sign cross dream rood

30
Literatim & Theoiogy, Vd 11 No 4, Datmber 1997 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS: CULTURE AND BELIEF IN THE DREAM OF THE ROOD Graham Holderness Abstract Two new translations are offered here of the Anglo-Saxon poems 'The Dream of the Rood* and 'The Seafarer. These translations are prefaced by a critical introduction which examines then- cultural and theological contexts. I Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. T. S. Eliot, Little Gtdding THE ANGLO-SAXON poem familiarly known as ' The Dream of the Rood 1 or ' The Vision of the Cross' (it has no tide in its manuscript form) occurs in the 'Vercelli Book', Codex CXVII of the cathedral library at Vercelli in Northern Italy, a compilation of Old English religious verse and prose. The MS dates from the second half of the tendi century. 1 The poem itself may be consider- ably older, perhaps seventh century. Unusually for Anglo-Saxon poetry, there is relatively definite circumstantial evidence bearing upon this poem's date of composition and cultural location: since a version of the same poem, or of an older poem from which both examples ultimately derive, is to be found inscribed in Northumbrian runes on the 'Ruthwell Cross', a carved stone monument formerly housed within the church of Ruthwell m Dumfreisshire. The cross could be as old as 670. 2 Additionally some close verbal parallels occur m a short inscription on the 'Brussels Cross', a silver-laminated wooden crucifix (probably considered a fragment of the True Cross) which dates from the late tenth or eleventh centuries. 3 These could derive from the poem, or again from a common source. The poem The Dream of the Rood (hereafter Dream), now isolated and distinguished m scholarly modern editions, and offered here (in one of many reasonably faithful translations) as a definitive masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon O Oxford Univeraty Pros 1997

Upload: iuliana-herghiligiu

Post on 19-Jan-2016

36 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Sign Cross Dream Rood

Literatim & Theoiogy, Vd 11 No 4, Datmber 1997

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS:CULTURE AND BELIEF IN THE

DREAM OF THE ROODGraham Holderness

Abstract

Two new translations are offered here of the Anglo-Saxon poems 'TheDream of the Rood* and 'The Seafarer. These translations are prefaced bya critical introduction which examines then- cultural and theologicalcontexts.

I

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,Every poem an epitaph. And any actionIs a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throatOr to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

T. S. Eliot, Little Gtdding

THE ANGLO-SAXON poem familiarly known as ' The Dream of the Rood1 or' The Vision of the Cross' (it has no tide in its manuscript form) occurs in the'Vercelli Book', Codex CXVII of the cathedral library at Vercelli in NorthernItaly, a compilation of Old English religious verse and prose. The MS datesfrom the second half of the tendi century.1 The poem itself may be consider-ably older, perhaps seventh century. Unusually for Anglo-Saxon poetry, thereis relatively definite circumstantial evidence bearing upon this poem's dateof composition and cultural location: since a version of the same poem, orof an older poem from which both examples ultimately derive, is to be foundinscribed in Northumbrian runes on the 'Ruthwell Cross', a carved stonemonument formerly housed within the church of Ruthwell m Dumfreisshire.The cross could be as old as 670.2 Additionally some close verbal parallelsoccur m a short inscription on the 'Brussels Cross', a silver-laminated woodencrucifix (probably considered a fragment of the True Cross) which datesfrom the late tenth or eleventh centuries.3 These could derive from thepoem, or again from a common source.

The poem The Dream of the Rood (hereafter Dream), now isolated anddistinguished m scholarly modern editions, and offered here (in one of manyreasonably faithful translations) as a definitive masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon

O Oxford Univeraty Pros 1997

Page 2: Sign Cross Dream Rood

348 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

poetic artistry, finally therefore derives from a written source, the sophisticatedliterary and intellectual context of late West-Saxon Christian culture, theculture of an already relatively united 'England'.4 Although the MS is acompilation of twenty-three homilies and six poems, the homogeneity evid-ent in its anthology of Christian prose and verse declares some degree ofconfidence m both doctrinal and aesthetic categories.

The history of the poem, however, begins (for us) with cryptic inscriptionscarved on a partly 'illegible stone', formulated in the runic alphabet of theNorthumbrian dialect, cohabiting with carved illustrations and extracts fromthe Gospels, and with Latin liturgical phrases. The undecorated MS, in itsneat and precise minuscule, rules and standardises its contents in a way thatanticipates the medium of print, and thereby formally excludes much of thereligious iconography, devotional practice and homiletic exhortation so richlyconfigured on, and entailed in, the practical artistry of the Ruthwell Cross.

