THE RUTHWELL CROSS and the DREAM of the ROOD Signposts

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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 panels 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, considering 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

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which ‘does not claim to be comprehensive’, and where the poem is not particularly 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, considering 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 actually 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

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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 problems 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 represented 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 glorious, 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 crucifixion 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. 8). 6 The same remark concerns the composition of the various panels of the Ruthwell Cross, which, as we shall see, do not necessarily now correspond to the original order, before the cross was cut in various pieces by the Puritans. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 250

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very good example of this treatment is the world famous 12th century ivory cross coming from Bury St. Edmunds and now at the Cloisters, New York. Apparently, the use of erecting big crosses was typical of the Anglo-Saxon Church in the northern part of Britain, at least from the second part of the 7th century, since ‘building churches in stone and working in stone was a new skill introduced into Northumbria from the Continent in the 670s, the days of Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop’.7 From what is usually called ‘The Age of Bede’ about 1500 fragments of stone crosses remain, and if we consider that probably there were also wood crosses, many more should have existed.8 We read in the Vita Willibaldi that ‘It is a custom among the Saxons to erect, in lands belong- ing to noble and virtuous persons, not a church, but the image of the holy cross, which is dedicated to our Lord and held in great reverence. It is placed on some eminent spot for the convenience of those who wish to pray daily before it’.9 With this in mind, the location of the Ruthwell Cross may be of importance. Whether it was within or, as the similar Bewcastle Cross, outside a church we do not know. The monument is 5.28m. high, and it is not easy to imagine it located in the rather small Anglo-Saxon churches such as we know them. It may have stood in the open air, as the contemporary Bewcastle cross. Paul Meyvaert is one of few who think that it stood ‘at a point in the nave indicating the demar- cation between the portion of the church accessible to the lay congregation and that reserved to the monks’, a thesis which would confirm his reading of the monument as showing on the north side the ‘Vita monastica’, and on the south side the ‘Ecclesia’.10 But he is honest to say that this is only a supposition.11 Farrell and Karkov remark that It is very probable that the cross was originally much closer to the sea than it is now […] It lies at the end of Hadrian’s Wall, with easy communication by land with the monastic centres at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, and a quick direct route by sea to Ireland by way of the Solway Firth. This places the cross at a series of major nexus points with the possibility that it might originally have served as a beacon for those arriving from Ireland.12

7 Paul Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross: Ecclesia and Vita monastica’, in: The Ruthwell Cross, 95-166: 150-151. 8 See Swanton, The dream of the rood, 47. 9 In Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores XV-1, 88. 10 Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 125. This hypothesis implies, as we shall see, a different ‘reconstruction’ of the cross. 11 Ibid., 151. 12 Robert T. Farrell & Catherine Karkov, ‘Deconstruction, and reconstruction of the Ruthwell Cross: Some caveats’, in: The Ruthwell Cross, 35-47: 35. To have a clear idea of the location see the map in this same book, p. 149. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 251

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It is easy to infer from this that the cross could appear at the same time the mark of where Christianity had arrived, a leading signpost for travellers, both in material and spiritual sense, and a continuous invitation to preach the gospel of Christ, which found in the cross its highest point of manifestation and its major driving force to tell around the good news of salvation.

Starting from these considerations, I think, together with other scholars, that the best way to interpret the Ruthwell Cross is to consider it as a ‘preaching’ book, containing a particular summary of the spiritual life, which includes both monastic asceticism and apostolic urgency. I will do this by carefully looking at its iconographic programme. I must warn from the start that there is a wide margin of hypothesis in this discussion, because the Cross, badly damaged by weathering and the disastrous 17th century Puritan fanaticism, stands in not a very good condition, and some of its images are hardly legible, so that this programme can be only suggestively reconstructed. I agree with Robert T. Farrell who says: The current state of the Ruthwell cross, due to the many indignities it has suffered, leads to the inevitable conclusion that any credible assessment of its style, iconography and meaning must accept the sculpture as it exists at present, a much-bat- tered, weathered, and worn partial record of a once magnificent monument. Early representations of the cross are no sure guide to its earlier appearance and, indeed, may be positively inaccurate and misleading.13 Viewed against the artistic background just outlined, the Ruthwell Cross is nei- ther realistic nor symbolic: it belongs more properly to the type of ‘encyclopaedic crosses’, where the cross is used to illustrate some tenets of the Christian doctrine by recalling events of the Old and the New Testament, which may become at the same time examples to be imitated by any follower of Christ. So, on the two broad and principal faces (looking now North and South) of the Cross we have a series of figurative scenes, surrounded by Latin quotations mostly taken from the Bible and used as captions. The two narrower sides (West and East faces) are decorated with a vine scroll inhabited by birds and fantastic animals, and surrounded by borders containing some lines of a poem on the crucifixion written in Old English runes. It may be suggestive to note the intriguing ambiguity inherent to the fact that the runes are carved (but it is not sure whether their carving is contemporary or posterior to the monument)14 on the sides of the Cross where natural life displays its intricacies of leaves and animals on one big stem which could be interpreted as a ‘Tree of Life’,15 while Latin letter and

13 Ibid., 46. 14 The chronological question and the problems presented by the layout of the runes is discussed by O’Carragáin, ‘The Ruthwell crucifixion poem’, 5-9. 15 See Swanton, The dream of the rood, 13. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 252

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language are applied to illustrate the figurative realistic scenes carved on the two broad sides. One would say that here we have symbolism, encapsulated in veg- etal and animal life and mysterious letters, versus reality, to which we should add the choice of connecting the death of Christ with the flowering of a tree on which various kinds of creatures are feeding, a paradox which is at the very cen- tre of the Christian theology of redemption. A very good example of this can be seen in the apse mosaic of San Clemente Basilica in Rome, where the cross is represented as a flowering tree where white doves are peacefully nesting.

