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V. On Palm-tree Crosses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2011

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In the Crucifixion scene on the remarkable bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, cast for Bishop Bernward in 1015, appears a cross with a series of curious protuberances regularly disposed all round its edge. Dibelius, writing of this cross, has suggested that it represents a cross constructed of unhewn palm-trunks, conventionalized in form, and has cited, as early examples of similar crosses, the representations of crosses on some of the Monza ampullae, attributing these representations to a presumed tendency, on the part of a Palestinian craftsman, to show the Saviour's cross as if made of a wood common in Palestine. I am dealing elsewhere with the suggestion that the cross on the Hildesheim door represents palm-wood, concluding that logs of palm-trunk are not represented in that cross and that the latter is no more than one of a class fairly common, formed of conventionalized living vegetation; and I am there discussing, in considerable detail, Dibelius's further suggestion that the crosses, common in medieval times and during the early Renaissance, represented as if made of rough wood, have been derived from crosses intended to represent pieces of palm-trunk set crosswise. Although since preparing that study I have seen no reason to ascribe the origin of roughwood crosses to prototypes representing palm-trunks, either dead and as the material substance of which our Lord's cross was constructed or as living, and representing symbolically the Tree of Life, the iconographical questions–first, as to actual representations of palm-tree crosses; and, second, as to the symbolical meanings underlying such representations–suggested by Dibelius's conjectures have seemed to me to be worthy of the investigation of which I present the results below.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1931

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References

page 49 note 1 Cf. Goldschmidt, Adolf, Die deutschen Bronzetüren des frühen Mittelalters, Marburg a. L., 1926, pis. LV, LIV, LVIGoogle Scholar , and (pair of doors) XII; Dibelius, F., Die Bernwardstür zu Hildesheim, Strasbourg, 1907, pl. 9Google Scholar (with pair of doors on pl. 2) and pp. 64 seq. of ‘Text’.

page 49 note 2 Op. cit., 65 of ‘Text’.

page 49 note 3 On a Medieval Bronze Pectoral Cross’ in Art Bulletin, xiv (1932).Google Scholar

page 49 note 4 Reproduced by Garrucci, R., Storia della Arte cristiana, vi, Prato, 1880, pls. 433, 434, 435Google Scholar ; Heisenberg, A., in Grabeskirche und Apostelkirche, i, Leipzig, 1908, pls. VIIIGoogle Scholar and IX, reproduces photographs of six; Cabrol, Dict. d'archéologie chrétienne, i, s.v. ‘Ampoules’, shows drawings ‘from photographs’ of five ; Frisi, A., Memorie storiche di Monza e sua corte, Milan, 1794, iGoogle Scholar , gives drawings of the most important ones, etc.

page 50 note 1 Reproduced from Garrucci, , op. cit., pi. 434Google Scholar , fig. 2; given by Heisenberg (fig. 1), Cabrol (fig. 458), Frisi, pl. v, no. v.

page 50 note 2 Morey, C. R., in ‘The Painted Panel from the Sancta Sanctorum’, in Festschrift… Paul Clemen, Düsseldorf, 1926, suggests (p. 160)Google Scholar that the rough crosses on the Monza ampullae, as well as those on the ampullae found at Bobbio (cf. ibid., 153 seqq., with reproductions from photographs; citations and pictures are from Father Celi's Cimeli Bobbesi, Rome, 1923Google Scholar , extract from Civilta Cattolica) ‘reflect the paramount importance to the pilgrims of the central objective of their pilgrimage, the gemmed Cross which stood, certainly as early as the fifth century, on the rock of Golgotha…’ I think that this is not the case with the examples I specify, for to me their little projections strongly suggest vegetation; as, also, do those of the cross, in the symbolized Crucifixion, on the Bobbio ampulla reproduced in Morey's fig. 12. On the other hand, I agree that the cross on the Bobbio ampulla shown in his fig. 10, with regular projections all pointing outward from the centre, may well represent the gemmed cross.

page 50 note 3 Cf. Cabrol, Dict., s.v. ‘Arbres’, 2707 and fig. 901 (the same as our pi. xxx, fig. 5, infra), 2706 and fig. 899.

