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A history of in 100 objects, a selection 5th & 6th class lesson Plan

Tall , late-ninth century

When hurlers and Gaelic footballers describe This cross, from Monasterboice in Co. Louth, is almost their ultimate ambition, they often use a simple seven metres tall, and every available face is covered shorthand: ‘a Celtic cross’. Since the late-nineteenth with elaborate carvings of a dazzling variety of scenes. century, the Gaelic Athletic Association has used The east face alone has Christ saving Peter from the a for its logo and for All-Ireland medals. water; Joshua; St Anthony tempted by demons; St Paul The modern use of the cross as a symbol of Irish and St Anthony killing a devil; an angel shielding three achievement dates to at least the 1853 Irish Industrial children in the fiery furnace; and images of Elijah, Exhibition, in Dublin, which displayed high as Moses, Abraham and Isaac, David and Goliath, and ‘fine monuments of the artistic skill and devoted piety David (again) killing a lion. of our Celtic ancestors’. Some crosses are inscribed with the names of The crosses are so deeply embedded in the kings or abbots, suggesting that they acted as potent Irish imagination that it seems almost sacrilegious symbols of the power and status of these dignitaries. to ask why they were made in the first place. There Part of their function is to claim territory and mark was no native tradition of building in cut stone, so boundaries. It is striking in this regard that the crosses the appearance of high crosses in the eighth century are highly individual, with distinctive styles associated was a major cultural innovation. So, as we have seen, with different regions. The basic form is common was the idea of depicting, in a relatively realistic way, to them all: a pyramidal base, a rectangular shaft human subjects and stories. The crosses are not widely culminating in a capstone and a large circle enclosing evident beyond Ireland and Irish-influenced . the arms of the cross. This circle may be intended to They required a huge investment of skill and resources represent a halo around the figure of Christ, but it can and, as art historian Roger Stalley has put it, ‘it is hard also be seen as a cosmic symbol, in the manner of older to believe they were undertaken for purely altruistic Irish traditions of representations of the sun. or religious motives’. Yet they were erected on a very One way of looking at the crosses is that they large scale: about 300 of them survive, of which 100 represent a new assertion of biblical Christianity in are decorated with carved images. the face of a new pagan threat. By the time the cross- The crosses undoubtedly served as gathering builders were at their most active, that threat was all places for prayers for monks and pilgrims, but their too real. scale and complexity far exceed this basic function.

This is a project of