The principal face of the Cross, now looking north (N), but originally turned to west, from where (Ireland) pilgrims probably would come, contains scenes which are connected in some way with the desert. Their sequence, read from top to bottom, is: N1 John the Baptist bearing the Lamb of God N2 Christ in majesty adored by beasts N3 The hermits Paul and Anthony breaking bread N4 The Flight into (or Return from) Egypt N5 (Deposition?)16

The southern face (S) presents only gospel scenes, arranged in the following order: S1 Two women embracing: probably Martha and Mary17 S2 The woman wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair (Lk 7:37-38) S3 The healing of the man born blind S4 The Annunciation S5 The Crucifixion18

16 See David Howlett, ‘Inscription and design of the Ruthwell Cross’, in: The Ruthwell Cross, 71- 93: 74. Howlett reads the panels in inverted order, from bottom to top, but I have preferred to follow Swanton’s order running from top to bottom. Howlett’s essay is a careful description and study of the Latin and runic inscriptions on the monument. The hypothesis of a ‘Depo- sition’ in this place, where nothing can be guessed, is supported by the lines forming the fourth part of the crucifixion poem we shall see later, where the body of Christ is laid down from the cross and delivered to his disciples. 17 The scene was also read as a ‘Visitation’ by Meyer Schapiro (‘The religious meaning of the Ruthwell Cross’, in: Art Bulletin 26 (1944), 232-245: 238), Swanton (The dream of the rood, 18), and O’Carragáin (‘The Ruthwell crucifixion poem’, 39), who later changed his opinion (see footnote 27), but David Howlett has convincingly argued that the scene represents ‘Martha and Mary’ (‘Inscription and design of the Ruthwell Cross’, 73-74), followed in this by Mey- vaert (‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 138-140). 18 Paul Meyvaert rearranges the order of the panels by inverting the place of Martha and Mary (S1) with that of John the Baptist (N1), thus creating a different sequence. He also inverts the orientation, so that instead of having the now North correspond to original West, he has it 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 253

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The message of the northern scenes sounds as a clear invitation to the contemplative monastic life of the desert Fathers, involving both hardness and security, both temptation and salvation. All figures can be interpreted according to this double meaning. John the Baptist (N1), the first image at the top, is a typical desert figure, and as such it was recognised as the founder of monasticism, especially in the form of solitary life. He announces the coming of the Lamb of God, an image which alludes both to death and glory, both to the man dying on the Calvary hill and to the triumphant apocalyptic Lamb sitting at the right hand of the throne of God. We immediately see in this scene what I have signalled as the global meaning of the iconographic programme of the cross, an illustration of the Paschal Mystery as life reached by a passage through death, whatever this ‘death’ may mean when translated into Christian vocation. Scene N2, Christ in majesty adored by beasts, directs our attention to the days of the temptation in the desert, at the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, after the Baptism. The presence of the beasts evokes Mark’s gospel, where it is said that when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he ‘was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered unto him’ (Mk 1:13). On the other hand the Latin quotation reads: ‘Jesus Christus iudex aequitatis: bestiae et dracones cognoverunt in deserto salvatorem mundi’ suggesting thus the positive interpretation of the image as indicating Christ’s victory over the devil.19 The combination of these two references implies that the desert is an ambiguous place, where hardship and com- fort, struggle and peace coexist, and even that one is the fruit of the other, as the Latin caption seems to assert in celebrating the desert as the place where the ‘evil’ part of creation is subjugated and drawn to quiet and adoration in a world reconciled by the cross. This icon of reconciliation through the cross evokes the majestic perspective of the Letter to the Ephesians: Now in Christ Jesus you who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even

turned towards East, and viceversa. By this he justifies his reading of the meaning of the cross located in between the choir and the nave: this would imply that the monks staying in the apse faced the ‘desert’ part of the cross (now North / former East), which he calls Side B, seen as the ideal of ‘Vita monastica’, while the congregation gathered in the nave would face the part (now South / former West), called Side A, illustrating ‘Ecclesia’, or Christian life of the faithful: see Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 102-106. 19 The presence of the ‘beasts’ has suggested a double exegetical reading: in one they symbolize the devil assaulting Jesus, in the other they represent the ‘animal’ side of creation now pacified as in a new Eden, where the wild beasts recognise and adore Christ as their king. On this double reading see, among others, Schapiro, ‘The religious meaning of the Ruthwell Cross’, 232- 236. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 254

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the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of two one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby (Eph 2:13-16). Paul Meyvaert quotes a significant passage of an Irish biblical commentator, Cummian, abbot of Clonfert, who, contrary to a well established tradition which reads the Markan mention of wild beasts as signifying the presence of the devil, says that, following the example of Christ, we are led into the desert to conquer evil forces, ‘and then the beasts will be at peace with us, namely when in the inner chamber of our souls we, being cleansed, will grow gentle with the unclean animals, and like Daniel we will lie down with the lions, when the spirit will not be pitted against flesh and blood (Eph 6:12), and the flesh will not lust against the spirit (Gal 5:17)’.20 In the desert the hermits Paul and Anthony break the bread together (N3). As it is well known, the breaking of the bread has Eucharistic connotations, which direct both to the sacrifice of the Calvary (the bread is ‘broken’) and to the desired effect of this sacrifice, the building of a new community based on service and fraternity (the bread is ‘shared’). Paradoxically (but the cross is first and foremost a paradox), the desert where some men try to follow the example of Christ by leading a hard and solitary life becomes the place where to celebrate the joy of brotherhood.21

