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Liturgical Influence in The Dream of The Rood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Howard R. Patch
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Extract

Scholars have long made an earnest search for analogues to The Dream of the Rood, but the very remoteness of the parallels thus afforded so far is a unique testimony to the high degree of originality in the poem. Closer in some ways than any of them, in that it gives us a dialogue with the cross, the “Disputation between Mary and the Cross” might have been cited; but here again comparison shows that the Dream is a poem standing apart in the unusually fine quality of its inspiration and in its genuine feeling. The poet seems to have had little to work on for a basis, either as a source or as a guide. Yet we know that he was deeply religious and we can be sure that he must have been thoroughly acquainted with those parts of the ecclesiastical service which were devoted to the celebration of the cross. In writing such a poem he could hardly rid his mind of all the echoes of the hymns and responsive utterances and the liturgical offices which he was accustomed to hear at various times during the church year.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , 1919 , pp. 233 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1919

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References

1 It is worth while to compare the poem with such hymns as those of the West Gothic type, which celebrate Constantine and Helen, and which refer to the tenebrae and the harrowing of hell: see Dreves, Anal. Hymn., xxvii, pp. 90 ff.

2 Cook, notes the parallel here with the Elene and also with the Daniel, ll. 496 ff.—The Dream of the Rood, Oxford, 1905, p. 11, p. xlii. See also Sarrazin in the discussion of ll. 7–9 below.

3 The Anglo-Saxon prose (EETS, xlvi, p. 3) reads: “He sona beseah up on þære heofenan. þær geseah þat halwænde tacen Christes rode on myceles liohtes brihtnesse ongean him geset.” The Irish (Schirmer, Leabhar Breac, St. Gallen, 1886, p. 32, 1. 60): “Sah er das Zeichen und die Gestalt des Kreuzes Christi am Himmel oben und einen sehr grossen, unerträglichen Glanz darum auf jeder Seite.”

4 See Cook, p. 12; Wuelcker's Vocab., “iheawen treow”; Lat. Hymns of the A. S. Church, Surtees Soc., xxiii, 1851, p. 78, ll. 16–17.

5 Signum is sometimes glossed “tacn”: see Elene, l. 85; prose, EETS, xlvi, p. 3; Napier, O. E. Glosses. The collections of hymns referred to in the course of the study are as follows: Mone, Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, Freiburg, 1853; Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus; Dreves, Analecta Hymnica; Chevalier, Poésie Lit. du Moyen Age, Paris, 1893; Merrill, Latin Hymns, N. Y., 1917; Morel, Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, N. Y., 1868; Chevalier, Repertorium Hymnologicum, Louvain, 1912; The Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church, Surtees Soc., xxiii, 1851; Bernard and Atkinson, Liber Hymnorum, HBS; Prudentius, ed. Weitzius, Hanoviae, 1613.

6 Hereford Brev., HBS, ii, pp. 159, 160; York Brev., Surtees Soc., lxxv, ii, col. 270, col. 554; Colbertine Brev., HBS, ii, pp. 313, 315; Brev. Sarum, Proctor and Wordsworth, Cambridge, 1886, m, col. 276; Wordsworth, Ceremonies and Proc. of the Cath. Ch. of Salisbury, Cambridge, 1901, p. 95. See also the Blickling Homily for Easter, Morris, EETS, p. 91, ll. 23. Cf. Cook, p. xlii, drawing attention to the presence of the “heavenly host.”

7 Liber Hymnorum, HBS, i, p. 80, ll. 122; for the tradition see ii, pp. 166 ff.

8 One may note the close parallel between “leohte bewunden” and the Irish “einen sehr grossen, unerträglichen Glanz auf jeder Seite.”

9 See also Colbertine Brev., ii, p. 315.

10 See Holder, Invent. Crucis, p. 40, l. 6, “Enituit”; the Syrian “den grossen und herrlichen Lichtschein des Heiligen Kreuzes,” ASNS, xciii, p. 9; Mone, i, p. 134, st. 25.