page 50 note 4 A series of sketches of representations of palm-trees in ancient art is given by Gruneisen, W. de, Sainte-Marie Antique, Rome, 1911, 243.Google Scholar

page 50 note 5 Garrucci, pi. 434, fig. 1; Heisenberg, fig. 5; Cabrol, fig. 461.

page 50 note 6 Reproduced from Rossi's, G. B. deLa Roma sotteranea cristiana, iii, Rome, 1877, pi. XIIGoogle Scholar.

page 50 note 7 For examples of date-palms thus shown in art of the period see Wilpert, J., Die rómischen Mosaiken und Malereien…vom IV. bis XIII. Jahrhundert, 2nd ed., iii, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1917Google Scholar reproducing the apse-mosaic (A.D. 526-530) of the Church of SS. Cosma e Damiano ; Berchem, M. van and Clouzot, E., Mosaíques chrétiennes du IVme au Xme siécle, Geneva, 1924, p. xxxivGoogle Scholar.

page 51 note 1 Cf. , Didron, Christian Iconography, i, 412Google Scholar , where authorities are cited.

page 51 note 2 By courtesy of the British Museum.

page 51 note 3 The ‘Golden Gospels’ (Brit. Mus., Harley MS. 2788), believed to have been produced in the imperial schools connected with the court of Charlemagne, at Aix-la-Chapelle; cf. Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Museum, Series I-1V, London, 1903Google Scholar . It has been described or referred to in many books on Carolingian illumination. The two canon-tables here mentioned are on fols. 6 v. and 7.

page 51 note 4 Cf. Witte, F., Die Skulpturen der Sammlung Schnütgen in Cöln, Berlin (1912), 18Google Scholar . The naturalistic rendering of details in the two palm-trees of the manuscript suggests artistic influences of some kind from the South.

page 52 note 1 The date-palm (Phoenix dadylifera, the tree with which we are here concerned) ‘was regarded by the ancients as peculiarly characteristic of Palestine and the neighbouring regions’; cf. W. Smith, Dict. of the Bible, s.v. ‘Palm-tree’. Medieval Europeans probably looked upon it in a similar way.

page 52 note 2 F. S. Ellis's edit, of Caxton's translation, in ‘The Temple Classics’, iii, 170.

page 52 note 3 Or, in another version, the suppedaneum.

page 52 note 4 The same four woods are mentioned, as the materials of the cross, in Mirk's Festial (E.E.T.S., ed., 1905, 77 seq.), presumably following The Golden Legend. They are also mentioned, but in a different set of applications, in another version of The Golden Legend, where palm-wood serves only for the suppedaneum, while cedar forms the upright (cf. Seymour, W. W., The Cross in Tradition, History, and Art, New York and London, 1898, 98)CrossRefGoogle Scholar . The tradition that palm and olive were used seems to derive from the South or the East; Bede mentions, in their stead, box (which, in northern Europe, long took the place of palm for religious uses) and fir (cf. Smith, Dict., s.v. ‘Cross’).

page 52 note 5 Cf. De Cruce Veliterna, Rome, 1780, pp. ccixGoogle Scholar seq., note C; the quotation here given occurs in a discussion concerning the woods of which the True Cross was made.

page 53 note 1Ex sententia in qua nonnulli fuerunt palmae lignum Crucis partem constituisse, forte manavit mos apud antiquos Christifideles receptus, quo consueverant palmam Cruci adnectere; quemadmodum huc etiam pertinet usurpasse veteres Patres palmam pro Cruce Christi, ut observare est penes interpretes ad ilia verba cap. vii. v. 8. Cantici Canticorum: Dixi Ascendam In Palmam.’

page 53 note 2 , Seymour, op. cit., 97 seq.Google Scholar

page 53 note 3 Ibid., 97, 98 note. On other woods of which the Cross was variously supposed to have been made, cf. ibid., 93 seqq. The utilization of palm-leaves for the making of small crosses, blessed and distributed on Palm Sunday, has, I imagine, no special significance in this connexion, because, of the various devices formed of the palm-leaves blessed on that day, none is symbolically more suitable for the purpose than the cross.

