Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T16:05:34.616Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Eighteenth-Century Drawings of the Ruthwell Cross

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

Brendan Cassidy  and
David Howlett
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When Presbyterian iconoclasts tumbled the Ruthwell Cross in 1642 they inflicted irreparable damage on one of the great monuments of Anglo-Saxon art and, unwittingly, provided scholars with boundless opportunities for discussion about how the Cross originally looked. Attempts to reconstruct and interpret the imagery and inscriptions have become a staple of scholarly endeavour. New evidence about its early appearance, therefore, is likely to be of some value. This note presents some eighteenth-century drawings of the Cross, until now unpublished, that survive in the library of the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. They have the merit of illustrating all the fragments of the Cross that were known in 1788. And in a modest way they supplement our information about the Cross before it deteriorated further under inclement Scottish skies in the hundred years prior to its reinstallation in the church at Ruthwell in 1887.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 72 , March 1992 , pp. 103 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, M. E. 1984. Burns and Tradition, ChicagoCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassidy, B. (ed.) 1992. The Ruthwell Cross, Index of Christian Art Occ. Pap. 1, PrincetonGoogle Scholar
Dinwiddie, J.L. 1927. The Ruthwell Cross and the Ruthwell Savings Bank: A Handbook for Tourists and Students, DumfriesGoogle Scholar
Duncan, H. 1833. ‘An account of the remarkable monument in the shape of a cross, inscribed with Roman and Runic letters, preserved in the garden of Ruthwell Manse, Dumfriesshire’, Archaiologia Scotica: or, Trans. Soc. Antiq. Scot. 4, pt 2, 313–26Google Scholar
Durham, Ritual 1927. Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis. The Durham Collector. A New and Revised Edition of the Latin text with interlinear Anglo-Saxon version (ed. Lindelof, U.), Surtees Soc, 140, London and DurhamGoogle Scholar
EXETER BOOK, THE 1895. The Exeter Book, An Anthology of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (ed. Gollancz, Israel), Early English Text Soc. Original Ser. 104, LondonGoogle Scholar
Farrell, R. T. and Karkov, C. 1992. ‘The construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of the Ruthwell cross: some caveats’ in Cassidy (1992), 35–47Google Scholar
Gordon, A. 1726. Itinerarium Septentrionale: Or, a foumey thro' most of the Counties of Scotland and Those in the North of England, LondonGoogle Scholar
Gough, R. 1789. Vetusta Monumental Quae ad rerum Brittanicarum memoriam conservandam Societas Antiquariorum Londini sumpto suo edenda curavit, 11. LondonGoogle Scholar
Grose, F. 1783–1787. The Antiquities of England and Wales, 2nd edition, LondonGoogle Scholar
Grose, F., 1791. The Antiquities of Scotland, LondonGoogle Scholar
Hickes, G. 1703. Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archaeologicus. Pars Tertia: seu Grammaticae Islandicae Rudimenta, Oxford published in facsimile in English Linguistics, 1500–1800. A Collection of Facsimile Reprints, 248, Menston 1971Google Scholar
Howlett, D. 1992. ‘Inscriptions and Design of the Ruthwell Cross’ in Cassidy 1992, 71–93Google Scholar
Irvine, J. 1868. ‘Notices of Robert Riddell of Glenriddell Esq. and of some of his manuscripts and books’, Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., 6, 451–4Google Scholar
Lindsay, M. 1980. The Burns Encyclopedia, 3rd edition, New York and LondonGoogle Scholar
McFarlan, J. 1885. The Ruthwell Cross, Edinburgh and LondonGoogle Scholar
Meyvaert, P. 1992. ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell cross: ecclesia and vita monastica’ in Cassidy 1992, 95–166Google Scholar
Nicolson, W. 1809. Letters on Various Subjects. Literary, Political, and Ecclesiastical, to and from W. Nicolson (ed. Nichols, J.), LondonGoogle Scholar
Nicolson, W., 1902. ‘Bishop Nicolson's diaries, part II’ (ed. H. Ware) Trans. Cumberland Westmorland Antiq. Archaeol. Soc, new series 11, 155–230Google Scholar
Okasha, E. 1971. Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Pennant, T. 1774. A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides: MDCCLXXII, Chester; reprinted 1809 in A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in all Parts of the World (ed. Pinkerton, J.), vol. 3, 213–14, LondonGoogle Scholar
Reid, A. G. 1896. ‘Notes as to the recovery of Three volumes of the MS collections of Scottish antiquities of the late Robert Riddell Esq. of Friar's Carse and Glenriddell’, Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. 3rd series, 6, 222–4Google Scholar
Smith, , H., A. (ed.) 1933. Three Northumbrian Poems, LondonGoogle Scholar
Stuart, J. 1856–1867. Sculptured Stones of Scotland, 2 vols., Aberdeen and EdinburghGoogle Scholar