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'In Me Porto Crucem': a New Light on the Lost St Margaret's Crux Nigra

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'In Me Porto Crucem': a New Light on the Lost St Margaret's Crux Nigra © The Author(s) 2020. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ‘In me porto crucem’: a new light on the lost St Margaret’s crux nigra Francesco Marzella Abstract St Margaret of Scotland owned a reliquary containing a relic of the True Cross known as crux nigra. Both Turgot, Margaret’s biographer, and Aelred of Rievaulx, who spent some years at the court of Margaret’s son, King David, mention the reliquary without offering sufficient information on its origin. The Black Rood was probably lost or destroyed in the sixteenth century. Some lines written on the margins of a twelfth- century manuscript containing Aelred’s Genealogia regum Anglorum can now shed a new light on this sacred object. The mysterious lines, originally written on the Black Rood or more probably on the casket in which it was contained, claim that the relic once belonged to an Anglo-Saxon king, and at the same time they seem to convey a signifi- cant political message. In his biography of St Margaret of Scotland,1 Turgot († 1115),2 at the time prior of Durham, mentioned an object that was particularly dear to the queen. It was a cross known as crux nigra. In chapter XIII of his Vita sanctae Margaretae, Turgot tells how the queen wanted to see it for the last time when she felt death was imminent: 3 Ipsa quoque illam, quam Nigram Crucem nominare, quamque in maxima semper ven- eratione habere consuevit, sibi afferri præcepit. Sed cum loculus, in quo fuerat inclusa, citius aperiri non posset, regina graviter ingemiscens, ait: ‘O nos miseros! O culpabiles! ulterius sanctæ crucis non merebimur aspectum.’ Quandoque tamen de loculo pro- latam, eique allatam cum reverentia suscepit, complecti, deosculari, oculos, faciem illa significare crebrius studuit. Jamque, frigescente toto corpore, nihilominus tamen ipsa semper orabat; et quinquagesimum Psalmum ex ordine decantans, crucem interim sibi ante oculos statuens, utraque manu tenebat.4 1 On St Margaret of Scotland, see C. Keene, Saint Margaret, Queen of the Scots: a Life in Perspective (New York, 2013). See also R. Rushforth, St Margaret’s Gospel-Book: the Favourite Book of an Eleventh-Century Queen of Scots (Oxford, 2007). 2 On Turgot’s life and career, see e.g. A W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: the Church of Durham 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 249–51. 3 Latin text from Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et Collectanea, ed. J. Hodgson Hinde, Surtees Soc. 51 (Durham, 1868), I, 252–3. 4 ‘Moreover, she asked that a cross, called the Black Cross, which she always held in the greatest veneration, should be brought to her. There was some delay in opening the chest in which it 351 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 30 Sep 2021 at 11:36:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675119000103 Francesco Marzella Turgot does not tell much about the relic and the reliquary. For example, he does not explain why it was called nigra crux, even though we can easily suppose it was due to the dark colour of its wood. What we learn from Turgot is that Margaret had a great devotion towards it – as demonstrated by her final will to see and touch the relic before dying, as an extreme act of veneration for the cross – and that the cross was kept in a loculus,5 a casket, that could be opened to extract the relic and venerate it. It is worth mentioning that in the abridg- ment of the Life of St Margaret in John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae (also known as Nova legenda Anglie)6 the reliquary is called Crucem Scotie nigram,7 the Black Rood of Scotland, and this suggests that the personal devotion of the saintly queen for this relic, as much prestigious as mysterious, was at some point so widely spread that the relic itself became a national symbol. Nevertheless, although stressing the importance of this holy object, Turgot – who being the chaplain of Queen Margaret surely had the chance to see the reliquary – does not add any information about its aspect and, most of all, its provenance and origin. A later text offers us more details. In the part of the Genealogia Regum Anglorum devoted to the pious life of Margaret’s son, David of Scotland, now known as De uita David regis,8 in paragraph X, Aelred tells how David imitated his mother when he was about to die. As the queen did, when his sickness got worse David wanted to be brought to the oratory to attend his last