page 53 note 4 Napier, A. S., in his History of the Holy Rood-tree, LondonGoogle Scholar (E.E.T.S., no. 103), 1894, gives (pp. x seq.) a bibliography of literature referring to the history of the wood of our Lord's cross, until the time of His passion. Some works, easy of access, in which the story may be found, are Morris's, R.Legends of the Holy Rood, LondonGoogle Scholar (E.E.T.S., no. 46), 1871; Caxton's The Golden Legend, s.v. ‘Of the Invention of the Holy Cross’; and John Ashton's reproduction (under the title of The Legendary History of the Cross, London, 1887)Google Scholar of a series of 64 woodcuts in a Dutch book of A.D. 1483.

page 53 note 6 Barbier de Montault speaks (Traité d'iconographie chrétienne, ii, Paris, 1890,Google Scholar 50) of the apple, the orange, and the fig, as thus shown; Didron, who cites (Guide de la peinture, Paris, 1845, 80 seq., note)Google Scholar the cherry and the grape-vine, points out {loc. cit.) that the tree selected varied according to the period and the geographical situation of the art in which it appeared, and was generally the one looked upon as most precious in the art of any particular time and place.

page 54 note 1 Cf. Molsdorf, W., Christliche Symbolik der mittelalterlichen Kunst, Leipzig, 1926, 211.Google Scholar

page 54 note 2 Cook, W. W. S., ‘The Earliest Painted Panels of Catalonia (V),’ in Art Bulletin, X, figs. 120Google Scholar , 22-5.

page 54 note 3 Cf. ibid., fig. 10.

page 54 note 4 Genesis ii, 9, and iii, 22.

page 54 note 5 On this ivory, which is in the Morgan Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, see Breck, J., ‘Spanish Ivories of the XI and XII Centuries…“, in Amer. Journ. Archaeology, 2 S., xxiv (1920), 218 seq.Google Scholar ; Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen, iv, no. 83.

page 54 note 6 Reproduced by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum.

page 54 note 7 Goldschmidt suggests (loc. cit.) that possibly the ivory illustrates an incident in the life of St. Vincent (of Avila). I have not, however, been able to identify the incident to which he alludes, and in consequence am inclined to remain in agreement with Breck's suggestion that the scene represents the testing of the True Cross.

page 54 note 8 There seems to have been considerable uncertainty, even at an early date, as to the exact nature of the miracle whereby the True Cross was identified; cf. Cabrol, Diet., s.v. ‘Croix (Invention de la)’, cols. 3135 seq. A bibliography of literature dealing with the finding of the cross by St. Helena is given by Napier, , op. cit., p. xiGoogle Scholar. Mirk's Festial says (E.E.T.S. ed., 144) that the crosses were tested upon a ‘dead body’, without specifying the sex; Caxton's Golden Legend states (Ellis's ed., iii, 173) that a dead young man was brought to life; Ashton's Legendary History of the Cross shows (block 47) a dead maiden being revivified; elsewhere we are told that an expiring woman was made whole.

page 54 note 9 Most important of these is, of course, the form of the object–a pillar or a stake rather than a cross—although a cross-form of the usual T-type is hinted at by the curling foliage at the top.

page 55 note 1 Reproduced from Hamann's, R.Die Holztür der Pfarrkirche zu St. Maria im Kapitol, Marburg a. L., 1926, pi. xxxvGoogle Scholar; cf. ibid., p. 20. It is given also by Clemen, P., in ‘Die katholische Pfarrkirche zu St. Maria im Kapitol’, in Die kirklichen Denkmäler der Stadt KölnGoogle Scholar, of the series “Kunstdenkmaler der Rheinprovinz’, Düsseldorf, 1911, fig. 170, p. 235.

paage 55 note 2 Opinions as to their date have, amongst the many writers on the doors, differed widely. A. Marignan has assigned them (cf. Études sur I'histoire de I'art allemand, Strasbourg, 1913Google Scholar, chap, on ‘La porte en bois de l'figlise de Sainte-Marie de Cologne’) to a period as late as the early thirteenth century.

