a and b in Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle upon Tyne, nos. 1956.234.1A and 1956.234.2A; c used as font base at Rothbury

a and b found in taking down walls of church during restoration in winter of 1849-50; donated to Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1850. c first mentioned in 1856, when font first recognized as incorporating part of same cross' font dated 1664, when order for making bowl appears in parish minute book; no evidence for earlier location of c

All Saints

a and b in good condition; c showing signs of greater wear, possibly due to later reuse

a (head):

Double-cusped type D9 with outer flat-band and inner roll moulding framing each face. The upper part of the lower and one complete horizontal arm survive.

A (broad): Part of a Crucifixion scene. In the left arm of the cross, the ground is cut back and dressed smooth, and a well modelled arm and hand are almost cut free from the surface. The fingers of the hand are closed and down-tilted, and the hand is pierced by a large nail in the palm. There is an attempt to show muscles on the inner arm. The main figure of Christ is cut away, but part of a dished halo survives at the bottom of the upper cross-arm. This halo is of the cruciferous type with triple incisions, and it overlaps and stands free from the roll moulding. In the upper arm an angel appears to be grasping the halo. The figure is shown sideways with head half-turned and cut almost free from the surface. Its face is framed in short `ribbed' hair divided at the centre. The eyes are modelled and the pupils are drilled or punched; the nostrils are also punched and the mouth cut so that the lips are slightly open. Long drooping moustaches fall from the upper lip. The body is winged and clothed in heavy drapery with concertina-like folds.

B (narrow): Upper curved face above the arm: one register of simple pattern E. Curved face immediately above arm: incomplete, but probably U-bends with a pattern D loop. Curved face below arm: incomplete interlace. The large square dowel-hole tapers and slopes diagonally down towards the centre of the cross-head.

C (broad): The central roundel with its single roll moulding is completely mutilated. In the upper arm is a frontal three-quarter figure deeply cut away from the background. Details of the hair and face are worn away, but the hair could be of the same type as for the other figures on this face. The eyes are drilled. No details of the drapery survive, but a coil beneath the figure's hands could be drapery. Alternatively, this could be connected with the two rodlike features which it holds in its hands, which could depict thongs or whips.

In the right arm of the cross a left-facing figure holds a circlet in each hand. Its extended right hand is grotesquely large, as large indeed as its head; the left hand is slightly withdrawn and the circlet(?) half hidden. Details of the head have survived well. The hair is of the ribbed type, the eyes are drilled and there is a ferocious moustache. The widest part of the arm is filled by voluminous ribbed drapery with flying V-shaped folds.

In the lower arm of the cross only part of another figure survives. Its hands clasp a bundle of short `pegs'; the head which is of the same type as the others is half-turned and upward looking.

D (narrow): Upper curved face above arm: simple pattern E. Curved face immediately above arm: U-bends combined with a pattern D loop. End of arm: simple pattern E. Curved face immediately below arm: single marigold flower pattern, empanelled. Main curved face below arm: two registers of simple pattern B.

b-c (shaft):

A (broad): Part of a figure of Christ in Majesty is framed in a wide flat-band moulding with an inner roll moulding of a semiarchitectural form. The figure is frontal with his head surrounded by a large dished cruciferous halo. His hair is grooved, parted in the centre and hanging on to his shoulders. His eyes are modelled with the pupils drilled, as are the nostrils. His lips are slightly open. His face is youthful, without beard or moustache. He has a plain unpleated under-tunic with round neck and is clothed in a pallium with heavy tubular folds. In his left hand he holds a book. A concave fold passes over his breast and over the book, as though dividing the scene (as face C). On either side of his head are stiff plants with double-sheathed buds with a corona below. The round-headed arch above is attached to the inner moulding by two V-shaped bindings as if it were a plant, and detached flowers fill the spandrels.

On the base is an Ascension scene. The frame is badly mutilated and the stone has been broken so that the head and part of the right arm are lost. The figure of Christ is frontal and seems to be surrounded by a cloud(?) or mantle(?). The right leg is flexed so that he has the appearance of being seated. His right hand is raised in blessing; his left holds a scroll or a book shown in section. He is dressed in a long sleeved tunic tightly pleated at the wrists, and an over-mantle with V-shaped folds, which are more sensitively rendered than on the other faces. He seems to be attended by two angels, who are shown three-quarter length and side-facing. The one on the right is very mutilated, but some details of the head, the drapery of the upper body and the hand, as well as the lower drapery folds, can be distinguished. On the left, the figure appears to be winged, and to have soft long hair. The angel's right hand grasps the surrounding cloud(?) near Christ's face. Drapery in sharp V-shaped folds falls over the arm. Below, massed together with heads turned upwards, are eleven figures, perhaps apostles, five in the back row and six in the front. Where detail is visible, they all seem to have close-cut hair, punched or drilled eyes, and heavy moustaches. Four figures in the front row, possibly the Evangelists, hold books. Their drapery is conveyed by heavy tubular folds.