20 Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 127. It may be of some interest to note, as Meyvaert does, that a text connecting the wild beasts with the desert in the context of the Flight into Egypt, another scene carved on the Ruthwell cross, is found in an incomplete copy of the Psalter (Psalms 39-151) with a Latin commentary and some Irish and Northumbrian glosses, considered to belong to the early 8th century and to derive from a monastery which was part of the paruchia of St. Columba in Northumbria. The manuscript is now Palatinus Lat- inus 68 of the Vatican Library (ibid., 128). 21 Éamonn O’Carragáin has devoted a long study to the scene of the meeting of Paul and Anthony in the Ruthwell Cross, reading it as ‘symbol of the Eucharist’ in the wider context of Irish Crosses and Celtic literary traditions. His conclusion is worth quoting in full: ‘Perhaps one reason for the popularity of the “Paul and Anthony” scene, at Ruthwell and in Celtic lands alike, was that by placing the eucharist in a desert setting it epitomised the importance both of the eucharist and of the eremitic vocation. This desert miracle symbolised the vital role of the eucharist as viaticum: food for the Exodus through the desert towards the “visio pacis”, the heavenly Jerusalem. The “Paul and Anthony” scenes presented the monastic vocation as a paradigm of faith: as a call to risk the desert in order to live on daily bread given from heaven, and in breaking that bread where two or three were gathered together, to know him (at once “Agnus Dei”, “salvatorem mundi” and “iudex aequitatis”) who gave peregrini life and the sight of peace’: see ‘The meeting of Saint Paul and Saint Anthony: Visual and literary uses of a Eucharistic motif’, in: Geróid Mac Niocaill & Patrick F. Wallace (Eds.), Keimelia: Studies in medieval archaeology and history in memory of Tom Delaney, Galway: Galway University Press, 1988, 1- 58: 44. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 255

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The Flight into Egypt (N4), involving a long journey through the desert, may indicate the vocation to take to the wilderness in order to fly from the world and from the new Herods who inhabit it.22 It has been suggested that the scene may be read as a ‘Return from Egypt’,23 meaning in this case the journey towards the promised land. The main point remains, and it is the passage through the desert. The icon of Exodus is in the background, as is clearly stated by Matthew in his gospel, where he mentions the flight in order to quote the realisation of the prophecy: ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’ (Mt 2:15).24 So, the desert is a road to freedom, and it is in the desert that the protection of God is experienced. The exile is but the manifestation of the real condition of men on earth, who are to be thought of as pilgrims on their way towards the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 13:14). As Bede says: ‘He teaches us that we should even now remember that as he saves believers though the waters of baptism – of which the Red Sea was an image – so he expects that after baptism we should continue to live a life of humility, cut off from the deformity of vices. And this aptly designates the secret monastic life of the desert’.25 The monastic vocation, as is known, with its strong eschatological overtones, has at its core the visualisation of earthly life as a pilgrimage. I anticipate here that the motif of pilgrimage is taken up consistently and impressively in the Dream of the Rood. So, the North face celebrates the desert as a place where to meet God, and to experience that death to oneself which opens the door to giving life to others, and ultimately to rescue one’s own life.

The south face presents with the Annunciation (S4) and the Crucifixion (S5) the beginning and the end of the story of Christ with us. Incarnation and Redemp- tion constitute the two basic polarities of Christian faith, and contrary to what may seem, the two events of Annunciation and Crucifixion are closely interconnected. In the Middle Ages it was believed that the date of these two events

22 This idea is commonplace in the somewhat later (12th century) Cistercian literature, although it may be traced back to the Desert Fathers. Aelred of Rievaulx, in a sermon for the feast of Saint Benedict, interestingly compares the monastic vocation to a new Exodus, where the Pharaoh is the devil, the desert is the world, the monastery is the promised land: ‘Through the ministry of Moses, the Lord led the Jews out of Egypt, through the ministry of Benedict he has led us out of the world. They were under the dominion of Pharaoh, a very cruel king; we were under the devil. They were in slavery to the Egyptians; we, in bondage to our vices’ (Sermon 6,5, in CCCM IIA, p. 54). 23 Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 130. 24 The Latin caption does not allow to solve the problem: only ‘Maria et Io… / tu [lerunt?]…’ can be read, and it remains open to speculation whether the sentence should be completed by ‘tulerunt in Aegyptum’ or ‘ex Aegypto’. 25 Bede, In epistolas septem catholicas, Commentary on the Letter of Jude, in: CCSL 121, 336, quoted by Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 130. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 256