'And that,' as T. S. Eliot suggests, 'is where we start.' The question of howthese different variants of the poem mter-relate has given rise to debatesfascinatingly reminiscent of bibliographical struggles over the chronology andauthorship of Shakespeare's plays. Like a 'Bad Quarto' version of aShakespeare play, the earlier version of the Dream on the Ruthwell Cross iscruder, stranger, transparendy more utilitarian, and generally regarded asaesthetically inferior to its apparendy later, canonical counterpart.5 The poemin die Vercelh Book could obviously be a subsequent expansion, elaborationand sophistication of the earlier form. But such a 'first draft' theory militatesagainst post-Romantic conceptions of audiorship, and it could seem morenatural to posit an 'original' form of die poem, an 'L/r-Rood' from which allpossible variants can be conjectured to have derived; as hinted by Dickinsand Ross in their edition of the poem:6

It might be suggested that the Vercelli text goes back to an original poem fromwhich extracts were carved on the Ruthwell Cross

The co-presence of these textual variants alerts us to the existence of a 'Dreamof the Rood" diat is larger than, and only partially corresponding to, any ofthe surviving forms: a body of cultural practice which could be described,borrowing terms from bibliography, as a 'work' rather than a 'text'.7 In thiscase the 'work' is known to us from those diree material sources—architec-tural, iconic and literary—as a collation of poetically organised words andrhythms, devotionally-focused spiritual meditations, and fragmentary tracesof an English Christian liturgy.

Historically, we might say, the Dream existed m a cultural space mappedbetween those three surviving objects, and inscribed across those constitutivecultural elements of stone, metal, wood and parchment. Since we know that

Page 3: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 349

the histoncal substance of that 'work' was shared (at least) between an 18-footstone monument, a 14 cm silver-laminated wooden icon, and a literarydocument, we can further discern the key functions of that 'work', to someextent disposed across its variant 'texts', as liturgical, devotional and aesthetic.The 'Rood' that inhabited that cultural space was a cross to be prayed to,and kissed, as well as a cross to be read.8

Nor was that cultural space anything like as homogeneous as might besuggested by searching back from our apparently integrated, canonised—indeed, in some senses 'modernised'9—Dream of the Rood towards its evidentlydiscrepant and fragmentary cultural roots. That great Northumbrian kingdomwhose language adorns the Ruthwell Cross, and whose Golden Age producedsuch masterpieces of Christian art as the Lindisfarne Gospels, by the time theDream was written down no longer existed; and the West Saxon dialect inwhich the latter was recorded was the language of those who were, at leastfor a brief space in that turbulent period, the historical victors.10

The surviving traces of that 'work' are those cultural documents, withtheir written texts, among which the Dream is the fullest and most impressiveexample. Notwithstanding the pre-eminence thus jusdy accorded to thepoem, we would do well, when using it in diis way as the starting-point fora journey of historical and cultural exploration, to recall that this poeticaddress to a relic—the historic Cross employed and left behind by theRedeemer—is itself a relict, a luckily surviving trace, of a substantial corpusof textual production, emanating from, and shaping, a particular historicalconjuncture of belief, faidi and art.

IIDespite its acknowledged poetic unity—Richard Hamer apdy calls it 'thefinest, most imaginatively conceived and most original of the Old Englishreligious poems'11—the poem is in some ways a hybrid synthesis of diversecultural, religious and poetic discourses. Its formal organisation echoes mostof the different kinds of Anglo-Saxon poetry that we know from survivingexamples: the heroic (e.g. Beowulf), the biblical paraphrase {Christ, Judith),the saint's life (Elene), the elegy (The Wanderer, The Seafarer), the riddles, andthe specimens of so-called 'gnomic' poetry.

The Dream is famous for its deployment of the language and imagery ofheroic poetry, its sharing of a heroic vocabulary with poems like Beowulf, todramatise the Passion of Christ. It contains a narrative which for some distancefollows that of the Gospels, but then traces the subsequent life of the Dreamer,as does its companion-piece in the Vercelli Book, Elene (the story of theEmperor Constantine and his modier Helena, legendary discoverer of theTrue Cross). In its postulation of human existence as a 'laene life', a life both

Page 4: Sign Cross Dream Rood

350 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

transitory and borrowed,12 lying between a bright lost past and a radiantanticipated future, the poem shares the spiritual landscape of elegies such asThe Seafarer. Where, in a passage of exhortation, the Cross dwells on thepractical lessons implied by its revelation, we find moral advice of the kindtypical of gnomic poetry. The stylistic personification of the Cross as speakingsubject ('prosopopeia') links it to the riddles, at least two of which have theCross as their partial solution.13

In these respects, the Dream is absolutely of and for its time, its formaldevices deeply embedded in the linguistic registers and cultural vocabulariesdeployed by the Anglo-Saxon poets across a wide range of poetic subjectsand styles. Its obvious link with the Ruthwell Cross takes its history backdeep into the very earliest stages of English society, to a point not long afterthe arrival of St. Augustine (597). Its medium of alliterative verse sets itwithin a cultural process by means of which a Germanic tradition of oralverse was assimilated to the norms of a monastic literacy originating in theMediterranean; or as John C. Pope puts it:14

Old English poetry is descended from a prehterary stock once common to theGermanic tribes of the European continent ... Writing as a literary art .. wasintroduced among the Anglo-Saxons in the course of die seventh century bymissionaries from the Mediterranean world and from Ireland.

