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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
The Legendary History of the Cross is a profound and multifaceted examination of the Christian tradition surrounding the relics of the True Cross, blending historical narrative, hagiography, and folklore. This anthology weaves together a tapestry of legends and accounts from different centuries, revealing the cross as a potent symbol of faith, redemption, and suffering. Written in a rich, evocative style, it juxtaposes theological reflection with the cultural practices of medieval society, offering insights into how these stories shaped and were shaped by the beliefs of their time. The compilation's various authors draw from a wide range of historical contexts, from early Christian martyrs to medieval mystics, reflecting a collective yearning to understand the significance of the Cross within the Christian experience. Their diverse backgrounds illuminate the socio-political landscapes in which they wrote, revealing how personal and communal narratives interweave through the sacred relic's legacy. This work illustrates not only devotion but also the era's intellectual currents, showcasing the interplay of faith, art, and tradition. This captivating exploration is highly recommended for scholars and readers alike who seek to delve into the historical and spiritual significance of one of Christianity's most iconic symbols. The Legendary History of the Cross invites reflection on enduring questions of faith and belief, making it a compelling addition to any theological or historical collection.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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The Legendary History of the Cross
Table of Contents
PREFACE.
THE origin of the mediæval romance of the Cross is hard to discover. It was very popular. It occurs in a good number of authors, and is depicted in a good many churches in stained glass.
I may perhaps be allowed here to repeat what I have said in my article on the Legend of the Cross, in “Myths of the Middle Ages:”—
“In the churches of the city of Troyes alone it appears in the windows of four: S. Martin-ès-Vignes, S. Pantaléon, S. Madeleine, and S. Nizier. It is frescoed along the walls of the choir of S. Croce at Florence, by the hand of Agnolo Gaddi. Pietro della Francesca also dedicated his pencil to the history of the Cross in a series of frescoes in the chapel of the Bacci, in the church of S. Francesco at Arezzo. It occurs as a predella painting among the specimens of early art at the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Venice, and is the subject of a picture by Beham, in the Munich Gallery. The Legend is told in full in the ‘Vita Christi,’ printed at Troyes in 1517; in the ‘Legenda Aurea’ of Jacques de Voragine; in a French MS. of the thirteenth century, in the British Museum. Gervase of Tilbury relates a portion of it in his ‘Otia Imperalia,’ quoting Peter Comestor; it appears in the ‘Speculum Historiale’ of Gottfried of Viterbo, in the ‘Chronicon Engelhusii,’ and elsewhere.”
In the very curious Creation window of S. Neot’s Church, Cornwall, Seth is represented putting three pips of the Tree of Life into the mouth and nostrils of dead Adam, as he buries him.
Of the popularity of the story of the Cross there can be no doubt, but its origin is involved in obscurity. It is generally possible to track most of the religious and popular folk tales and romances of the Middle Ages to their origin, which is frequently Oriental, but it is not easy to do so with the Legend of the Cross. It would rather seem that it was made up by some romancer out of all kinds of pre-existing material, with no other object than to write a religious novel for pious readers, to displace the sensuous novels which were much in vogue.
We know that this was largely done after the third century, and a number of martyr legends, such as those of S. Apollinaris Syncletica, SS. Cyprian and Justina, the story of Duke Procopius, S. Euphrosyne, SS. Zosimus and Mary, SS. Theophanes and Pansemne, and many others were composed with this object. The earliest of all is undoubtedly the Clementine Recognitions, which dates from a remotely early period, and carries us into the heart of Petrine Christianity, and in which many a covert attack is made on S. Paul and his teaching. On the other hand, we know that an Asiatic priest, as Tertullian tells us, wrote a romance on “Paul and Thecla, out of love to Paul.” S. Jerome says that a Pauline zealot, when convicted before his bishop of having written the romance, tried to exculpate himself by saying that he had done it out of admiration for S. Paul, but the Bishop would not accept the excuse, and deprived him. Unfortunately this romance has not come down to us, though we have another on S. Paul and his relations to Thecla, who is said to have accompanied him on his apostolic rambles, disguised in male attire.