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coincided: Christ was conceived and died on the 25 March. For that day many calendars of the early Middle Ages have entries like ‘Dominus crucifixus et adnunciatio sanctae mariae’.26 The theme appears more explicitly in the Dream of the Rood, where the cross personifies both the angel of God (as a messenger it announces the vision of the cross and its meaning) and Mary (the cross is elected, as she was, to carry the Word of God to the world). The Annunciation includes both the delivering of a message (‘The Lord is with you’) and the life of obedience as a response to it (‘I am the servant of the Lord’), both missionary and contemplative life, both word and silence. It appears a perfect icon of the spiritual doctrine of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Church of the time, and its link with the Crucifixion sculpted under it presents, so to speak, a programme and its realisation, the beginning and the end, enhancing thus the meaning of the monument, not only as a place where people are gathering to hear a sermon, but as being a sermon itself. The other three scenes form the ‘practical’ part of this sermon.27 The healing of the man born blind (S3) is a notorious and clear image of baptism as illumination. It hints at the healing power of the cross, and shows what happens when a man meets Christ and hears his words. Since the rich meaning of this event is well known I do not need to expand on it. Let it suffice to remember that the particular force of this miracle is that the man born blind is an image of humanity sunk in original sin, from which it could have never be saved except by an intervention of God himself. Moreover, it is worth recalling that in the Gospels the recovery of sight is often connected with the necessity of having wide open eyes to properly understand the shocking scandal of the cross. This is particularly evident in the story of the blind Bartimaeus, which in the Gospel of Mark is the last miracle performed by Jesus before his passion, where the ‘healing’ means that a man who was ‘blind’ and ‘sitting’ motionless at the roadside becomes in fact a disciple of Jesus: ‘at once he recov- ered his sight and followed him on the road’ (Mk 11:52). That road would lead to the Calvary.

26 Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 109. The connection between these two events is amply illustrated in Éamonn O’Carragain, ‘Crucifixion as annunciation: The relation of “The Dream of the Rood” reconsidered’, in: English Studies 63 (1982), 487-505. 27 O’Carragáin remarks that ‘these panels (…) form the iconographic programme of the whole east side, which is concerned with the progressive union between the Christian and Christ: in conversion (the blind man), repentance (Mary Magdalene) and the Christian life (Martha and Mary Magdalene). The panels of this side of the cross all reflect the liturgy of the last three weeks of Lent. These weeks were devoted to the preparation of catechumens for the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist’. See ‘The Ruthwell Cross and Irish high crosses: Some points of comparison and contrast’, in: Michael Ryan (Ed.), Ireland and insular art: A.D. 500- 1200, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1987, 118-128: 118. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 257

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The scene with the woman wiping with her tears the feet of Jesus (S2) is a sign both of love and of forgiveness of sins, especially in the sacrament of penance thought of as a second baptism.28 The natural connection between the woman washing the feet of Jesus, and of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples before the Last Supper (incidentally, another Eucharistic hint) makes this scene an emblem of love conceived of as service, which is the deep meaning of the cross as a sign of a total and perfect self-giving on the part of Jesus.29 If the two upper figures are Mary and Martha (S1), as they probably are, they may allude at the two ways of serving God, through active or contemplative life, according to the well known interpretation of the two sisters given by Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede. It may be interesting to compare the two meeting women of the south face with the two meeting men of the north face, and to see it as a celebration of the new fraternity deriving from the cross. To summarise the global meaning of this part of the cross, we may read the message of salvation as saying that God heals our wounds by dying on the cross, realising in this way what had been announced to the Virgin Mary. She is the first to be illuminated by listening to the announcement given by the angel, and this illumination becomes the offering of her life to the service of God and of her neigh- bour, in this case her cousin Elizabeth. In the figure of the man born blind salvation reaches humanity at large, taking away the original sinfulness and opening our eyes into salvation. The woman at the feet of Jesus is a sign both of love and repentance, showing thus the practical effect of the coming of Jesus and of meeting him. The sacraments of baptism and reconciliation are figured here, as the Eucharist was alluded to in the figures of the desert fathers, Paul and Anthony, breaking the bread together. All these sacraments are the ways through which God’s salvation comes to us as a healing power, and by which our response goes to God in a life transformed through service, love and reconciliation, as the embracing figures may mean.

I am not sure whether this is a ‘correct’ interpretation of the scenes sculpted on the Ruthwell Cross. This is certainly what I would preach today looking at those scenes, drawing out their potential message, whether the sculptor intended it or not. In any case, I think that Michael Swanton is right when he summarises the

28 This anonymous figure was soon conflated with Mary Magdalene through a merging of two different episodes, one in Lk 7:36-50, the other in Jn 12:1-8, becoming thus a symbol of both penance and love: see Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 110-111. 29 As an example of this attitude of service connected with and derived from the eremitical desert experience Schapiro quotes some passages from a 12th century Life of Saint Kentigern (518?- 603), who lived in the area of the Ruthwell Cross, where it is said that, returning from the desert places where he had retired for Lent, on Maundy Thursday ‘he washed with his own hands the feet of a multitude of poor men first, then of lepers, bathing them with his tears, wiping them with his hair’ (Schapiro, ‘The religious meaning of the Ruthwell Cross’, 244). 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 258

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complex meaning of the sculpture by saying that: ‘With an overall artistic scheme at once ascetic and missionary, the Ruthwell Cross is a monument to the extend- ing Celtic frontier of the Northumbrian church’.30 It may be useful to remember that at the time there was no distinction between asceticism and mission, between being a pilgrim and building a Christian community, between monasticism and evangelism, given the basic fact that a monk thought of himself, and was thought of by other Christians, as the ideal version of Christian faith and discipleship, to be imitated, at least intentionally, by all, and that the monastic profession was accordingly interpreted as a second baptism. Speculations about the sort of community who commissioned the Ruthwell Cross have led to conclude that ‘this cross was conceived by a Northumbrian monk, brought up in the Lindisfarne tradition, who was familiar with the works of Bede’, and that the presence of exegetical developments (for example the reading of the presence of the beasts in some scenes) not found in Bede or in the wider Western tradition would suggest ‘a Celtic monastic community absorbed, like that of Whithorn, by the Anglian advance along the banks of the Solway Firth’.31 The Northumbrian origin of the artistic style of the Ruthwell Cross has been clearly stated by Michael Swanton: The form and stance of Christ here (the scene of the woman at the feet of Jesus), as in the Judgement scene, are virtually identical with that incised on the wooden coffin of St. Cuthbert, made at Lindisfarne in 698, while in mannered drapery both have much in common with figure work in the Lindisfarne Gospels, them- selves made about the year 700, or in the Codex Amiatinus, copied from an Ital- ian model at Wearmouth-Jarrow at about the same time.32

