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In the fourth and final sentence of the poem they contemplate that dead human body (the Northumbrian poem uses the word li._c, “a corpse”), emptied even of its blood. Divine kenosis can go no further: Wounded with arrows They laid him down limb-weary [limwrignę]; They stood at the head and feet of his dead body. There they looked upon [the lord of heaven].53 The heroic metaphor “arrows” (the poet uses the word strae_l, which can mean “spear” as well as “arrow”) is flexible enough to encompass the wound of the spear in Christ’s side as well as the wounds of the nails in his hands and feet. The image keeps our attention concentrated on the pouring out of Christ’s blood. Christ has become “limb-weary” through the wounds in his limbs. The wonderful adjective “limb-weary” is the earliest recorded example of English understatement (litotes). In Beowulf, to be “battle-weary” is used to mean “killed in battle”; here, to say Christ is “limb-weary” means that he has been “brought to death by [the wounds in] his limbs.” The closely-related kenotic metaphors of stripping/emptying provide the unifying images behind the whole Ruthwell poem. Christ’s followers who here contemplate his “limb-weary” body look on him whom they themselves have pierced, through their sins.54 The final image of the poem, of a new kind of hero “who in his own self bore our sins on his body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live to justice,”55 presented any audience at Ruthwell who read the runes or heard them chanted with an urgent challenge. How were they, today and at Ruthwell, to look upon this body? how to recognize it? how to react to it? The Ruthwell designer provided an unforgettable response to this challenge. If we move, taking the hint provided by the columns of runes, and following the sun’s daily course, to the side of the cross that probably faced west originally, we come upon the sequence of two panels we have already seen at Bewcastle: Christ acclaimed by the beasts and, directly above, John the Baptist acclaiming the Agnus Dei. But the Ruthwell designer has transformed the meaning of the sequence by putting it in a new context. These two panels now form the third and fourth stages of the five-fold sequence of panels which, of all early medieval sculpture, most coherently explores how Christ is to be seen and recognized, particularly in the Eucharist and in the Good Friday liturgy. Reading upwards, Christ is first represented as a child in his mother’s lap borne from Egypt back to Israel: here he fulfills the manna which once fed the people of Israel in their desert wanderings. Next, Christ is recognized in the breaking of bread: the second panel represents two standing male figures in flowing ecclesiastical robes who together break a loaf of bread between them (fig. 13a). At the Irish Columban monastery of Iona visiting priests were honored by being asked to celebrate the community Mass; at the breaking of bread the priest called the abbot of the monastery to him so that together they could break bread in imitation of the first monks in Egypt. Saint Anthony the abbot had visited the first monk, Saint Paul of Thebes, in his desert hermitage, and they had broken between them the loaf brought miraculously from heaven by a raven. The Iona liturgical tableau had been created, perhaps by the founder Saint Columba himself, as an enacted image of monastic courtesy, expressed through eucharistic celebration. The Ruthwell panel refers primarily to this Irish Columban custom, while its titulus recalls the episode (in Jerome’s Vita Sancti Pauli) from which Iona had developed its eucharistic tableau: “Saints Paul and A[nthony, hermits] broke bread in the desert.”56 Scenes representing or referring to Saints Paul and Anthony breaking bread in the desert are common on Pictish (Columban) monastic monuments and on Irish high crosses, but, apart from Ruthwell, we have no other certain English example. It is possible that the Iona tableau was imitated by the Ruthwell community in order to honor visiting priests. Whether or not this happened, the panel shows us the Ruthwell designer reaching out beyond the Roman liturgy to a liturgical tableau practiced at Iona: this Ruthwell panel, an eirenic image of monastic courtesy placed in a eucharistic setting, is itself a startling and moving example of courteous exchange between the Roman and the Irish liturgical traditions. Thirdly, Christ is acclaimed by the natural world, with particular reference to the chants sung on Good Friday at the ninth hour. As at Bewcastle the majestic Christ blesses the closed scroll in his left hand and the beasts at his feet, but now the theme of the Liber Vitae, central to the Bewcastle design, is subordinated to that of eucharistic recognition