B (narrow): Framed by a double flat-band moulding. The two pieces of this face represent the top and bottom of an inhabited spiral scroll with tangled side tendrils. The scroll has central incised stems, and heavy V-shaped nodes and roots. At the top the scroll ends in a large sheathed berry bunch and from the top volute sprout long veined and lobed leaves, a trilobed berry bunch and a sheathed bud. From underneath the main stem, the head and forequarters of a calf emerge, nuzzling the branch. It has embryonic horns, naturalistic ears, drilled eyes, and its lean elongated body has a crest of lank curls.

At the base is a volute with similar three-element berries and sheathed buds, and again the animal's body is half in and half out of the volute. It is shown in motion, nuzzling the plant, and appears to be of a canine or leonine type, like the reptiles on face D. It has a long tail and lank body curls. Below its back legs is a side volute with an elongated leaf, and above its back is the tail of a reptile which gnaws at the volute on the other side.

C (broad): Framed by a flat-band moulding. Two scenes are juxtaposed on different planes: the healing of the blind man by Christ; and the healing of the woman with an issue of blood. The angle of Christ's figure, which is unfortunately headless, seems to be placed so as to divide the two scenes. At the top, the blind man is seated on a basket chair or litter. His hair and heavy moustache can be paralleled on the other non-divine figures on the cross, but his eyes are shown as empty slits. He is swathed in a robe with heavy tubular folds, and his hand is raised in a gesture of acceptance. His head shrinks back under the pressure of Christ's powerful index finger, which is in the act of opening his right eye. Christ's body is bent forward towards the man. He is clothed in a long sleeved tunic and pallium, the folds of which he holds back with his left hand.

Nestled into the curve of his garment fold is a woman; her long hair is covered by a plain cloth with a banded facing. She is slightly turned towards the frame. Her face is modelled on the same formula as the other figures.

On the base is a panel of interlace in a round-headed frame; the interlace is a complex sixteen-cord pattern B.

D (narrow): Framed by a double flat-band moulding. The surviving part of this face is filled by a crowd of eighteen people, cleverly conveyed as a massed group. Of the back row, only the heads can be seen; of the next two rows, only the upper half of the face or half the faces as they appear to extend behind the frame; the front row figures are shown as heads and shoulders. One in the second row leans forward realistically with his hands on the shoulders of a figure in the front row. Their faces conform to the normal Rothbury type, with contoured eyes, drilled pupils and nostrils, and lips slightly open. However, they do not have moustaches and their hair is dressed with distinctive fillets. Despite the identical formula for the faces, the variety in size, in posture (one, bottom left, has his fingers to his mouth) and in dress creates a very dramatic group. Whether in their position at the top of the cross they are thought of as heavenly souls, or simply as a group of earthly spectators, is uncertain; the scene below which might have explained their awe and interest is lost.

At the base of the same face is what could be a scene in Hell, in which small animals and humans struggle in the coils of reptiles. Each reptile has a canine-type head with prominent ears, drilled eyes and blunt jaws. They have three-toed front paws, but their scaly reptilian backs end in a tail. The top pair reach down to gnaw at the underbellies of two small quadrupeds, which lie spread-eagled on their backs, feet braced against their bodies. The heads and the front paws of the quadrupeds appear from underneath the tails of a second pair of reptiles, which reach down to bite the necks of two snake-headed quadrupeds rearing up from below. They in their turn bite the tails of those which bite their necks.

At the top, in a space between the writhing reptiles, is a small startled cat-like head. The pivot of the composition at the bottom is a small naked human figure who grips in each hand the feet of the two rearing quadrupeds at the base. Despite the symmetry of the composition, genuine tension and horror is created. This is partly because of the naturalism of the small quadrupeds at the top, whose feet, naked bellies and testicles are realistically portrayed, partly because of the texturing of the reptiles.

 

The unworn, though damaged, condition of this cross, probably because it was originally inside a building, makes it possible to evaluate technical details of the carvings. The dowel-hole in face B of the head presumably represents a repair, suggesting that the missing arm may have been broken off comparatively early, perhaps even during the erection of the cross. It seems that the whole cross was the work of one hand, and where the work appears finer and more complex, as in the Ascension scene, this could be a reflection of the model. Despite its fragmentary state, it is clear that the scheme as well as the execution puts this among the major works of Northumbrian stone carving. Only the cross at Ruthwell surpasses this one in the complexity of its theological scheme, and there are reasons to believe that Ruthwell is not unrelated to Rothbury (Cramp 1965b, 11).