page 55 note 3 Adelung, F., in Die Korssún'schen Thüren in der Kathedralkirche sur heil. Sophia in Nowgorod, Berlin, 1823, 46Google Scholar. A coloured lithograph, purporting to show this cross, on a fairly large scale, is given on pi. 22 of vol. vi of the Russian publication on The Antiquities of the Russian Empire, Moscow, 1853Google Scholar. Photographs of a number of the panels, including the present one, are reproduced, on a small scale, by Beenken, H., in Romanische Skulptur in Deutschland (II. und 12. Jahrhunderf), Leipzig, 1924, pp. 55, 57Google Scholar (text on 54, 56). For the latest and most exhaustive study of the doors see A. Goldschmidt's Die Bronzetüren in Nowgorod und Gnesen (vol. ii of R. Hamann's series, ‘Die frtihmittelalterlichen Bronzetüren’), Marburg (Lahn) University, 1932.

page 56 note 1 Reproduced from Die Bronzeturen in Nowgorod und Gnesen.

page 56 note 2 Cf. Cursor Mundi (a Northumbrian poem of the fourteenth century, translated from the French), E.E.T.S. edit., Part III (E.E.T.S. no. 62, London, 1876), lines 16859-16869.

page 56 note 3 Cf. , Beenken, loc. cit.Google Scholar; Goldschmidt, , Die Bronzetüren in Nowgorod und GnesenGoogle Scholar. The reasoning on which this dating has been based is by some German scholars regarded as not entirely conclusive, although there seems to be general agreement as to the doors having been made after 1150. Cf., also, Antiquities of the Russian Empire, Text, 61-5.

page 57 note 1 Sometimes the impulse for such representations sprang from the conception of the Tree of Life in the midst of Paradise as an allegory of Christ's cross as the centre of the Church, giving life to the world; cf. Hoppenot, J., Le crucifix, Lille and Paris, 1902, 195Google Scholar.

page 57 note 2 Cf. Barlow, H. C., Essays on Symbolism, London, 1866, 69.Google Scholar

page 57 note 3 Cf. ibid., 63 seqq.; one example cited is ascribed to 1500 B.C., or earlier. The sycamore (Ficus sycomorus) may sometimes take its place (cf. ibid.., 64).

page 57 note 4 Bohn's ed. (, Bostock and , Riley's trans.) of The Natural History of Pliny, iii, London, 1855, 175.Google Scholar ‘Possibly the known fact that when an aged female palm-tree was burnt down to the roots, a new tree sprang up amid the ashes of the old one, may have been the origin of the fable’ (Barlow, , op. cit., 71, note)Google Scholar.

page 57 note 5 e g., the apse-mosaic, of about A.D. 530, in the Church of SS. Cosma e Damiano (cf. Wilpert, , op. cit., iii, pi. 102)Google Scholar; or that of the early ninth century in the Church of St. Prassede (cf. Garrucci, , op. cit., iv, pi. 286)Google Scholar.

page 58 note 1 Their special association with Christian martyrdom should, in this connexion, not be forgotten.

page 58 note 2 Cf. Smith, Dict, s.v. ‘Palm-tree’.

page 58 note 3 I have seen it stated (cf. Jewish Encyclo., s.v. ‘Crucifixion’) that Tertullian says (Apologia viii, 16) that convicts were often crucified upon trees; I have not, however, been able to verify this reference.

page 58 note 4 The curé of the church at Vézelay suggested to Mr. Barrow that the scene represented the crucifixion of a victim of Alexander Jannaeus, a subject with which it accords reasonably well. Alexander Jannaeus (on whom see , Smith's Dict. Greek and Roman Biography, 1850, i, 117)Google Scholar, having won a decisive victory, in 86 B.C, crucified a large number of his opponents in circumstances of such peculiar atrocity (cf. Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, bk. 13, chap, xiv) that they made an impression lasting many centuries thereafter. The method of fastening, to be seen on the capital, by cords instead of by nails, was one used in Egypt and probably elsewhere (cf. Jewish Encyclo., loc. cit); while the prolonging of the victim's agonies by setting him astride a piece of wood appears to have been a regular feature of punishment by crucifixion.