of Christ, the new Adam. The beasts, by crossing their paws in acclamation of Christ, once more silently proclaim that the harmony of Paradise has been restored (fig. 13a). Now their crossed paws echo, not an X-shaped g-rune as on the Bewcastle Cross, but the similarly shaped Greek letter chi in the divine name on the panel’s upper border: “IhS XPS IVDEX AEQUITATIS,” “Jesus Christ the judge of fairness.” The rest of the titulus reminds the audience of the story’s beginning, and of the beginning of Lent: “Beasts and dragons recognized in the desert the Saviour of the World.” The temptation of Christ (in Matthew 4:1-11) always provided the Gospel for the first Sunday in Lent. The Ruthwell titulus recalls another version of this narrative, Mark 1:13: “he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.” The designer composed a titulus that echoed Mark, not Matthew, so that, by its reference to Mark’s “wild beasts,” the panel could link the desert sojourn of the first Sunday to the culminating ninth hour on Good Friday when the cantors sang in succession the two ancient chants, first from Habbakuk (“you will be known in the midst of two animals”) and then from Psalm 91 (“you will tread down the lion and the dragon”). In this way the panel could encapsulate the unity of the season of Lent. Fourthly, on the damaged upper stone at the top of the shaft John the Baptist acclaims the Agnus Dei: once more, a variant of the corresponding Bewcastle panel (fig. 13b). The context of this panel on the upper stone enables us to see with particular clarity how and why the Bewcastle program was expanded at Ruthwell. Bewcastle had hinted at the unity between the incarnation and the passion, in particular by its references to the sun and the Christian solar cycle; this idea is now fully expanded at Ruthwell. On the upper stone, John the Baptist pointing to the Agnus Dei fulfills the promise of the visitation-archer sequence at the other side. On that first side the “chosen arrows,” John the Baptist and Christ, were still “hidden in [God’s] quiver”: the quiver of Scripture, the quivers of Elizabeth’s and Mary’s wombs. Now, on the second side, John is fully revealed. Though already clad in soft garments as part of the heavenly liturgy, he is still the messenger (angelus), acclaiming Christ as the Agnus Dei, the center of that liturgy (Rev chs. 4 and 5). The visitation panel on the first side was inscribed in Latin, but in runes, a native alphabet associated with secrecy and riddles, and all other (now fragmentary) inscriptions on that first side of the upper stone are also in runes. But what was once hidden is now revealed: on the second side the Agnus Dei panel is again inscribed in Latin, but this time in Roman script, the script and language in which liturgy and Gospels were proclaimed. On this second side of the shaft Christ acclaimed by the beasts is flanked by an image with Roman associations (as we have seen, the Agnus Dei chant had recently been introduced from Rome to accompany the breaking of bread for Communion) and, below, by an image with Irish associations (two ecclesiastics break bread, in imitation of the Iona tableau and of the first monks of Egypt). As we have seen, the breaking of bread for Communion was understood to symbolize the breaking of Christ’s body on the cross by the nails and spear: thus the upper three panels of this side of the Ruthwell shaft provide a unified and ecumenical image of how Christ’s heroic death was made present in daily Mass, and above all in Good Friday liturgies. Although the transom is missing, enough fragments of the cross-head remain to make it certain that this side represented the four evangelists, each identified by his symbol. These four would have surrounded another portrait of Christ at the crossing: probably a bust-portrait, but possibly, once more, the Agnus Dei. Saint Matthew with his symbol, the angel, survives below the missing transom; Saint John with his eagle survives on the upper arm (now mistakenly reversed). Thus the portrait of Christ, at the center of the cross-head, was probably flanked by images, on the transom, of Saint Mark with his lion and Saint Luke with his ox. If so, here once more Christ was to be recognized in medio duorum animalium, in the midst of two animals. The cross-head, structured as a quincunx, provided a unified five-fold symbol of the heavenly liturgy. It brought the program of the whole cross to a triumphant eschatological conclusion, but also referred back to the Lenten catechumenate, and so to the first broad side of the cross. In the Roman liturgy the Lenten instruction of the catechumens included a “passing on of the Gospels” in which the celebrant explained how the symbol of each evangelist epitomized his Gospel.57 |
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