11 Von Kädmon bis Kynewulf, Berlin, 1913, p. 121.

12 Berichte der Königl. Sächs. Ges. der Wiss., Leipzig, 1881, p. 84, n. 4.

13 See Rock, The Church of Our Fathers, London, 1905, iv, p. 290, and i, p. 240; Wordsworth, The Tracts of Clement Maydeston, HBS, London, 1894, p. 53; J. D. Chalmers, Divine Worship in England in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, London, 1877, p. 13; Feasey, Ancient English Holy Week Ceremonial, London, 1897, pp. 241–2.

14 Cook, DR, p. 19, considers Ebert's evidence not “quite convincing.”

15 Martigny, Dict. des Antiq. Chrét., Paris, 1877, p. 216; Zoeckler, Das Kreuz Christi, pp. 206 ff.

16 Surtees Soc., xliv, 1864, i, App. v.

17 See the jewel-adorned church of the apostate Irish priest, Revue Celt., xx, p. 428.

18 Liber Hymn., i, p. 63, l. 36; ii, p. 24. The cross was called “the great gem.” Compare the figure “quam preciosa gemma,” Brev. Sarum, iii, col. 273; and “thesaurus perfectorum,” Merrill, Lat. Hymns, p. 67. See also Prudentius:

Agnoscas, Regina, libens mea signa necesse est,
In quibus effigies Crucis aut gemmata refulget,

(Contra Symm., p. 274, ll. 465.) See the cross of St., Margaret, Hewison, Runic Roods, Glasgow, 1914, p. 7; also Opera Symeonis Dun., Surtees Soc., 1868, i, p. 239; cf. Brandl, Sitzungsberichte der Königl. Preuss. Akad. der Wiss., 1905, p. 722. Note the use of jewels on the Pastoral Staff of St. Patrick in the seventh century: F. E. Warren, The Lit. and Rit. of the Celtic Church, Oxford, 1881, p. 115.

19 For the books on the mosaics I am indebted to the kindness of Professor G. G. King of Bryn Mawr for pointing out many useful references. The generosity of the libraries of Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania, has helped me at every turn in the bibliography of this paper. For S. Apollinare in Classe, see Diehl, Ravenne, Paris, 1907, p. 71; date, pp. 24, 62. Less accurately, Didron, Christ, Icon., trans. Stokes, Bohn ed., i, pp. 396 ff. Inaccurately, Twining, Symbols and Emblems, London, 1852, plate vi, fig. ix.

20 Lowrie, Monuments of the Early Church, N. Y., 1916, p. 244, fig. 83; Twining, pl. vi, fig. 11, opp. p. 14.

21 Bunsen, Basiliken des christlichen Roms, pl. 46; Twining, pl. xxxvi, fig. 8, also pl. vii, fig. 9.

22 Kraus, Gesch. der christl. Kunst, Freiburg, 1896, frontispiece i; Lowrie, p. 306.

23 Kraus, i, p. 182, fig. 144; Lowrie, p. 311. See Kraus, i, p. 324; Lowrie, p. 311; Bunsen, Basiliken, pl. xlv.

24 C. R. Morey, Lost Mosaics and Frescoes of Rome of the Med. Period, Princeton, 1915, p. 26. See also the fresco, p. 62, pl. v; and see Twining, pl. lvi; p. 36, pl. xvii; p. 38, pl. xviii; pl. lxxxix. Also Asturias y Léon by D. José M. Quadrado, Barcelona, 1885, pl. opp. p. 88 (9th. cent.); Tavenor-Perry, Dinanderie, London, 1910, pl. xvii; Cabrol and Leclercq, Dict. d'Arch. Chrét. et de Liturgie, Paris, 1914, iii2, 3104, fig. 3403, 3411, pl. opp. 3107. Certainly many other examples could be collected with little trouble.

25 For the Byzantine influence see: Diehl, Ravenne, pp. 63 ff.; Schnaase, Gesch. der bildenen Kunst, iii (Im Mittelalter, i), Düsseldorf, 1869, pp., 217 ff.; J. R. Allen, Early Chr. Symb. in Gt. Bt. and Ireland, London, 1887, p. 142; compare Hewison, Runic Roods, pp. 3, 132; see the ornament of the Lindisfarne Gospels, Repro. from Ilium. MSS., British Museum, Series iii, 1908, p. 9; G. B. Brown, The Arts in Early England, iii, plate x, 2, 3, 4, 6. See the Gothic crosses, Lacroix, Les Arts au Moy. Age, p. 128; pl. opp. p. 130, a, b, d, e; p. 131, fig. 88; p. 132; p. 141, fig. 95. See also Dennison and Morey, Studies in East Christian and Roman Art, N. Y., 1918, pl. xxxiii, fig. 2.

