High cross

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For places, see High Cross (disambiguation).

Muiredach's High Cross, Monasterboice, 9th or 10th century
A simpler example, Culdaff, County Donegal, Ireland

A high cross or standing cross (

Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria
, which had been converted to Christianity by Irish missionaries; it remains unclear whether the form first developed in Ireland or Britain.

Their

vine-scrolls, all in the styles also found in insular art in other media such as illuminated manuscripts
and metalwork. They were probably normally painted, perhaps over a modelled layer of plaster; with the loss of paint and the effects of weathering the reliefs, in particular scenes crowded with small figures, are often now rather indistinct and hard to read.

The earlier crosses were typically up to about two metres or eight feet high, but in Ireland examples up to three times higher appear later, retaining thick massive proportions, giving large surface areas for carving. The tallest of the Irish crosses is the so-called Tall Cross at Monasterboice, County Louth. It stands at seven metres or twenty-two feet high.[2] Anglo-Saxon examples mostly remained slender in comparison, but could be large; except in earlier Northumbrian examples their decoration is mostly ornamental rather than figures. The crosses often, though not always, feature a stone ring around the intersection, forming a Celtic cross; this seems to be an innovation of Celtic Christianity, perhaps at Iona.[3] Although the earliest example of this form has been found on fifth-seventh century Coptic textile.[4] The term "high cross" is mainly used in Ireland and Scotland, but the tradition across Britain and Ireland is essentially a single phenomenon, though there are certainly strong regional variations.

Some crosses were erected just outside churches and monasteries; others at sites that may have marked boundaries or crossroads, or preceded churches. Whether they were used as "preaching crosses" at early dates is unclear, and many crosses have been moved to their present locations. They do not seem to have been used as grave-markers in the early medieval period. In the 19th century Celtic Revival Celtic crosses, with decoration in a form of insular style, became very popular as gravestones and memorials, and are now found in many parts of the world. Unlike the Irish originals, the decoration usually does not include figures.

Ireland and Britain

Three views of the Northumbrian Easby Cross of 800–820
King Doniert's Stone in East Cornwall, Ninth century

High crosses are the primary surviving monumental works of

Ossory group[8] in Ireland, Iona or the Kildalton Cross on Islay, have all shown a tendency to converge on the period around or slightly before 800, despite the differences between the Northumbrian and Celtic types. The high cross later spread to the rest of the British Isles, including the Celtic areas of Wales, Devon, Brittany and Cornwall, where ogham
inscriptions also indicate an Irish presence, and some examples can be found on Continental Europe, particularly where the style was taken by Insular missionaries.

Most Irish High crosses have the distinctive shape of the ringed

Reformation
, and typically only sections of the shaft remain. The ring initially served to strengthen the head and the arms of the high cross, but it soon became a decorative feature as well.

The high crosses were status symbols, either for a monastery or for a sponsor or patron, and possibly preaching crosses, and may have had other functions. Some have inscriptions recording the donor who commissioned them, like Muiredach's High Cross and the Bewcastle Cross. The earliest 8th- or 9th-century Irish crosses had only ornament, including interlace and round bosses, but from the 9th and 10th century, figurative images appear, sometimes just a figure of Christ crucified in the centre, but in the largest 10th century examples large numbers of figures over much of the surface. Some late Irish examples have fewer figures (often Christ accompanied by a local bishop or abbot),[9] approaching life-size, and carved in very high relief. The Irish tradition largely died out after the 12th century, until the 19th-century Celtic Revival, when the Celtic cross form saw a lasting revival for gravestones and memorials, usually just using ornamental decoration and inscriptions. These are now found across the world, often in contexts without any specific link to the Insular Celts or Britain.

Anglo-Saxon crosses were typically more slender, and often nearly square in section, though when, as with the Ruthwell Cross and Bewcastle Cross, they were geographically close to areas of the Celtic Church, they seem to have been larger, perhaps to meet local expectations, and the two 9th century Mercian Sandbach Crosses
are the largest up to that period from anywhere. The heads tend to be smaller and usually not Celtic crosses, although the majority of cross-heads have not survived at all. Carved figures in these large examples are much larger and carved in deeper relief than the Irish equivalents with similar dates – only some very late Irish crosses show equally large figures. Anglo-Saxon decoration often combines panels of vine-leaf scrolls with others of interlace, although the placement and effect from a distance is similar to Celtic examples. Smaller examples may have only had such decoration, and inscriptions, which are much more common on Anglo-Saxon than Irish crosses.

After the

Norse myths, which the Church seems to have tolerated, and adopted at least as metaphors for the period when conversion was bedding down. The Gosforth Cross, a very rare almost-complete cross in England, is an example. By the 10th century such Anglo-Norse crosses were the bulk of the production in England, as the high cross seems to have been abandoned further south, although the simple and practical Dartmoor crosses, no doubt an essential aid to navigating Dartmoor, appear to have continued to be made for centuries after. Given the tough granite used, decoration is mostly slight and they are hard to date confidently. Market crosses
, many once dating to the Early Medieval period, have continued to be erected and replaced until modern times.