30 Swanton, The dream of the rood, 25. Other interpretations oscillate from the ‘political’ one given by Schapiro who, in the wave of the conflict between the Hiberno-Celtic and the Northumbrian-Roman Church, sees it as a compromise between these two ‘forms’ of Chris- tianity (‘The religious meaning of the Ruthwell Cross’, 245: ‘The cross is Anglian and classic in its forms, mainly Celtic in its religious contents’), to the ‘liturgical’ one chosen and convincingly argued by O’Carragáin (‘The Ruthwell crucifixion poem’) via the ‘iconic’ presenta- tion of the double aspect of Church and monastic life favoured by Meyvaert. The very fact that there are at least three possible interpretations would suggest that a considerate reading would include all of them. 31 Meyvaert, ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell Cross’, 164. Schapiro imagines ‘hypothetically that there existed in Ruthwell in the second half of the seventh century a religious community of Briton and Anglian settlers, ruled by Northumbrians who belonged to the older generation that owed its Christianity to the teachings of Aidan and Columba’ (‘The religious meaning of the Ruthwell Cross’, 243). The same successful mixing of ‘cultures’ is also stated by O’Carragáin, who concludes one of his essays by saying that ‘Poem and cross both provide evidence that the Ruth- well community combined a deep reverence for the Roman way of doing things (the ordo Romanus) with a receptive awareness of Irish traditions’ (‘The Ruthwell crucifixion poem’, 54). 32 Swanton, The dream of the rood, 22. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 259

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It is fascinating to conclude this part with the realization that two peoples, two cultures, two forms of Christian life as those personified in Celts and Angles, which might, and sometimes did, originate a conflict, have come to find their peaceful unity in that very symbol of reconciliation which is the cross.

2. THE POEM CARVED ON THE MONUMENT – THE FIRMNESS OF THE CROSS

What we may conveniently call the Ruthwell Dream of the Rood (RDR) is composed of sixteen lines disposed in four parts of four lines each on the borders of the two narrower sides (west and east) of the Ruthwell Cross. They are now in a badly damaged condition, and the reconstruction owes something to the much longer text now extant in the Vercelli Book. As David Howlett says, ‘the text established by collation of the cross and drawings suggests that the source of the Ruthwell poem was similar to, but distinct from, lines 39-65 of The Dream of the Rood’.33 After the reasonable integrations derived from the longer poem to replace lost or illegible lines, the short poem, or what remains of it, reads like this. The parts in square brackets are taken from the Dream of the Rood (DR) whose corresponding lines are given in round brackets. I. Stripped himself God almighty when he wanted to ascend on to the gallows, strong before all men. Bow [I dared not, but had to stand fast]. (DR 39-42) II. [I raised up] a powerful king, the Lord of heaven, I dared not bend. They insulted us both together; I [was] with blood [drenched], sprinkled from [that man’s side, after he sent forth his spirit]. (DR 44-45; 48-49) III: Christ was on the cross. Then many came quickly, faring from far noble ones to that one. I beh[eld] it all. Sorely I was smitten with sorrow, I bent [to the men, to their hands]. (DR 56-59) IV. With arrows wounded, limb-weary they laid him down; they stood [at] the head of his body; they [be]held hi[m] the[re]. (DR 62-64) On the principle already stated, that we must evaluate the text as it is now, I think that if we take these lines as making a self-contained poem, we can draw

33 Howlett, ‘Inscription and design of the Ruthwell Cross’, 85. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 260

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interesting conclusions as to its meaning.34 No one will fail to notice, first of all, the strong insistence on the will expressed by the cross not to ‘bow down’ in Parts I and II, at least until the work of redemption is accomplished by the death of Christ, when the cross ‘bows’, lending herself to the hands of the friends of Jesus (P. III), as the longer poem expressly says (l. 59). The two contrasting attitudes of the cross, not bending and bending, are located, characteristically on the two contrasting sides of the monument. The fact of the Ruthwell Cross being of stone gives an added meaning to this verb (to which actually three verbs correspond in Old English: bugan, hyldan, hnigan): before suffering, and since it is necessary for Christ to die, the only accepted position is to stand firm, to hold on, where the invitation to carry one’s own cross turns into being oneself a cross, hard and stable as a stone cross. On the other hand, when the work has reached its goal, that is, when the death of Christ has been assimilated into one’s life, firmness turns into the meekness of the cross who lends herself to the hands of men (P. III), ea∂mod elne micle, ‘humble with great courage’, as the Dream says in the following line (l. 60). Humility is in fact the fruit of breaking one’s own pride, and in this sense is like dying. This passage may be illustrated by another echo: the bending of the cross accompanies the Deposition, and corresponds to the body of Christ being laid down, in an attitude of submissive surrender, as Michelangelo’s Pietà of St. Peter, Rome, so movingly illustrates. There are other themes in this poem, which will find an extensive devel- opment in the longer Dream of the Rood. The four stanzas, or sententiae as O’Carragáin calls them, establish a sort of process in two parts, each subdi- vided in two. Part I and II concern the crucifixion as an ‘act’ both of Christ and the cross; part III and IV describe the ‘beholding’ and understanding of what has happened, concluding in the disciples ‘standing’ by the dead body and becoming ‘one’ with the Christ-cross already unified. Part I focuses on Christ’s divinity: he is always named with glorious epithets such as ‘God almighty’, ‘powerful king’, ‘Lord of heaven’. This is combined with the marvellously ambiguous ‘stripping’ of God mentioned in the first line. One is led to remember the kenosis of Jesus ‘emptying’ himself which is celebrated in the hymn of Philippians 2:1-12, to be taken both as a sign of God’s benev- olence and of inner freedom of the man Jesus from any earthly obstacle. To this affirmation of divinity corresponds Jesus’ courageous mood: his nakedness has military and heroic overtones, besides evoking Adam’s original innocent nakedness before the Fall;35 he ‘wants’ to ‘ascend’ to the gallows as it were his throne, echoing the regnavit a ligno Deus of Fortunatus’s hymn; his strength is showed