26 Repro. from Ilium. MSS., series ii, 1907, pl. vi; and Allen, Early Chr. Symb., pp. 253 ff., 261 (fig. 90), 262 (91), 278 (99), 282 (101).

27 Armstrong, Art in Gt. Bt. and Ireland, N. Y., 1909, p. 12, fig. 17, gives a generally accessible picture of it. See Coffey, Guide to R. Irish Acad. Coll., Dublin, 1910, p. 56, dating it c. 1123 a. d. Cf. the cross in S. Giov. Lat. to which I have referred.

28 See Armstrong, Art in Gt. Bt. and Ireland, p. 7, fig. 8, for the type.

29 Allen, Early Chr. Symb., p. 100, fig. 14, 2, 3, 4, 5; p. 105, fig. 16, 4; p. 114, fig. 20, 1, 2.

30 See G. B. Brown, The Arts in Early Eng., N. Y., 1903, ii, p. 211, fig. 127; Rev. W. S. Calverley, Early Sculptured Stones in the Diocese of Carlisle, Kendal, 1899, pp. 3, 78, 139, 170, 223. Note the variations with bosses at the end of each beam, p. 8; boss at the end of each beam and one in the center, pp. 34, 223, 263; five bosses in circle in the center, p. 206. See Allen, Brit. Arch. Journ., xxxiv, p. 357; A. G. Langdon, Old Cornish Crosses, 1896, pp. 190, 358, 391. See also the English consecration crosses, Archaeol., xlviii, pl. xxxiii, fig. 7; pl. xxxvii, fig. 9, 10; xlvii, p. 161; xxv, p. 279. Note the fragments of a cross from the priory of Hexham: Surtees Soc., The Priory of Hexham, ii, 1865, p. xxxi, no. 3.

31 Archaeologia xliii, pt. 1, p. 149, pl. xxi. For this type see also the ms. illumination in Westwood's Facsimiles of the Miniatures and Ornaments of A.-S. and Irish MSS., London, 1868, pl. vii, Gospel of Durrow; pl. xii, Lindisfarne Gospels.

32 The attribution is opposed by Archbishop Eyre, Hist. of St. Cuthbert, London, 1887, pp. 218–219, 319. See also Cabrol and Leclercq, Dict. d'Arch. Chrét., iii (2), p. 3106, fig. 3406. See the similar cross on the altar of St. Ambrose presented by the Archbishop of Milan in 885: Leroux Agincourt, Hist. of Art., ii, xxvi, b. See the cross, apparently taken from a ms. illumination, on the title page of the Aelfric Soc. ed. of the Homilies of the A.-S. Church, London, 1846. See the quincunx in an enamelled cross in the Hamilton broach, A.-S. Review, Dec. 1900, p. 170 (9th cent.). See the cross with one jewel at the center, Archaeol., xliv, p. opp. p. 48.; cf. also G. B. Brown, The Arts in Early England, iii, plate a, 1; plate x, 7; iv, plates ciii, cxlv, cxlvii. For jewelled crosses of another type which appears in the stone: Arch., l, pt. 2, p. 406, pl. xxiii, fig. 1; G. B. Brown, op. cit., ii, p. 31, fig. 17(a); Allen, Early Chr. Symbolism, p. 99.

33 W. O. Stevens, The Cross in the Life and Lit. of the A.-S., Yale Studies, p. 43.

34 Early Chr. Symbolism, p. 100; Brit. Archaeol. Journ., xxxiv, p. 357.

35 The Lost Lang. of Symbolism, London, 1912, ii, p. 129.

36 DR, pp. 14 ff.

37 Migne, Pat. Lat., ccx, col. 224.

38 Aelfric Soc., Homilies, London, 1846, i2, pp. 588–9. See also pp. 590–591.

39 Ed. 1484, p. 10 .

40 See also Honorius, Migne, clxxii, col. 587: “Crux ob tres causas super altare erigitur … secundo ut passio Christi semper ecclesiae repraesentetur.” See col. 559 and 560 (lvi) for interpretations of five.