mass, and then asked to see the reliquary. This is how Aelred described the sacred object: 9 Igitur clericorum atque militum manibus in oratorium deportatus, post missarum sol- lemnia, uenerandam sibi crucem, quam nigram uocant, produci sibi petiit adorandam. Est autem crux illa longitudinem habens palme de auro purissimo mirabili opere fabri- cata, que in modum thece clauditur et aperitur. Cernitur in ea quedam dominice crucis was kept, during which the queen, sighing deeply, exclaimed, “O unhappy that we are! O guilty that we are! Shall we not be permitted once more to look upon the Holy Cross!” When at last it was got out of the chest and brought to her, she received it with reverence, and did her best to embrace it and kiss it, and several times she signed herself with it. Although every part of her body was now growing cold, still as long as the warmth of life throbbed at her heart she continued steadfast in prayer. She repeated the whole of the Fiftieth Psalm, and placing the cross before her eyes, she held it there with both her hands.’ See W. Forbes-Leith, The Life of St Margaret, Queen of Scotland by Turgot, Bishop of St Andrews (Dunfermline, 1980), p. 25. 5 The same word is used in the Itinerarium Egeriae (37, 1) to describe the casket containing the lignum crucis: ‘affertur loculus argenteus deauratus, in quo est lignum sanctum crucis, aperitur et profertur, ponitur in mensa tam lignum crucis quam titulus’. 6 See Nova Legenda Anglie: as collected by John of Tynemouth, John Capgrave, and others, ed. C. Horstman (Oxford, 1901), vol. 2, p. 174. 7 See also the apparatus of Hinde’s edition on p. 252. 8 See Aelredi Rievallensis Opera hagiographica et historica, ed. D. Pezzini, CCCM 3 (Turnhout, 2017), 78*–91*. 9 Latin text ibid. pp. 16–17. 352 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 30 Sep 2021 at 11:36:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675119000103 ‘In me porto crucem’: a new light on the lost St Margaret’s crux nigra portio, sicut sepe multorum miraculorum argumento probatum est, Saluatoris nostri imaginem habens de ebore decentissime sculptam, et aureis distinctionibus mirabiliter decoratam. Hanc religiosa regina Margareta, huius regis mater, que de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum extitit oriunda, allatam in Scotiam, quasi munus heredi- tarium transmisit ad filios. Hanc igitur crucem, omni Scotorum genti non minus terri- bilem quam amabilem, cum rex deuotissime adorasset, cum multis lacrimis peccatorum confessionum premissa, exitum suum celestium mysteriorum perceptione muniuit.10 Aelred makes a distinction between the golden cross, the uenerandam crucem etc., and the relic in it. Strictly speaking, in this passage the name nigra crux seems to apply to the cross-shaped reliquary only – uenerandam (...) crucem (...) est autem crux illa (...) cernitur in ea all grammatically refer to the first cross, called nigra, namely the reliquary – but Aelred here is quite ambiguous and it seems more than plausible that the name designates the whole object (the reliquary and relic kept inside). After all, the firstueneranda crux is golden, so why should it be called nigra? We can suppose the name initially designated the relic and then also the reliquary contain- ing it.11 Nevertheless, there is much we learn from Aelred’s description. Dimensions. The reliquary was the length of a palm, that means approximately 7.5 cm.12 A small measure, much smaller than that of comparable examples coming from Britain, like the Anglo-Saxon reliquary cross kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum (height: 18.5 cm) or the Brussels cross (46.5 cm) attributed to a certain Drahmal. Too small to be a processional cross, it was not even a hanging cross: both Turgot and Aelred suggest that the precious object was occasionally held in its owner’s hands to be venerated. 10 ‘He was therefore carried to the oratory on the hands of the clerics and soldiers, and after the solemnity of the mass he asked that the venerable cross that people call “black” be brought for him to adore. This cross, the length of the palm of the hand, was made with surpassing skill out of pure gold; it opens and closes like a box. In it can be seen a portion of the Lord’s cross, as has been often proved by the evidence of the many miracles. It bears the image of our Saviour carved from the most beautiful ivory and is marvellously adorned with golden ornaments. The devout Queen Margaret, the king’s mother, who sprang from the royal seed of the English and Hungarians, passed on to her sons as a hereditary gift this cross that she had brought to Scotland.
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