34 To my knowledge, the best and most detailed commentary to the four sententiae of this poem is to be found in E. O’Carragáin, ‘The Ruthwell crucifixion poem’, 15-29. 35 Cf. Saint Ambrose, In Lucam, PL 15, 1923-1924. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 261

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before all men. The conclusion of the cross is only natural: such great and triumphant enterprise cannot be jeopardised by a weak attitude on the part of the cross who is called to cooperate: she cannot bow, she does not want to bow. As a sort of counterpoint, Part II shows the actual suffering which lurks behind the heroic and majestic side of the scene. Two kinds of suffering are mentioned: physical and mental, blood and insults. In such a compressed stanza glory and humiliation, joy and pain go side by side, because before introducing images of sorrow, one is reminded that the suffering protagonist is in fact the great king and the Lord of heaven. Not only, the cross herself in fact ‘raises up’ (Ic ahof) the body of Christ, becoming thus in a sense the protagonist and the agent of his power and glory. Since this is her necessary function she cannot bend. Part III celebrates the union between Christ and the cross, who not only ‘beholds’ all the scene/event, but she too is ‘sorely smitten with sorrow’, and she too, as Christ had done by offering his life to his torturers, now submits herself to the hands of the men coming from afar, beckoning a mood of self-surrender- ing as the best way to imitate Christ and to become one with him. Part IV does not forget or omit the memory of the strong battle Christ and the cross had to fight (notice that each stanza has a word denoting pain: I: gallows; II: blood; III: sorrow; IV: arrows, limb-weary). But notwithstanding this it is strongly marked that the men coming to see the cross and to contemplate the story of the Passion must not run away from the ‘disaster’, but they have to ‘stay’ near Christ, who is the ‘head’ of a body to which they belong, and ‘behold’ the event and its outcome. By using the same verb a passage is built in Parts III and IV: the cross, who after taking such an important part in ‘raising up’ the king Jesus (Part I and II), now ‘beholds’ the scene of the Deposition (Part III), and her attitude of contemplation passes on to the companions of Jesus who at the end ‘beheld him there’ (Part IV), the first of many onlookers who were to come in the future.

If we remember what was said in the Vita Willibaldi, that the great crosses erected in the open air were places where people would gather to pray, these words of the short poem are very appropriate, and praying may be intended literally as staying at the head of the Lord, before his cross, to behold and contemplate what he did for us, to re-enact the story of his death in order to come to a new eternal life, as he did.36 The process of identification with Jesus, a major theme

36 O’Carragáin suggests that, what R.I. Page had seen as a text ‘maddeningly hard to read’, so odd that ‘it may not be part of the original design of the cross’ (quoted from R.I. Page, An introduc- tion to English runes, London 1973, 150), becomes clear if we imagine ‘the kind of reader for whom the text is likely to have been intended: a permanent member of a community at Ruth- well who knew the monument from years of use, and who probably knew the poem off by heart 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 262

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of the longer poem, is underlined also in the short one. The cross is as strong as Jesus (she does not bow: P. I), suffers physically and mentally with him (P. II and III), with Christ she sees men coming to the Lord seeking for him (P. III), with them she stays at the foot of Jesus, where she is at the same time wounded like him and adoring him after the great battle he has fought to crush death (P. IV). This poem is thus another little sermon, moving through images, echoes and suggestions, much as the longer Dream will do.

3. THE DREAM OF THE ROOD – FROM PASSIVITY TO ACTIVITY

It is evidently out of the scope of this paper to analyse the Dream of the Rood in much detail. Let it suffice to give first a short idea of its themes and composition, and then to focus on some points more connected with the Ruthwell Cross and the short poem inscribed on it. As already said, I read the poem as composed of four parts, having approxi- mately the same number of lines, with the narrator as a protagonist of the two outer parts, and the cross of the two inner ones. In Part I (ll. 1-27) a narrator describes a vision he had at night, when he saw a mysterious sign, both glorious and bleeding, appearing in the sky. In Part II (ll. 28-77) the sign, which is now explicitly the cross, narrates the death of Christ and its own involvement in it. Part III (ll. 78-121) is a sort of homily in which the cross explains the theological and spiritual meaning of the death of Christ. In Part IV (ll. 122-156) the narrator, having absorbed the message of the cross, prays and shows his desire to follow Christ bearing his cross in order to be with him and with all the preceding followers of his in the kingdom of heaven.37 This fourfold process admirably illus-