This seems to be the earliest surviving stone rood in England. In earlier crosses such as Hexham 11 or Ruthwell the Crucifixion scene is depicted on the shaft, and this tradition is maintained in Bernicia (see Alnmouth and Aycliffe 1). However, in the Viking dominated regions of southern Northumbria the positioning of the crucified in the cross-head became common in the tenth and eleventh centuries. There is not enough of the figure of Christ crucified to compare his type. Coatsworth (1979, I, 201-7) considers that the closed drooping hand with the prominent nail in the palm is consistent with types of Christ crucified found, for example, in some Carolingian ivories of ninth-century date. The angel protectively supporting Christ's halo is also sometimes found in ninth-century ivories of the Crucifixion (Coatsworth 1979, I, 203-4). In scenes in which this feature occurs there are usually two or more such figures; there would not be room for another on this cross-head.

The figures on the other face of the cross are unique in Anglo-Saxon art. The central roundel is completely defaced. They carry, as Kendrick first noted, the Instruments of the Passion (Kendrick 1938, 155), and by analogy with other works in which these figures appeared, the central roundel must have included Christ in one of His attributes – either as a bust as at Hoddom or Easby, or as the Divine Lamb as at Hoddom or Hart (no. 7). It is just possible to see a fragment of drapery on the left side of the medallion, and a credible outline of a book on the right, so that the bust is more probable. Coatsworth has pointed out that the detachment of figures carrying the Instruments from narrative scenes and their recombination with other elements is a ninth-century development. This iconography does seem to develop alongside the interest in devotional literature, for example in the works of Cynewulf. The choice of Instruments does not conform to any known combination, and the nails separated from narrative scenes of the Crucifixion and Deposition do not seem to be found elsewhere at this date. However, a new liturgical interest seems to be reflected throughout the Rothbury cross.

The healing of the blind man is found in Northumbria only here and at Ruthwell, although the scene with a seated figure of a blind man is known also from Great Glen, Leicestershire. The strange way in which figures of the blind man and Christ and the woman below are put together on different planes is a phenomenon also found on a frieze at Jarrow (no. 20).

I have elsewhere credited the Monkwearmouth/Jarrow school with the cross at Ruthwell (Cramp 1965b, 10). Rothbury also bears the stamp of a lively theological interest, and shares with Jarrow and Ruthwell similar peculiar stylistic features, particularly in the flora of the inhabited scroll. The treatment of the drapery and the facial form is also comparable on the Rothbury and Ruthwell crosses. In the figural panels, however, the iconography is more advanced than at Ruthwell. Instead of the dignified solitary or paired figures, there is a taste for crowd scenes and emotive effects which reminds one of the ninth-century Tours or Rheims schools on the continent. The crowd at the top of the shaft registering awe and amazement are very like the shocked Israelites listening to Moses in the Moutier-Grandval Bible, fol. 25v – even to the trick of creating a crowd perspective.

The writhing torments of the men and reptiles which plausibly represent Hell and the majestic pomp of the Ascension are also directly related to the emotional piety of the age, as Clemoes has shown in relation to the Ascension (Clemoes 1971, 296). It is possibly coincidental that the two surviving animals in the inhabited scroll can also be used as Evangelist symbols; this could have given them an added significance. However, the large-scale animals spanning more than one volute of a scroll are typical of the ninth century elsewhere.

It seems then that at Rothbury the carver has maintained the heavy Roman style of carving as exemplified earlier at Ruthwell. However, the iconography seems if anything precocious, and betrays the influence of a centre in touch with new ideas from southern England and from the continent. The holes in the arms could have been used for attaching lights, foliage or some other form of `dressing' to the cross if it stood inside a church. The decking of a cross is perhaps referred to in the Old English poem, `The Dream of the Rood', lines 14-15 (Dickins and Ross 1951, 22).

First half of ninth century

(—) 1855b; Charlton 1855; (—) 1855-7d, 181; Haigh 1857, 173; Stuart 1867, 45-6, pls. lxxxv-vii; Allen and Browne 1885, 351; Dixon 1885, 266-7; Hodges 1893, 81-2; (—) 1899-1900b, 71-2; (—) 1909-1Ob, 112; Prior and Gardner 1912, 122, fig. 100; Howorth 1917, III, 316, 319; Brown 1921, 168, pl. 25, 8; Brøndsted 1924, 42; Hodges 1925a; Collingwood 1927, 76-8, 84, 106, figs. 94-5; Clapham 1930, 68, pl. 18; Longhurst 1931, 45, pl. 29, 4; Gardner 1935, 35, fig. 19; Kitzinger 1936, 69-70; Kendrick 1938, 154-8, 164-5, 167, 169, 176, 180, 182, pls. 63-4; Dodds 1940, 330; Dauncey 1941, 116; Fyson 1951-6, 241-2; Radford 1955, 52-4; Stone 1955, 21, pl. 9A; Pevsner 1957, 282-3; Cramp 1965b, 10-11, pl. 13; Adcock 1974, 165-8, pls. 56B, 58-9; Cramp and Lang 1977, no. 1; Morris 1978, 129; Coatsworth 1979, I, 200-7, II, 42-3, pls. 27, 81-2, 101; Cramp and Miket 1982, no. 40