, altar-cloaths, etc.” The rood with its images from S. Andrew’s Holborn, was burnt to ashes, and that from S. Margaret’s, Westminster, was destroyed by “cleaving and sawing” it.

Such rage and violence towards the effigy of the Saviour reads more like an account of the ribald and blasphemous paganism of the French Revolution, than a record of the acts of men claiming a burning desire for pure religion. Who can picture a sincerely Christian devotion hacking and hewing at the statue of the Redeemer?

Amongst the magnificent roods destroyed about this time must be reckoned that at S. Mary Hill, London, the figures from which were sold in the reign of Edward VI. The cross was of wood, plated with silver gilt, and the images of silver, and at the base of the cross was a crystal engraved with the Holy name, and the five wounds of the Lord were marked with rubies.

It was, perhaps, in the hope of making assurance doubly sure that the ecclesiastical commissioners on the 10th October, in the third year of Elizabeth, ordered the removal of all rood-lofts. “It is thus decreed and ordered, that the rood-lofts as yet being at this day aforesaid untransposed, shall be so altered that the upper parts of the same, with the soller (loft), be quite taken down unto the upper parts of the vaults and beams, running in length over the said vaults, by putting some convenient crest upon the said beam, towards the church.” That this order was fully carried out the visitation questions of Archbishop Grindal and other similar documents, as well as the state of every ancient screen left to us, clearly show.

It must not, however, be imagined that England has been alone in losing these objects of art and of devotion. Rood-screens, once as commonly found in France as amongst ourselves, are now as commonly absent from the ordinary parish churches, although in many instances suspended crucifixes have to some extent filled their place. The lust for destroying, which was such a passion of the Revolutionary era in that country, is largely answerable for this. The great Abbey of S. Ouen, at Rouen, once possessed a splendid rood-loft, ascended by twin circular stairs; it was pierced by brass gates of elaborate design, and surmounted by a crucifix whose top stood sixty feet from the pavement. It was defaced in 1562 by the French Protestants, or Calvinists, and destroyed by the revolutionary faction in 1791. The Cathedral of Alby still has a fine loft similar to the one which existed at Rouen, and Louvain has one also of great dignity.

In recent years an extraordinary revival of rood-screens, adorned with all their proper and ancient images, and even provided with lofts, has taken place in England. Amongst well-known London churches, S. Peter’s, Eaton Square, has recently been adorned with a fine metal screen surmounted by a cross and the figures of six angels, and S. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, with a complete rood-screen; but instances of this are now indeed common. As an illustration of the revival of the loft, together with the other details of the ancient screen, amongst village churches in the single county of York, Womersley, Cantley, and Sledmere have all in recent years been thus enriched. Certainly few architectural features add more solemnity and dignity to a sacred building than a well-proportioned and well-designed screen, crowned by the representation of the Great Sacrifice.

The marking with a cross by engraving, embroidery, or otherwise of almost all articles used in the sacred offices, calls for little comment, being largely a matter of taste merely. It has long been usual to enrich the stole and maniple with three crosses, one in the centre and one at each end; most of the linen used at the altar is also similarly marked. The old English chasubles usually had a cross on the back in the form of a Y, the Continental ones have a Roman Cross. The “Imitatio Christi” refers to these chasubles, and explains their form thus: the priest “has before him and behind him the sign of the cross of his Lord, that he may continually bear in mind Christ’s Passion. Before him he bears the cross on his chasuble, that he may diligently look at the footsteps of Christ, and fervently endeavour to tread in them. Behind him on his back he is signed with the cross, that he may meekly endure for Christ’s sake any trials which others may bring upon him.” This passage has a literary interest in that it has been imported into the controversy concerning the disputed authorship of that famous book of devotion. The work has been ascribed to Gerson, Chancellor of Paris, as well as to Thomas 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, a simple unadorned hexagon, while the alternate faces of the example at Lanteglos, which is of about the same height, are elaborately carved. The almost cubic head of each is cut into niches, containing a crucifixion and the figures of saints. Other instances of churchyard crosses in Cornwall are found at S. Buryan, S. Levan, Gwinear, S. Erth, Sancreed, S. Paul, Illogan, Lelant, Cury, Ludgran, Gulval, and a few other places. These, for the most part, are roughly hewn crucifixes, of from four to six feet in height; but those at Sancreed and at S. Erth are taller, the latter being a ruder specimen of the type found at S. Ives and Lanteglos, and the former a crucifix of a primitive sort with some simple designs cut on the body of the cross. A good example of the characteristic Cornish cross, of little height and decorated with an interlaced pattern resembling wicker-work, is in the churchyard at S. Columb.

One of the best known crosses in the country is the one in the churchyard of the little village of Eyam, in Derbyshire, celebrated for its tragic experience of the plague. It is a fine specimen of a Saxon cross, with scrolls on the shaft, and figures in the arms and on the centre. It had long lain in fragments in a corner near the church, when John Howard, the philanthropist, seeing it, got it rebuilt; to him, therefore, it may be considered a lasting and fitting memorial. Bakewell, in the same county, has another cross originally of the same type, but now much mutilated.

A very curious example of the Runic cross stands in the churchyard at Nevern, in Pembroke. On a tall and substantial shaft, which slightly tapers towards the top, is placed a small cross surrounded by a circle, the whole being covered with interlaced carvings of a semi-barbaric kind. A very curious form of churchyard cross is seen at Romsey Abbey, a fine late Norman building; a large crucifix of antique type is let into the outside wall of the south transept; the feet of the Redeemer lie side by side, and above is the Father’s hand—marks of antiquity as we have seen.