from hearing it from other members of the community, from hearing it sung, or from reading some version of the poem in a manuscript’ (‘The Ruthwell crucifixion poem’, 5 and 10 respec- tively). In this light I find suggestive Carragain’s insight that ‘The Vercelli Dream of the rood should be seen as a manuscript version developed (perhaps through many stages) for “private” devotional reading, as distinct from the “public” text on the monument at Ruthwell’ (ibid., 14). 37 For reference see note 3. Probably there is no longer the need to vindicate the integrity of the poem as it stands, complete in its fourfold structure, but it has taken some time to reach this conclusion. Michael Alexander seems still to hesitate when he writes: ‘Scholars used to find the second half of the poem, after the Invention [that is from l. 78 on], stylistically different, more diffuse, and inferior; this coda is translated into prose in this volume. In view of the purposes and procedures of the time, however, such a devotional application of the vision is quite to be expected; if it is an addition, it is coherent with the theology of the vision though far more commonplace in conception’ (Old English literature, London: The Macmillan Press, 1983, p. 184). Even J. A.W. Bennett, to whom we owe one the best analysis of the Dream of the Rood, stops his translation at l. 86, speaks very briefly of ‘the expository stage of the poem’ (ll. 78-121), and ignores the fourth and final part: Poetry of the Passion, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 1-31. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 263

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trates the dynamic of Christian meditation and can be compared with the four senses of Scripture as they were to be defined later on. The ‘vision’ of Part I, cast in highly symbolic language, proclaims the need of something startling (in this case the glorious splendour of a ‘tree’ towering in the sky) to trigger an attitude of attention which is the necessary starting point of any exercise of contemplation. On the other hand this exercise must be based on history and facts, hence the ‘nar- ration’ of Part II, where no real fruit can be expected without a sort of identification with the subject being contemplated, in a kind of a personal re-enactment of the Passion. As intensely emotional as this re-enactment can be, feelings are not enough: the mind also must be enlightened, and this is the purpose of the ‘expla- nation’ of Part III. The driving force of this contemplation, together with the eschatological meaning of the cross already hinted at in Part I, finds its expression in the moving lines of Part IV, imbibed with the ardent desire to reach Jesus and to join the company of his followers in the festive joy of heaven. Considering that the viewer is the I narrator of Part I and IV, and the cross of Part II and III, the poem reveals a clear chiastic structure (1-2//2-1), and this too may have a meaning in that it constitutes a verbal cross.38 On the other hand number four is crucial in the very symbolism of the cross, as shown in a much quoted text of St Paul, where the love of God has four dimensions: breadth, length, depth and height (Eph 3:18). Theologically, a more simple binary structure is probably the best way to read the poem, whose meaning can be reduced to a variously expressed polarity: fiducia gloriae et doctrina patientiae (hope of glory and teaching on patience) to quote Saint Augustine,39 or, more concisely, sacramentum et exemplum (mystery and example) to use the words of Pope Leo the Great.40 The sacramentum is the paradoxical intertwining of life and death, humiliation and glory; the exemplum is the invitation to follow Christ’s footpath in accepting suffering and death in order to share his everlasting happiness, or, to use Leo’s words literally: ‘a sacrament through which the power of God is realised, and an example by which human devotion is stirred’. Anyone reading the Dream can verify how Christ is constantly showed to be both man and God, either by using opposite qualifications when he is named, or by contrasting any humiliating situation with the memory of his glorious real condition, or even by the ambiguity of some words, as for example the use of the verb to ascend, OE gestigan, to indicate the actual mounting of Jesus on to the gallows, and to suggest his final ascension into heaven.41 A reader can never forget

38 See G.S. Tate, ‘Chiasmus as metaphor: The “figura crucis” tradition and the Dream of the Rood’, in: Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 79 (1978), 114-125. 39 Augustine, Sermo Morin Guelferbytanus 3,1, in Patr. Lat. Suppl. 2, 545. 40 Sermo 59,1, in Sermons, tome III (Sources Chrétiennes 74, 129). 41 See Il sogno della Croce (transl. Domenico Pezzini), Parma: Pratiche, 1992, ‘Introduzione’, 13-18. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 264

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that the man who is dying on the cross is the Lord of the world, and the whole creation is shown weeping at the death of its king. Here are some powerful lines: Geseah ic weruda God ∫earle ∫enian. / ≠ystro hæfdon bewrigen mid wolcnum / Wealdendes hræw, scirne sciman; / sceadu for∂ eode wann under wolcnum. / Weop eall gesceaft, cwi∂don Cyninges fyll. / Crist wæs on rode. (ll. 51-56) [I saw the God of hosts cruelly stretched. / Darkness had shrouded with clouds / the Ruler’s corpse, that radiant splendour; / a shadow went forth wan under heaven / All creation wept bewailing the King’s fall. / Christ was on the cross.]42 Being obliged, for reasons of space, to choose only few points, I would like to stress a couple of things, both connected with the preceding analysis. One is the passage of the cross, and consequently of the believer, from passivity to activity; the other is how the following of Christ can be read as a pilgrimage. The one obviously refers to the meaning of such verbs as ‘bow/bend’ and ‘hold’, so cen- tral in the Ruthwell poem; the other has to do with the perspective chosen from the start as the leading light of the interpretation given here.

1. In the way the cross tells the event of the passion we can detect a movement in three stages: in the first she is totally passive, being so to speak acted upon; in the second she acts simply by standing, with a sort of passive resistance which is anyway a kind of activity; in the third stage, being now totally transformed in Christ, she acts as a protagonist: she preaches the message of the cross and she invites the reader so much as any man to ‘taste bitter death as he did on the tree’ (ll. 113-114) in order to be saved at the Day of Judgement.

