The Romanesque age was, above all, the age of symbolism; the sculptures on the pastoral staves are full of hidden meaning. The _tau_, or crutch shape, is the earliest form and belonged, more especially, to the insignia of the abbots, though in later days they also had croziers. The most ancient _tau_[22] belonged to Morard, Abbot of St. Germain de Près (990-1014) and is ornamented with a network pattern. Another fine _tau_, with the ends curling upwards and finished with lions’ heads, belonged to Gérard, Bishop of Limoges. The earlier croziers had a simple volute usually ending in a dragon’s or serpent’s head, with snapping jaws, which symbolizes the struggle between the serpent and the cross,[23] the latter being borne by the symbolic ram, a development of the _Agnus Dei_. This ram is the symbol of Christ; as St. Ambrose says, because he washes his fleece, guides the flock, clothes the shepherd, conquers the wolves by his strength and was the victim which replaced Isaac at the sacrifice, and again, because the ram is silent before the shearers, as Christ was before his judges, and finally the crozier curls like the horn of a ram, a symbol of force. The famous crozier (so-called of “St. Gregory”) in the Monastery of St. Gregory on the Cœlian Hill at Rome, shows the dragon’s head, the ram bearing the cross and a strange little lion cub, which is a direct reference to the death and resurrection of Christ. In the natural history of the Middle Ages, which drew more on fancy than on fact, it was narrated how the lion cub died at birth and could only be recalled to life by the breath of its father. The Romanesque Church plunged even deeper into this symbolic thought, and the Pascal Taper, which signifies the life of Christ on earth was placed in a candelabrum supported by lions. The strange pagan form, half human and half serpent, with a cock’s head, is none other than the mystic Abraxas, whose name in Greek numerals represented in the elaborate Gnostic calculations the whole hierarchy of heaven and the Supreme Ruler of the Universe. This symbol was supposed to have great talismanic powers to ward off evil, and though it was contrary to canonical rules, Gnostic gems engraved with the Abraxas deity were often set in the episcopal croziers, or even the crook was decorated with this mysterious symbol, as on the ivory crozier in the British Museum. These croziers became more and more complicated in design, whole groups of figures were introduced and foliage of a freer pattern, as in the Staff of St. Ives, Bishop of Chartres, which is now in the Bargello at Florence. The Gothic artists of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries filled the volutes with figures and exquisite foliage, the groups of the Crucifixion and the Virgin in glory fitting back to back so accurately, that each side appeared perfect, and the join of the ivory volute on to the wooden staff was often hidden by a row of saints under delicate Gothic canopies.