The Greek romance literature was not wholesome reading for Christians. Some of the writers of these tales became Christian bishops, and probably devoted their facile pens to more edifying subjects than the difficulties of parted lovers.
Heliodorus, who wrote “Theagenes and Charicheia,” is said to have become Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly. Socrates, in the fifth century, in speaking of clerical celibacy, mentions the severity of the rule imposed on his clergy by this Heliodorus, “under whose name there are love-books extant, called Ethiopica, which he composed in his youth.”
Achilles Tatius, author of the “Loves of Clitophon and Leucippe,” is said also to have become a bishop. So also Eustathius of Thessalonica, author of the “Lives of Hysemene and Hysmenias,” but this is more than doubtful.
Three things conduced to the production of a Christian romance literature in the early ages of the Church:—(1) The necessity under which the Church lay of supplying a want in human nature; (2) The need there was for producing some light wholesome literature to supply the place of the popular love-romances then largely read and circulated; (3) The fact that some bishops and converts were experienced novel writers, and therefore ready to lend their hands to some better purpose than amusing the leisure and flattering the passions of the idle and young.
Much the same conditions existed in the Middle Ages. There was an influx of sensuous literature from the East, through the Arabs of Spain and Sicily; Oriental tales easily took Western garb, in which the caliphs became kings of Christendom, and the fakirs and imauns were converted into monks and Catholic priests. To counteract these stories, collections of which may be found in Le Grand d’Aussi and Von der Hagen, and in Boccaccio, the Gesta Romanorum was drawn up, a collection of moral tales, many of them of similar Oriental parentage. But beside these short stories, or novels, were long romances, some heroic, and founded on early national traditions and ballads. To these belong the Niebelungen Lied and Noth, the Gudrun, the Heldenbuch, the cycles of Karlovingian and of Arthurian romance.
As it happens, we have two authors in the Middle Ages, living much about the same time, one intensely heathen in all his conceptions, the other as entirely Christian, each dealing with subjects from the same cycle, and the one writing in avowed opposition to the tendency of the other’s book. I allude to Wolfram of Eschenbach and Gottfried of Strassburg. The latter wrote the Tristram, the former the Parzival. In Gottfried, the moral sense seems to be absolutely dead; there is no perception of the sacredness of truth, of chastity, of honour, none of religion. Wolfram is his exact converse. Wolfram gives us the history of the Grail, but he did not invent the myth of the Grail, he derived it from pre-existing material. The Grail myth is almost certainly heathen in its origin, but it has been entirely Christianised. The holy basin is that in which the Blood of Christ is preserved, and only the pure of heart can see it; but the Grail was really the great cauldron of Nature, the basin of Ceridwen, the earth goddess of the Kelts, or, among Teutonic nations, the sacrificial cauldron of Odin, in which was brewed the spirit of poesy, of the blood of Mimer. The remembrance of the mysterious vessel remained after Kelt and Teuton had become Christian, and the poets and romancists gave it a new spell of life by christening it. It was much the same with the story of the Cross. In the Teutonic North, tree worship was widely spread; the tree was sacred to Odin, who himself, according to the mysterious Havamal, hung nine nights wounded, as a sacrifice to himself, a voluntary sacrifice, in “the wind-rocked tree.”
That tree was Yggdrasill, the world tree, whose roots extended to hell, and whose branches spread to heaven.
Northern mythology is full of allusion to this tree, but we have, unfortunately, little of the history of it preserved to us; we know of it only through allusions. The Christmas tree is its representative; it has been taken up out of paganism, and rooted in Christian soil, where it flourishes to the annual delight of thousands of children.