page 58 note 5 Reproduced by courtesy of the Rheinisches Museum (Bildarchiv), Cologne.

page 59 note 1 Reproduced by courtesy of the Historical Department of the Hungarian National Museum. A brief note on this cross, together with a rather poor reproduction of a photograph, has been published by Czobor, Béla in Die historischen Denkmäler Ungarns in der 1896er Milleniums-Landesausstellung, I, Budapest and Vienna, 1897-1901, 66 and fig. 85Google Scholar.

page 59 note 2 Cf. Czobor, loc. cit., with fig. 86; the picture is not very clear.

page 59 note 3 Ibid., with fig. 87; the reproduction is even poorer than in fig. 86.

page 59 note 4 The crucifixes of these two crosses are very like the one here shown; the crucifix of fig. 87 is crowned, the one of fig. 86 is not. A crownless crucifix having several of the same characteristics as that of our fig. 9, but with an exaggeratedly long body, and a loin-cloth of another and quite different form, occurs on a Hungarian cross, of about the same period as those just cited, whose stem is engraved with plaited ornament; cf. ibid., 65, with fig. 84. Czobor refers (66) to a cross, ‘similar’ to the one of his fig. 85, found in the grave of King Bela III (†1196); my examination of a small line drawing (given by Imre [Emerich] Henszlmann, , Magyarország ó-keresztyen, román és atmenet stylu muemlékeinek rövid ismertetese, Budapest, 1876, 58, fig. 46)Google Scholar of this seemed to indicate that the cross, although similar in many ways to the crosses of Czobor's figs. 85,86, and 87, was smooth and without markings suggesting a palm-trunk.

page 59 note 5 Reproduced by courtesy of the V. and A. Museum; the fine support is not shown in our figure.

page 60 note 1 Reproduced from Goldschmidt's, A.Der Albanipsalter in Hildesheim, Berlin, 1895, fig. 41.Google Scholar

page 60 note 2 Reproduced by courtesy of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum.

page 60 note 3 For a reproduction on a large scale see Oppenheim's, B.Original-Bildwerke in Holz, Stein, Elfenbein usw. aus der Sammlung Benoit Oppenheim Berlin, Leipzig, 1907, pi. 1Google Scholar. Cf. also , Demmler, Die Bildwerke des Deutschen Museums, Berlin and Leipzig, 1930, 63 seqqGoogle Scholar.

page 60 note 4 Cf. J.-B. L. G. Seroux d'Agincourt, History of Art, ii, London, 1847, pi. cxxxv.Google Scholar

page 61 note 1 Cf. Bouchier, E. S., Stained Glass of the Oxford District Oxford, 1918, 43.Google Scholar

page 61 note 2 Cf. Ant. Journ. xii, pi. ix and p. 25.

page 61 note 3 My paper, ‘An Alabaster Table of the Annunciation, with the Crucifix’, in Archaeologia, lxxiv, 203 seqq., mentions eight examples of the ‘Crucifix on the Lily’. Since it was published, a further example, painted on a wooden screen at Kenn, near Exeter, has been noted in Ant. Journ. vii, 72; another, in glass, at Long Melford, has been reported to me by Miss A. G. Gilchrist and by Mr. Christopher Woodforde (cf. Ant. Journ. xii, pi. viii and pp. 24 seq.), and the one at Queen's College has appeared in its true light. A twelfth example—curiously, perhaps the first example recorded in print–in the church at Wellington, Somerset, has just lately (in February, 1932) been brought to my notice by our Fellow the Very Reverend Dom Ethelbert Home; a good engraving of it, together with a short description, appears in Proc. Somerset Archaeol. Soc, i (1849-50), part 2, 36.

page 61 note 4 Cf. op. cit., 226 seqq.

page 61 note 5 Cf. ibid., 218 seqq.