In

Pictish Scotland the cross-slab, a flat stone with a cross in relief or incised on an essentially rectangular stone, developed as a hybrid form of the Pictish stone
and the high cross. The cross is normally only on one side of the stone and the remaining areas of the stone may be covered with interlace or other decoration. These are usually distinguished from true high crosses.

Scandinavia

The tradition of raising high crosses appeared at a time when Norse settlers appeared in the British Isles and met a Christian culture.[10] A fragmentary cross has been discovered in Granhammar in Vintrosa parish in Närke, Sweden and testify to the English mission in the central Swedish provinces.[10] The Swedish cross was very similar to a cross in Leek, Staffordshire, and may have been made by an English immigrant.[11] In Norway the British tradition was more widely accepted and some 60 stone crosses are known from the country, but only four of them can be safely dated to the Viking Age thanks to runic inscriptions on the crosses. Many of the crosses have probably been raised on pagan grave fields when the family was baptised. Later, they were moved to cemeteries.[10] The high cross tradition also probably helped increase the popularity of raising runestones (often with engraved crosses) in Sweden.[12]

Notable examples

Location of high crosses in Ireland.

Amongst the most famous are:

  • Muiredach's Cross and West Cross at Monasterboice, County Louth
  • The Clonmacnoise crosses: Cross of the Scriptures (the original 9th century cross is housed in a museum, but a copy stands on the original site), and the North and South Crosses.
  • The Nether (or Lower) Cross, a 9th-century granite cross with ornate carving, in the graveyard of St. Canice's Church, established by St. Canice, Finglas village, Dublin. The Cross was taken from its original location in the grounds of St. Canice's Abbey and buried to prevent damage by Cromwellian forces in 1649. It was found 160 years later intact and moved to its present location.
  • The Anglo-Saxon Ruthwell Cross from Scotland, 8th century, with relatively large figures.
  • The Anglo-Saxon Bewcastle Cross Northumbrian
  • The Anglo-Saxon Irton Cross, Cumbria showing affinity to the style of Bewcastle
  • The
    Early Medieval Dupplin Cross in Strathearn
    , Scotland
  • The Pictish/Early Medieval Camus Cross in Angus, Scotland
Graiguenamanach crosses, Kilkenny, east side

Modern period

From the 19th century, many large modern versions have been erected for various functions, and smaller Celtic crosses have become popular for individual grave monuments, usually featuring only abstract ornament, usually

interlace
.

In 1887, the Rev. William Slater Calverley commissioned a replica life-sized copy of Gosforth cross and had it erected in the churchyard at Aspatria, Cumbria.[3]

In the early 21st century, Irish sculptor Brendan McGloin was commissioned by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Portland to handcraft a full size replica of the Clonmacnoise Cross of the Scriptures. The 13-foot, 5 tonne sandstone cross was completed in 2007 and shipped from Donegal to Portland, Oregon, where it will stand as a Famine memorial. In 2016, a high cross was erected outside Wakefield Cathedral, West Yorkshire, England, carved from stone quarried in Holmfirth and carved by Celia Kilner. This was based on the remains of a Saxon high cross, dated 930 A.D.[13][14]

Gallery

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to High crosses.

Notes

  1. ^ ard&lang=2 Focal
  2. ^ Crilly, Oliver (2013). The Great Irish Crosses: Meaning and Mystery. Columba Press. p. 75.
  3. ^ Wilson, 118
  4. S2CID 192024681
    .
  5. ^ The Archaeology of late Celtic Britain and Ireland, c. 400–1200 AD, Lloyd Robert Laing, p. 169
  6. ^ Henry, Françoise. Irish art in the early Christian period, 1940
  7. ^ Catherine E. Karkov, Michael Ryan, Robert T. Farrell, The insular tradition, p.138, SUNY Press, 1997, also citing The Chronology and Relationship of some Irish and Scottish Crosses, J.R.S.A.I 86 [1956], pp. 85–89 by R.B.K Stevenson
  8. ^ (Nancy Edwards, 1982.) A reassessment of the early medieval stone crosses and related stone sculpture of Offaly, Kilkenny and Tipperary. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7418/1/7418_4483-vol1.PDF
  9. ^ Skurdenis, Julie (1987). "PASSPORT: Silent Sentinels: The High Crosses of Ireland". Archaeology. 40 (1): 64–65, 83 – via JSTOR.
  10. ^ a b c The entry Stenkors in Vikingatidens ABC by Göran Tegnér. Archived 19 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ "Gravstenen från Botkyrka och korset från Granhammar", in Fornvännen.
  12. ISBN 978-91-27-35725-9
    p. 192
  13. ^ "Saxon cross raised at Wakefield Cathedral". www.pontefractandcastlefordexpress.co.uk. Retrieved 19 May 2016.
  14. ^ "Wakefield Cathedral Cross". seiyaku.com. Retrieved 19 May 2016.

References

  • Wilson, David M.; Anglo-Saxon Art: From The Seventh Century To The Norman Conquest, Thames and Hudson (US edn. Overlook Press), 1984.

External links

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