Now the mediæval romancists laid hold of this tree, as they laid hold of the Grail basin, and used it for Christian purposes. The Grail cup became the chalice of the Blood of Christ, and the Tree of Odin became the Cross of Calvary. They worked into the romance all kinds of material gathered from floating folk-tale of heathen ancestry, and they pieced in with it every scrap of allusion to a tree they could find in Scripture. It is built up of fragments taken from all kinds of old structures, put together with some skill, and built into a goodly romance; but the tracing of every stone to its original quarry has not been done by anyone as yet. The Grail myth has had many students and interpreters, but not the Cross myth. That remains to be examined, and it will doubtless prove a study rewarding the labour of investigation.
S. BARING-GOULD.
The Legendary History of the Cross.
THE Cross on which our Lord and Saviour suffered, would, naturally, if properly authenticated, be an object of the deepest veneration to all Christian men, be their creed, or shade of opinion what it might; but, for over 300 years it could not be found, and it was reserved for the Empress Helena in her old age (for she was 79 years old) to discover its place of concealment.1 That this Invention, or finding of the Cross was believed in, at the time, there can be no manner of doubt, for it is alluded to by St. Cyril, Patriarch of Jerusalem (A.D. 350 to 386), and by St. Ambrose. Rufinus of Aquila, a friend of St. Jerome, in his Ecclesiastical History, gives an account of its finding, in the following words: “About the same time, Helena, the mother of Constantine, a woman of incomparable faith, whose sincere piety was equalled by her rare munificence, warned by celestial visions, went to Jerusalem, and inquired of the inhabitants where was the place where the Divine Body had been affixed and hung on a gibbet. This place was difficult to find, for the persecutors of old had raised a statue to Venus,2 in order that the Christians who might wish to adore Christ in that place, should appear to address their homage to the goddess; and thus it was little frequented, and almost forgotten. After clearing away the profane objects which defiled it, and the rubbish that was there heaped up, she found three crosses placed in confusion. But the joy which this discovery caused her was tempered by the impossibility of distinguishing to whom each of them had belonged. There, also, was found the title written by Pilate in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew characters; but still there was nothing to indicate sufficiently clearly the Cross of our Lord. This uncertainty of man was settled by the testimony of heaven.” And then follows the story of the dead woman being raised to life.
Not only did Rufinus write thus, but Socrates, Theodoret, and Sozomen, all of whom lived within a century after the Invention, tell the same story, so that it must have been of current belief.
The punishment of the Cross was a very ordinary one, and of far wider extent than many are aware. It was common among the Scythians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Germans, and the Romans, who, however, principally applied it to their slaves, and rarely crucified free men, unless they were robbers or assassins.
Alexander the Great, after taking the city of Tyre, caused two thousand inhabitants to be crucified.
Flavius Josephus relates, in his Antiquities of the Jews, that Alexander, the King of the Jews, on the capture of the town of Betoma, ordered eight hundred of the inhabitants to suffer the death of the Cross, and their wives and children to be massacred before their eyes, whilst they were still alive.
Augustus, after the Sicilian War, crucified six thousand slaves who had not been claimed by their masters.
Tiberius crucified the priests of Isis, and destroyed their temple.
Titus, during the siege of Jerusalem, crucified all those unfortunates who, to the number of five or six hundred daily, fled from the city to escape the famine; and so numerous were these executions, that crosses were wanting, and the land all about seemed like a hideous forest.
These instances are sufficient to show that death by crucifixion was a common punishment; but, singularly enough, the shape of the Cross has never been satisfactorily settled; practically, the question lies between the Crux capitata, or immissa, which is the ordinary form of the Latin Cross, and the Crux ansata, or commissa, frequently called the Tau Cross, from the Greek letter T. The Tau-shaped Cross is, undoubtedly, to be met with most frequently in the older representations; and the more ancient authorities, such as Tertullian, St. Jerome, St. Paulinus, Sozomen, and Rufinus, are of opinion that this was the shape of the Cross. After the fifteenth century, our Lord is rarely depicted on the Crux commissa, it being reserved for the two thieves.
