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Liturgical InculturationThe Bewcastle and Ruthwell Crosses, both, are triumphs of liturgical inculturation.58 Bewcastle adapts images of the tree and the sun’s course, important in native pre-Christian religion as well as in pre-Christian Mediterranean traditions, to Christian purposes. To imply the importance of union with Christ it refers to a number of complementary metaphors: the Cross as an integrative image forming “the sign of the Son of Man”; salvation as involving inscription in the Book (or Scroll) of Life; Christians as “living stones” joined to Christ the “corner stone”; the Church, sustained by the Eucharist, as “the body of Christ” whose members can help each others by their prayers. The Ruthwell Cross expresses several of the Bewcastle themes, but in a more developed and radical manner. It makes the Tree of Life even more central, the symbolic core of the cross. Its designer edited, from a pre-existing English vernacular poem, two matching ekphrastic narrative tituli for the twofold Tree of Life. The central theme of this poem is Christ’s courage, and his startlingly new kind of heroism, based not on pride and aggression but on kenotic self-giving: the central symbol for this is Christ’s blood, which drenches the Cross. The poem presents the crucifixion as an heroic advent, and the Cross as a loyal Germanic follower who is agonizingly required, first to stand fast and bear its lord to his death, and then, in eloquent silence, to bow down to present its lord’s dead body to his followers. Contemplation of the vine-scrolls in the narrative order of their tituli leads the audience to follow the sun’s daily course around the cross, and thus to contemplate the two broad sides in due order. When we move sunwise from the narrow to the broad sides, we proceed from the ancient runic crucifixion narrative (the runic verse tituli) to a figural program that explores the implications of that narrative for the Ruthwell community; then, continuing our sunwise movement, we return to the second stage of that ancient foundation-narrative before again exploring its present-day implications. From the first runic titulus dramatizing the Cross’s confrontation with Christ “brave before all men” we move to Mary’s confrontation with Fortitudo Dei at the annunciation. This scene begins a rich sequence of images presenting the incarnation and growth of Christ in the Virgin’s womb as the model for all spiritual growth. From the second titulus, telling how the Cross presents Christ to his followers, we move to a richly coherent sequence of images showing the ways Christ is to be recognized in daily Mass, and especially in the Good Friday liturgy. The Ruthwell Cross builds on the concepts found in brief in the Bewcastle Cross, to present the life of this Christian community as centered on the passion of Christ, mediated to them by the two great sacraments, aqua et sanguis: Lenten catechumenate and baptism, culminating in the Eucharist.59 Though there is no sundial at Ruthwell, an important feature of the monument is how the liturgy proclaims the Christ-event by means of the sun’s seasonal course through the equinoxes and solstices. The sun’s daily course was also marked on this monument. Each morning, when at Lauds clerics, monks, and nuns sang the Benedictus, the dawning sun could be seen behind and (usually) to the right of John the Baptist acclaiming the Agnus Dei. When this happened, John’s right index finger, pointing across his body, could be seen to point beyond the Agnus Dei to the morning sun, oriens ex alto.60 Each evening, when at Vespers they sang the Magnificat, the sun set behind the eloquent visitation panel where Mary, on the point of intoning her great canticle, does not face directly towards her cousin but partially out beyond the panel, as though to involve the spectators in her song.61 When the cross still stood in the open air (and assuming that it then was oriented as the Bewcastle shaft still is) Elizabeth (the figure on the right) gazed fixedly, not only towards Mary, but towards the afternoon sun. When these crosses were first erected, local audiences must have experienced “the shock of the new” when looking at such sophisticated sculpture. These crosses transformed the idea of standing stones, an important feature of the pre-Christian landscape of Britain and Ireland, to new Christian purposes.62 Bewcastle was concerned with memory: it proclaimed that Christianity offered the possibility that history itself could be sanctified: that it created new and intimate relationships between present and past generations by offering them participation in Christ through the communion of saints. Such participation, enacted in Eucharistic celebration, would offer all (not just those important people named on the cross) the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. It seems likely that the Ruthwell designer, familiar with the Bewcastle Cross, worked out much more extensively the implications of these subversive beliefs, though it would also be possible to argue that the Bewcastle designer preserved from the Ruthwell Cross only those two panels vital to the theme of Liber Vitae. Ruthwell redefines nobility much more radically than Bewcastle: there are no names of local aristocrats or patrons at Ruthwell, and no “falconer.” At Ruthwell nobility depends, not on aristocratic birth, but on radical responses to Christ who called to his kingdom, not the rich, powerful, and pious, but outcasts and sinners. An important key to understanding the imagery of the Ruthwell Cross is the Christian tradition of sermo humilis: the idea that the fate of poor people is every bit as important as that of the powerful (quia respexit humilitatem, Luke 1:48). For people brought up on poems such as Beowulf, where the heroes are aristocratic to a man, this idea must have been shocking.63 Suddenly, on the Ruthwell Cross, what happens to ordinary people becomes of vital importance: we are invited to interpret our lives, and the course of history, in terms of a blind man, a woman who was a sinner, pregnant mothers, monks sharing bread. Suddenly, women become major protagonists, not the secondary figures they are in poems such as Beowulf: five images of women survive on the Ruthwell Cross, including three of the Virgin Mary. Suddenly, God becomes not merely human, but humane: healing, forgiving, blessing, and in harmony with newly-converted beasts and dragons, those threatening presences against whom the pagan hero Beowulf had struggled to the death. Here, on the sixth day at the ninth hour, the universal harmony of Paradise is recreated. Animals now feast from the eucharistic Tree of Life, and symbolize the heavenly liturgy in which the Ruthwell community already participate. Here, where the Eucharist is celebrated eagles gather on the upmost arm of the cross; on the upper stone, Christ is acclaimed as the Lamb; at the culmination of the visual program on the broad sides the evangelists’ symbols place Christ yet again in the midst of animals.64 Around the Tree of Life, the symbolic core of the cross, the runic verse tituli that sing of the encounter between the Cross and Christ present, perhaps for the first time in written form, a new human ideal: a humility at once kenotic and heroic. The primary function of both crosses was devotional: central to each is an image of Christ in majesty, blessing created beings, but their devotional strategies were different. While the Bewcastle Cross assured its community of their incorporation as “living stones” into the Book of Life and the Body of Christ, the Ruthwell Cross demonstrated to its community in much greater detail how, through the aqua et sanguis (John 19:34) and, for some, the monastic life, they could participate in Christ’s incarnation, passion, and heroic victory over death. |
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