41 See Hoskins, Primers of Sarum and York, London and N. Y., 1901, pp. 123, 11, 112, 360; Dickinson, Missale Sarum, 1861–1883, col. 751 ff.

42 Rock, Church of Our Fathers, i, pp. 74 ff.; i, p. 192. He gives a review of the patristic utterances on the subject.

43 Blickl. Hom., EETS, lviii, p. 31, ll. 16. Note the representation of the five wounds in Twining's Symbols and Emblems, p. 40, pl. xix, fig. 6; see the five jewels in the diadem of God, ibid., pl. xxxiv, p. 70, fig. 3; and the five wounds painted on the red cross of a cross-cloth, Feasey, Ancient Eng. Holy Week Cer., p. 40.

44 The jewels in the Elene may be simply a device for expressing the radiance of the cross, just as the Anglo-Saxons often compared the sun and stars to jewels. A liturgical echo in an Anglo-Saxon line gives us: “þu scinende rod swiþor þonne tungle” (Aelfric, EETS, xciv, p. 150, l. 117. “O crux splendidior cunctis astris,” appears among other places in the York Brev., ii, col. 275.)

45 This passage should be compared with Riddle 54, ll. 1 ff.

46 Compare the symbolical interpretation in the gloss on the Trinity College ms. of the Liber Hymnorum, i, p. 39: “Si enim crux in terra proiicitur per .iiii eius cornua, .iiii partes mundi demonstrat. In hoc voluit dominus demonstrare quod non uenit unam partem mundi redimere sed totum humanum genus.” Cf. Honorius, Pat. Lat., clxxii, col. 593 (clx): “Quatuor cornua altaris signavit, dum quatuor partes mundi cruce salvavit”; ibid., col. 946, “Crux si in terra inclinatur, ad orientem, meridiem, septentrionem, occidentem se protendere comprobatur, quia quatuor partes mundi ad regnum Christi signantur.”

47 The same sense is expressed in the passage in the Beowulf (ll. 726–7):

“Him of eagum
lige gelicost leoht stod unfæger.“

48 DR, p. 16.

49 See Wuelcker, Vocab. In the sense of “timber” it might be a reference to the altar “beam” on which the crucifix hung and on which were images of the saints. See Gasquet, Parish Life in Med. Eng., London, 1909, p. 51, and Rock, Church of Our Fathers, iii, pp. 388 ff. But the reference to the cross is quite direct here, especially in the compound “sigebeam,” and the cross conceived as a tree was a figure especially vivid to the people of the early period. For the latter it may be worth while noting the cross represented as a tree with the branches cut off, but still covered with greenish bark, in the stained glass of St. Etienne de Bourges, the St. Chapelle in Paris, and Notre Dame de Chartres. See Didron, Christ. Icon., i, p. 412. See the green cross in the apse of St. Denis, ibid., i, p. 416. See the cross of bright green, Twining, Symbols and Emblems, pl. xx, p. 42; and pl. vii, fig. 20. See also the altar cross in J. Tavenor-Perry, Dinanderie, p. 123; p. 118, pl. xiv.

50 See Cook, DR, p. 16, n. 13.

51 A.-S. Hymns, p. 78.

52 See Exodus, ll. 588 and elsewhere.

53 Tracts of Clement Maydeston, HBS, p. 53.

54 Op. cit., p. 84. See for various red crosses, Zoeckler, Das Kreuz Christi, Gütersloh, 1875, p. 238.

55 The reference in the Crist (Part III), I. 1101, taken by itself, might easily be explained by the possibility that the cross was gold, and that since gold is often referred to as “red” and the color would be especially appropriate, it was so described. See Genesis, l. 2404.

56 Church of Our Fathers, iv, p. 263. See also Gasquet, Parish Life in Med. Eng., p. 171.

57 Tracts of Clement Maydeston, HBS, p. 49: “Excepta prima dominica differatur crux lignea rubei coloris depicta sine ymagine crucifixi.” Stevens refers for evidence to the red crosses in Archaeol., xlviii, p. 456, but these are consecration crosses and without significance here.

