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THE RUTHWELL CROSS and the DREAM of the ROOD Signposts

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THE RUTHWELL CROSS and the DREAM of the ROOD Signposts 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 247 Studies in Spirituality 17, 247-266. doi: 10.2143/SIS.17.0.2024651 10.2143/SIS.16.0.2017789 © 2007 by Studies in Spirituality. All rights reserved. DOMENICO PEZZINI THE RUTHWELL CROSS AND THE DREAM OF THE ROOD Signposts for Pilgrims SUMMARY — This essay deals with a monument, the Ruthwell Cross, and two connected poems, one short carved on the stone cross, and another much longer known as the Dream of the Rood extant in a codex presently at Vercelli (Italy). Through an analysis of the iconographic programme of the sculpture and the texts of the two poems, I try to describe their global interconnected meaning under the heading of a dynamic idea of Christian life conceived as a ‘pilgrimage of faith and desire’. In this journey the cross becomes a signpost indicating both doctrine and moral life, the ‘sacrament’ of God’s love and the ‘exemplum’ of how the believer should respond to God’s action. All this is illustrated through a reading of the figurative pan- els of the monument, the short stanzas of the poem carved on it, and the more diffused elaboration of the Dream of the Rood. In these three ‘texts’, created in a context of monastic mysticism and missionary fervour, words and images admirably combine to preach the gospel of the cross, in which death and life, sorrow and joy are but the two sides of the Paschal Mystery which every Christian is invited to re-enact in his/her daily life. This essay deals with a monument, the Ruthwell Cross, and a poem known as The Dream of the Rood. They are connected not only by having the cross as their subject, but also by the fact that the stone Cross has a long runic inscription which corresponds to part of the poem. What I propose here is to read the three works, the sculpture, the inscription and the poem, in close connection, consid- ering them eminently as different but complementary versions of the biblical texts related to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. Read in this light, they provide a series of signposts to direct the life of the Christian believer, seen as a ‘pilgrimage’ of faith and desire, towards the heavenly city. In few words, they present the Cross as via gloriae, a way to glory, they mark at the same time the end of journey and the practices needed to reach it, they suggest the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, the prize to be conquered and the struggle required to obtain it. I am deeply aware that it is not easy to add a new contribution to the lot of scholarship which has been showered upon the Ruthwell Cross and the Dream of the Rood for years. In a 1992 publication a bibliography on the Ruthwell Cross, 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 248 248 DOMENICO PEZZINI which ‘does not claim to be comprehensive’, and where the poem is not particu- larly considered, lists no less than 450 items.1 This number is impressive if only we consider that the Dream of the Rood has no more than 156 lines, and the dis- proportion between the text and its criticism is clear enough in the standard edi- tion by M. Swanton where the poem takes only 7 of the 150 pages of the book.2 Both the cross and the poem have proved to be a rich mine for a wide variety of critical and interpretative approaches, including art and liturgy, patristic theology and missionary activity of the Irish monks. My aim is not properly to offer new insights, for which I will refer to specific studies, but more exactly to present a global view of the three works gathered under the heading of the spiritual life, con- sidering them, as I have marked in my title, as ‘signposts’ meant to direct the mind and the heart towards the heavenly kingdom. While previous minutely detailed studies will be taken into account, I prefer to outline a concise general pattern forming a clear design which risks being blurred under the heap of too many references, admirable and necessary as they are. In doing so I will remain in the field I am most familiar with, that of textual analysis, which I will extend to both the monument and the ‘two’ poems. In fact the Ruthwell Cross, as actu- ally any work of art, can be read as a ‘book’, and the more so since it contains both words and images. On the other hand the poem is a well-wrought ‘sermon’ using at least four literary genres,3 but it is also interspersed with a host of images either explicit or implicit in the highly iconic character of the words used. Before proceeding let us summarily describe the three objects under consideration. The first is a monumental Cross erected at Ruthwell probably in the first half of the 8th century,4 the second is a poem of sixteen lines (or, possibly, sixteen lines 1 Brendan Cassidy & Katherine Kiefer, ‘A bibliography of the Ruthwell Cross’, in: Brendan Cas- sidy (Ed.), The Ruthwell Cross, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, 167-199. 