42 The translation tries to follow the Old English text literally. Not everybody agrees with the interpretation of ll. 54.55 given here, which is in any case the most common. The problem arises with the meaning of the verb in the phrase ‘sceadu for∂ eode’. This is understood by some to represent the preterite of the verb ‘for∂eon’ meaning ‘to oppress, overcome’: in this case ‘scirne sciman’, from being an apposition to ‘Ruler’s corpse’, becomes the object of the verb, and the phrase then is rendered: ‘a gloom murky beneath the clouds, overwhelmed its pure splendour’ (S.A.J. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon Poetry, London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1982, p. 161), or ‘The bright radiance a shadow covered / wan ‘neath the welkin’ (J.A.W. Bennett, Poetry of the Passion, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, p. 29). Others take the verb as the preterite of the more common ‘for∂ gan’ (literally ‘go forth’), and in this case ‘shadow’ is separated from ‘sciman’ and the phrase has no object. This is the solution discussed and suggested by Swan- ton, The dream of the rood, 112-123, and adopted here. 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 265

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The first of these three stages can be read in ll. 28-33: ≠æt wæs geara iu / (ic ∫æt gyta geman), ∫æt ic wæs aheawen / holtes on ende, astyred of stefne minum. / Genaman me ∂ær strange feondas, geworhton him ∫ær to wæfersyne, / heton me heora wergas hebban. Bæron me ∂ær beornas on eaxlum, / o∂∂æt hie me on beorg asetton, gefæstnodon me ∂ær feondas genoge. [It was long ago / I still remember it that I was hewn / at the forest edge, removed from my root. / Strong enemies seized me, fashioned me as a spectacle, / ordered me to hoist their criminals. There men carried me on their shoulders, / until they set me upon a hill, fastened me there many enemies…] The second is the attitude of ‘not bending’ which is adequately and appositely stressed in the verses carved on the Ruthwell Cross, and which recurs quite often in the Dream (see ll. 35-36, 38, 42-43, 45). Here passivity is perceived and described as a conscious choice, that is being firm in suffering (I trembled in ter- ror, / but I dared not bow me: ll. 42-43), a refusal to being aggressive (All foes I might fell, yet I stood firm: l. 38; and Those sinners pierced me… I dared injure none: ll. 46-47), and above all a capacity of humble surrender (In meekness I bowed / to the hands of men: ll. 58-59), which is the supreme realisation of Christ’s self-offering: ‘Take and eat it: this is my body which is broken for you’ (1 Cor 11:24). The third stage is illustrated in the whole third part of the poem, to which I refer the reader. A spiritual programme is offered here, described as a passage from passivity to activity, in which, paradoxically, the highest point of activity coincides with the deepest experience of passivity.

2. The other point traces us back to where we started: the cross as a beacon, a signpost, indicating the way to travellers, ‘a healing tree’ (see l. 85) erected along the road of humanity as a good Samaritan, so that ‘every soul’, no matter how gravely wounded, ‘from the ways of earth through the cross shall come / to heavenly glory, who would dwell with God’ (ll. 119-121). The idea of pilgrimage has a very long story and is deeply embedded in the Christian spirituality. In the Celtic Christianity it had become a way of living. In this perspective I think we may read Part I and IV, where the narrator is the protagonist, as signifying two sorts of pilgrimage: the pilgrimage of the mind in the first part (the vision), and the pilgrimage of desire (the prayer) in the fourth. The startling nocturnal vision is meant to wake up the imaginative powers of the mind and to start contemplation. After Part II and III have so movingly re-enacted the experience of the crucifixion, in which the cross is deeply and progressively involved, Part IV expands on the pilgrimage of desire. This is explicitly described: 0447_07_SIS_17_10_Pezzini 12-12-2007 14:41 Pagina 266

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Gebæd ic me ∫a to ∫an beame / bli∂e mode, elne mycle, / ∫ær ic ana wæs mæte werede. / Wæs modsefa afysed on for∂wege; / feala ealra gebad langung-hwila. / Is me nu lifes hyht ∫æt ic ∫one sigebeam / secan mote ana oftor / ∫onne ealle men, well weor∫ian. / Me is willa to ∂am mycel on mode, / and min mundbyrd is geriht to ∫ære rode. (ll. 122-131) [I prayed to that beam / with an ardent spirit and earnest zeal, / there where I was alone without companions. / My mind was driven towards departure; / many I had endured hours of longing. / Now it is my life’s hope that I that tree of victory / may seek I alone more often / than all men and worship it well. / This desire towards it is great in my heart, / and my hope is directed to the cross.] To comment on this image of pilgrimage we can quote a statement by Leo the Great in the second of his Sermons for the feast of the Ascension: ‘The vigour of the great minds, and the special light of the faithful souls is to believe without hesitation what cannot be seen by bodily sight, and to fix the desire where you cannot thrust your look’.43 A pilgrimage is a quest, and the best and sim- plest verb to indicate a quest is ‘seek’. In the DR this verb, OE secan, recurs at important points. Christ will come in judgement to ‘seek mankind’ (mancynn secan: l. 104). To his quest corresponds ours. The narrator prays to be able to ‘seek this tree of victory’ (l. 127), and remembers friends ‘who have gone away / from these earthly delights to seek the king of glory’ (l. 132-133). Quaerere Deum was the main purpose of monastic life,44 from where most probably the Ruthwell Cross and the Vercelli Book have come to us. It remains the main Christian ideal, and it is refreshing to notice that, through time, in this respect things have not changed, and to consider how profitably ancient mon- uments and old texts continue to help us in this searching for God.

43 Sermo 61,1, in Sermons, tome III (Sources Chrétiennes 74, 140). 44 See the Benedicine Rule 58,7, where the first condition required for the admission of a new brother to the community is to ascertain whether the novice ‘is really searching for God’ (si revera Deum quaerit).