58 Rock studies the usage with some evidence not without importance for us, Church of Our Fathers, iv, pp. 290 ff., citing the description of the cross in the cathedral of York: “Una crux de rubeo jaspide ornata cum argento deaurato, cum petris infixis in pede ligneo depicto… . Item una crux de christallo cum pulchro pede bene sculpta.” (See Mon. Angl., viii, p. 1204.) See in the ritual of Durham (Surtees Soc., cvii, 1903, p. 10 and p. 105) the processional crosses, one of silver and double gilt, and one of gold. Cf. Chalmers, Divine Worship, p. 282; and the prayer, App., p. xviii. Also the Osmund Register lists the ornaments in the hands of the treasurer of Sarum, 1214–1222 (Wordsworth, Cer. and Proc. of the Catholic Church of Salisbury, p. 34 n. and p. 169):

Crux una magna cooperta argento cum ligno crucis beati Petri.
Crux una processionaria bene deaurata cum lapidibus multis.
Crux una processionaria dominicis diebus cooperta argento.
Crux una aurea cum ligno dominico, cum multis lapidibus, cum pede argenti et pomello.
Crux una deaurata ex una parte cum ligno dominico cum pede argenti.

The ceremony may be reflected in Riddle 56, ll. 3–4:

Wrætlic wudutreow ond wunden gold,
sinc searobunden, ond seolfres dæl.

See also Gasquet, Parish Life in Med. Eng., pp. 172 ff.

59 Cf. A.-S. Hymns, p. 78, “Tendens manus vestigia” glossed “aþenigende þanda fot-swaþu.” Cook refers to Ben. Off., p. 73: “Crist wæs on rode aþened.”

60 Cf. Cook, DR, pp. 21, 41, referring to “arbor una nobilis”; also Brandl, Sitzungsberichte der Königl. Preuss. Akad. der Wiss., 1905, p. 721. The line quoted above seems to be more to the point. The Pange lingua is almost entirely incorporated in the antiphons for the adoration of the cross in Gregory's Liber Antiphonarius, §§ 684–5, Migne, Pat. Lat., lxxviii. Cf. also Chalmers, Divine Worship, App., pp. xxix ff. See the same sentiment in the hymns: Chevalier, Poés. Lit., p. 181, lxv (174), 2 (Electa cunctis credulis); Daniel, v, p. 183 (Quod solum fuisti dignum sustinere Dominum); Dreves, vii, p. 105, No. 91, 8a (quae sola fuisti digna portare regem). In the liturgy: York Brev., ii, col. 275 (que sola fuisti digna portare talentum mundi); col. 551 (que digna fuit portare precium hujus seculi); Brev. Sarum, iii, col. 274.

61 Cf. Anselm, Pat. Lat., clviii, col. 942: “Salva me, sancta crux, quae in corpore Christi dedicata es, et ex membrorum ejus compage tanquam margaritis ornata; quae praetium nostrum portare digna fuisti et vitam aeternam nobis attulisti.” Cf. with this York Brev., ii, col. 551 (que digna fuit portare precium hujus seculi).

62 Although the details are not in the Irish abridged version; see Schirmer, Leabh. Breac, p. 46.

63 EETS, xlvi, p. 15. Of. Durandus, Rationale, p. 138 ro, “lapidibus et preciosis adornatam.” It may not be out of place to note here, however, that the Elene seems to have a special predilection for jewels: the nails after the crucifixion are described as shining like jewels (ll. 1114 ff.,), while the analogues give them as shining like gold (ASNS, cxxv, p. 87; ZDPhil, xxxvii, p. 18), and in the Dream (l. 46) at the time of the crucifixion they are “deorcan,” (note the parallel here in the Dream to the Crist, Part iii, ll. 1107–9.) For the Elene see also note 44 above. It should be added that “golde and seolfre” of DR may have reference merely to the ceremony described in the discussion of ll. 21 ff. above.

64 Cook has noted many of the parallels. Seee note 63 above and Cook, DR, p. 30; DR, ll. 110, 117, and Crist, ll. 999, 1376 ff., and Cook, DR, p. 42. Others have been mentioned in the course of the study.