2 Michael Swanton, The dream of the rood, Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1987. 3 Four different ways of ‘preaching’ the cross can be identified in the poem: 1. a vision using a mainly symbolic language (ll. 1-27); 2. the narrative of the crucifixion (ll. 28-77); 3. the homily of the cross giving the theological meaning of the event (ll. 78-121); and finally 4. the response of the dreamer in terms of invocation and prayer (ll. 122-156): see Domenico Pezzini, ‘Teologia e poesia: la sintesi del poema anglosassone “Sogno della croce”’, in: Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lom- bardo 106 (1972), 268-286: 274, where I discuss earlier different ways of sectioning the poem. 4 The problem has been thoroughly discussed by Douglas Mac Lean, ‘The dating of the Ruth- well Cross’, in: The Ruthwell Cross, 49-70. His conclusion is that it was about 740 that ‘a dusty band of stonemasons, trained at Jarrow, trudged along Hadrian’s Wall to the headwaters of Sol- way Firth and set up their masterpiece at Ruthwell, whether they made the Bewcastle cross along the way, or instead while returning home’ (p. 70). The very similar Bewcastle cross, erected some thirty miles east of Ruthwell by the same school of sculptors is often studied in connection with the Ruthwell cross: see Éamonn O’Carragáin, ‘A liturgical interpretation of the Bewcastle Cross’, in: Myra Stokes & T.L. Burton (Eds.), Medieval literature and antiqui- ties: Studies in honour of Basil Cottle, Cambridge: Brewer, 1987, 15-42, partic. 36-40. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 249 THE RUTHWELL CROSS AND THE DREAM OF THE ROOD 249 of a poem) devoted to the crucifixion which are carved in runic characters on the narrower lateral sides of the shift; the third is another poem of 156 lines, known as the Dream of the Rood, copied in the 10th century and preserved in a codex now at Vercelli together with twenty three anonymous Old English prose homilies and five other poems. The connection between the monument and the book comes from the fact that the short poem carved on the cross is literally part of the longer poem. Whether this is a quotation from the Dream, or on the contrary the Dream is an expansion of the original nucleus attested in the short poem is a question which I do not intend to examine here.5 A main point should be made in this context. The very style of Anglo-Saxon poetry, where the lines are based on short self-contained phrases and sentences linked by alliteration and cut by a regular caesura, allows many processes of selection and recomposition with no apparent difficulty.6 The two possibilities are thus to be taken into account, either from the long poem to the short one, and/or viceversa. I think that the best way to deal with this problem is to consider the short poem as we can reasonably read it now something complete in itself, and to examine it accordingly. In fact, if the carver selected and quoted lines from a longer poem (which is not necessarily the Dream as we have it now), he did exactly what we do when we analyse a text by select- ing, stressing and examining a few passages which we consider more important or more meaningful. That is the reason why I think that, all the historical prob- lems set apart, the Ruthwell crucifixion poem is worth an analysis of itself. 1. THE RUTHWELL CROSS – AN ILLUSTRATION OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE AND LIFE It is well known that in the early Middle Ages the crucifixion was rarely repre- sented as a death scene: even when not dressed as a pontifex, with a regal crown on his head, Christ was in any case portrayed as a living body, as shown in his wide open eyes. More often crosses were treated either as symbols, preferably glo- rious, covered with gold and gems, or as ‘theological summaries’ of the history of salvation by the selection of figures or events recorded on the cross itself. A 5 A good summary of the question can be found in Éamonn O’Carragáin, ‘The Ruthwell cru- cifixion poem in its iconographic and liturgical context’, in: Peritia 6-7 (1987-88), 1-71: 5-9, where the conclusion is that ‘first, the Ruthwell crucifixion poem has a coherent structure and can be appreciated in its own right as a poem of considerable power; and second, that on the cross the poem and the iconography are complementary’ (p.
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