The Ruthwell Cross And Its Story With Seven Illustrations

The Ruthwell Cross is one of the finest Anglo-Saxon high crosses that have come down to us. The longest epigraphic text in the Old English Runes Corpus is inscribed on two sides of the monument: it forms an alliterative poem, in which the Cross itself narrates the crucifixion episode. Parts of the inscription are irrevocably lost. This study establishes a historico-cultural context for the Ruthwell Cross’s texts and sculptures. It shows that The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem is an integral part of a Christian artefact but also an independent text. Although its verses match closely with lines of The Dream of the Rood in the Vercelli Book, a comparative analysis gives new insight into their complex relationship. An annotated transliteration of the runes offers intriguing information for runologists. Detailed linguistic and metrical analyses finally yield a new reconstruction of the lost runes. All in all, this study takes a fresh look at the Ruthwell Cross and provides the first scholarly edition of the reconstructed Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem—one of the earliest religious poems of Anglo-Saxon England. It will be of interest to scholars and students of historical linguistics, medieval English literature and culture, art history, and archaeology.

The Ruthwell Cross, a late seventh-or eighth-century high cross in the kirk at Ruthwell in the Scottish Borders, is one of the most intriguing examples of sculpture to survive from the early Middle Ages. With its Latin inscriptions, a Runic poem related to the "Dream of the Rood," and an extensive program of finely carved images, the cross has long attracted the interest of scholars from a variety of disciplines. Bringing together papers delivered at a conference sponsored by the Index of Christian Art in Princeton in 1990, this illustrated volume addresses some of the most debated issues surrounding this major literary and artistic monument of Anglo-Saxon culture. The volume begins with an introduction to the historiography of the cross by Brendan Cassidy. Robert T. Farrell discusses the fate of the cross from the seventeenth century, its current state of preservation, and its reconstruction; David Howlett uncovers patterns of significance in the Latin and Runic inscriptions; Douglas MacLean suggests the most likely date for the cross on the basis of contemporary historical events; Paul Meyvaert addresses the message of the iconographic program in the light of the theology and religious beliefs of the time. The volume also contains an extensive bibliography and the complete series of sixteenth-to nineteenth-century drawings and engravings of the entire cross and of its parts.

The Ruthwell Cross is one of the finest Anglo-Saxon high crosses that have come down to us. The longest epigraphic text in the Old English Runes Corpus is inscribed on two sides of the monument: it forms an alliterative poem, in which the Cross itself narrates the crucifixion episode. Parts of the inscription are irrevocably lost. This study establishes a historico-cultural context for the Ruthwell Cross’s texts and sculptures. It shows that The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem is an integral part of a Christian artefact but also an independent text. Although its verses match closely with lines of The Dream of the Rood in the Vercelli Book, a comparative analysis gives new insight into their complex relationship. An annotated transliteration of the runes offers intriguing information for runologists. Detailed linguistic and metrical analyses finally yield a new reconstruction of the lost runes. All in all, this study takes a fresh look at the Ruthwell Cross and provides the first scholarly edition of the reconstructed Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem—one of the earliest religious poems of Anglo-Saxon England. It will be of interest to scholars and students of historical linguistics, medieval English literature and culture, art history, and archaeology.

The function of images in the major illustrated English poetic works from the Anglo-Saxon period to the early fifteenth century is the primary concern of this book. Hilmo argues that the illustrations have not been sufficiently understood because modern judgments about their artistic merit and fidelity to the literary texts have got in the way of a historical understanding of their function. The author here proves that artists took their work seriously because images represented an invisible order of reality, that they were familiar with the vernacular poems, and that they were innovative in adapting existing iconographies to guide the ethical reading process of their audience. To provide a theoretical basis for the understanding of early monuments, artefacts, and texts, she examines patristic opinions on image-making, supported by the most authoritative modern sources. Fresh emphasis is given to the iconic nature of medieval images from the time of the iconoclastic debates of the 8th and 9th centuries to the renewed anxiety of image-making at the time of the Lollard attacks on images. She offers an important revision of the reading of the Ruthwell Cross, which changes radically the interpretation of the Cross as a whole. Among the manuscripts examined here are the Caedmon, Auchinleck, Vernon, and Pearl manuscripts. Hilmo's thesis is not confined to overtly religious texts and images, but deals also with historical writing, such as Layamon's Brut, and with poetry designed ostensibly for entertainment, such as the Canterbury Tales. This study convincingly demonstrates how the visual and the verbal interactively manifest the real "text" of each illustrated literary work. The artistic elements place vernacular works within a larger iconographic framework in which human composition is seen to relate to the activities of the divine Author and Artificer.Whether iconic or anti-iconic in stance, images, by their nature, were a potent means of influencing the way an English author's words, accessible in the vernacular, were thought about and understood within the context of the theology of the Incarnation that informed them and governed their aesthetic of spiritual function. This is the first study to cover the range of illustrated English poems from the Anglo-Saxon period to the early 15th century.

The Dream of the Rood is a poem that has entranced generations of scholars. It is one of the greatest religious poems in English literature, the work of a nameless poet of superb genius. Immediately attractive, its poetic content is readily accessible to the modern reader, being in the mainstream of Western religious thought. Representative of the Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon culture, drawing on both visual and doctrinal motifs, it provides a ready introduction to its own intellectual and artistic milieu. This is underlined by intimate links with the Ruthwell Cross, the documentary context of the earlier version, and itself often regarded as one of the finest monuments of the Anglo-Saxon Age. This edition presents a conservative text with variant readings described in the notes. In his introduction Professor Swanton describes the Vercelli Book, in which the full text of The Dream of the Rood is found, and gives an account of the Ruthwell Cross, the sources for which are scattered and not normally familiar to students of Old English. The relationship between the two texts, the doctrine behind the poem and its style and structure are also discussed. The edition includes extensive notes and a glossary.