M. Adolphe Napoleon Didron, in his Iconographie Chretienne, gives a few illustrations of the antiquity of the Tau Cross: “The Cross is our crucified Lord in person; ‘Where the Cross is, there is the martyr,’ says St. Paulinus. Consequently it works miracles, as does Jesus Himself: and the list of wonders operated by its power is in truth immense. By the simple sign of the Cross traced upon the forehead or the breast, men have been delivered from the most imminent danger. It has constantly put demons to flight, protected the virginity of women, and the faith of believers; it has restored men to life, or health, inspired them with hope or resignation.
“Such is the virtue of the Cross, that a mere allusion to that sacred sign, made even in the Old Testament, and long before the existence of the Cross, saved the youthful Isaac from death, redeemed from destruction an entire people whose houses were marked by that symbol, healed the envenomed bites of those who looked at the serpent raised in the form of a Tau upon a pole. It called back the soul into the dead body of the son of that poor widow who had given bread to the prophet.
“A beautiful painted window, belonging to the thirteenth century, in the Cathedral of Bourges, has a representation of Isaac bearing on his shoulders the wood that was to be used in his sacrifice, arranged in the form of a Cross; the Hebrews, too, marked the lintel of their dwellings with the blood of the Paschal lamb, in the form of a Tau or Cross without a summit. The widow of Sarepta picked up and held crosswise two pieces of wood, with which she intended to bake her bread. These figures, to which others also may be added, serve to exalt the triumph of the Cross, and seem to flow from a grand central picture which forms their source, and exhibits Jesus expiring on the Cross. It is from that real Cross indeed, bearing the Saviour, that these subjects from the Old Testament derive all their virtue.”
The wood of which it was made is as unsettled as its shape. The Venerable Bede says that our Lord’s Cross was made of four kinds of wood: the inscription of box, the upright beam of cypress, the transverse of cedar, and the lower part of pine. John Cantacuméne avers that only three woods were employed: the upright, cedar; the transverse, pine; and the head in cypress. Others say that the upright was cypress, the transverse in palm, and the head in olive; or cedar, cypress, and olive. Most authorities seem to concur that it was made of several woods, but there is a legend that it was made from the aspen tree, whose leaves still tremble at the awful use the tree was put to; whilst that veritable traveller, Sir John Maundeville, says: “And also in Iherusalem toward the Weast is a fayre church where the tree grew of the which the Crosse was made.” Lipsius says that it was made of but one wood, and that was oak; but M. Rohault de Fleury (to whose wonderful and comprehensive work, Mémoire sur les Instruments de la Passion de notre Sauveur Jesus Christ, I am deeply indebted, says, “M. Decaisne, member of the Institut, and M. Pietro Savi, professor at the University of Pisa, have shewn me by the microscope that the pieces in the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem at Rome, in the Cathedral at Pisa, in the Duomo at Florence, and in Notre Dame at Paris, were of pine.” And he adds, in a footnote, “Independently of the experiments which M. Savi kindly made in my presence, he wrote me the results of other observations, which tended to confirm.”
Starting with the Invention of the Holy Cross, the loving, but fervid, imaginations of the faithful soon wove round it a covering of imagery, as we have just seen in the case of the several woods of the Cross, and the sacred tree became the subject of a legend (for so it always was only meant to be), which was incorporated in the Legenda Aurea Sanctorum, or Golden Legend of the Saints, of Jacobus de Voragine, a collection of legends connected with the services of the Church. This book was exceedingly popular, and, when Caxton set up his printing-press at Westminster, he produced a translation, the history of which he quaintly tells us in a preface.[A]
As this Golden Legend is the standard authority on the subject, and as it will much assist the intelligent appreciation of the wood-blocks, I reproduce it, premising that I have used throughout the first edition, 20 Nov., 1483:—
