The Cross in Ritual, Architecture and ArtTyack, Geo. S. (George Smith)
History
The Cross in Ritual, Architecture and Art
Tyack, Geo. S. (George Smith)
Crosses
Monasterboice, or the Monastery of Boethius, a bishop who died in 521,
situated in county Louth, has a number of crosses, several of which are in
excellent preservation. The Great Cross, as it is called, stands
twenty-two feet in height, and is on the south side of the church. A
second example, which is also near the church, has been described as
"the most beautiful specimen of Celtic stone-work now in existence," this
is the Cross of Muiredach. It is covered with carvings of scriptural
scenes, and bears on the front the inscription (in Erse), "Pray for
Muiredach, by whom this Cross was made." The venerable builder was Abbot
of Armagh, and died in 923 or 924. Drumcliff, near Sligo, and many other
places in Ireland also possess most interesting crosses.
[Illustration: THE CROWLE STONE.]
A curiously carved shaft in the church of S. Oswald at Crowle, in North
Lincolnshire, has been supposed by many to be the shaft of a very ancient
cross, and if so, must almost certainly be included amongst those raised
as memorials. It is covered on one side with an involved chain pattern
roughly suggesting a snake swallowing its tail, and on the other are some
human and animal figures, the meaning of which has never been
satisfactorily explained. What makes the shaft especially interesting is
the presence of the fragment of a runic inscription. The wall into which
the Crowle stone is built was part of the eleventh century church of the
place, and this ancient memorial to some long-forgotten hero was obviously
taken from some neighbouring spot and converted into a lintel for the west
door by the Norman builders.[3]
Another memorial cross of quite a different type is the Hall Cross of
Doncaster. It was erected by, or in memory of, Oti, or Otho di Tilli,
steward of Conisborough for the Earl of Warren, under Stephen and Henry
II. It would have been destroyed by the troopers of the Earl of Manchester
in the Civil War, but for the action of the mayor, who succeeded in
preserving it; but in 1792 it was taken down on making some alterations in
the level of the road, and another cross of the same character was put up
in the following year on Hall Cross Hill. It consists of a centre circular
column, with four others much smaller placed about it, each of the five
originally terminating in a cross. Its memorial character is preserved by
the old Norman-French inscription, which it still bears, "Icest est la
cruice Ote di Tilli a ki alme Deu en face merci. Amn." It served a more
gruesome purpose in the seventeenth century, being the spot chosen for the
exposition of the heads of decapitated traitors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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