The multi-cultural character of the literature produced from such a rapproche-ment of traditions is self-evident. It is quite another matter, on the otherhand, to analyse within the literature the precise relations between thosediverse cultural elements, smce the record is already irreversibly translatedinto a European literacy that entered England only with the advent ofChristianity. All the Anglo-Saxon poetry we have was documented, if notactually produced, in the environment of a Christian culture.

The earliest examples of English alliterative verse, for example, are thehymns of Caedmon, the illiterate cowherd of Whitby who was prompted bya divine visitation to cast the word of God into the verse of his native tongue.Bede's account in the Historia Ecdesiastica illustrates both the English languageand the Germanic verse-forms deployed obediently in the service of theChristian faith. Once Old English verse showed itself capable, m other words,of revealing through inspiration the word of God, it became worth notingand writing down (though not, admittedly, by Bede himself).15 The pagantraditions from which such poetry originated were, on the other hand, betterdiscarded, and their verse with them: after all, as Bishop Alcuin put it, 'Whathas Ingeld to do with Christ? The eternal king reigns in Heaven, the lostpagan laments in Hell.'16

Page 5: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 351

III

The relauonships between Christian and pre-Christian traditions, literacy andorality, Mediterranean Christianity and Germanic paganism, lie at the heartof the Dream, and have been central to the history of its critical interpretation.The poem's religious content in a sense demanded the standard Latin ofbiblical, patristic and liturgical Christian literature—certainly of that RomanChristianity which established its supremacy over the Celtic variety at theSynod of Whitby. The vernacular into which, presumably for missionary andevangelical purposes, that gospel had to be translated, happened to have beenthe natural vehicle for a secular literature of pagan heroism.

But the Dream goes much further than utilitarian vernacularisation in itsgathering of Christian and pagan discourses. The poem does actually imaginethe Crucifixion as a heroic battle, depicting Jesus as a 'geong Haeleth' ('younghero'), who approaches the challenge of the Passion like an epic hero girdinghimself for mortal combat:

It was then that I saw a splendid SaviourApproach with alacrity and courage to climb.Hastily, the young hero snipped HunFor action ... (11.43—6)

The indignity of the stripping of Christ's raiment in the Passion narrative istransformed, in the poem, into an eager and athletic stripping for batde. Herethe Crucifixion is no humiliating subjugation: Jesus willingly embraces theCross in a trial of strength and courage:

In the sight of spectators,Feariess and firm, keen for the combat,He clambered on the cross. (11.47—9)

In the vocabulary of the Germanic heroic tradition, Christ is depicted not asa sacrificial lamb led to the slaughter, but as a fighter actively grappling anopponent:

Widi shocks I shuddered, when the warrior woundHis strong arms about me ... (II.59—60)

In death he lies as the finally defeated hero, subjugated yet magnificent inthe scale of his epic achievement, and bitterly mourned by his survivingretainers:

They took Him upTenderly, torn from His torture,

Page 6: Sign Cross Dream Rood

352 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

Left me blood-boltered, impaled by the pointsOf annihilating nails. They stretched out His limbs,Wounded, war-weary; stood at His headTo say their good-byes; gneved at his going,They laid the exhausted hero to rest. (II.85—91)

In this way the poem reconstitutes the Passion-narrative into a form quite

different from that encountered in the Gospels. Where the latter tend to

distinguish, by narrative sequencing, the suffering victim from the triumphant

risen God, the Dream by its use of heroic language brings into the Passion a

dimension of epic heroism in action: reckless self-sacrificing bravery, and a

triumph of heroic values even more poignant in defeat than in victory

(although of course in this case, the victory of the Resurrection is implicit

and yet to come). This certainly looks, prima facie, like cultural assimilation.

As Bruce Mitchell puts it, 'the concept of Christ as a warnor-king' .1 7

must have appealed to a people who put such value on ferocious courage andpnde and who lived according to the comitatus code in which the lord was thenng-giver and great hero for whom his warriors were duty-bound to die loyallyand without complaint.

IV

As these examples demonstrate, the presence within the poem of a Germanic

warrior-ethic and a language of heroic values is in itself unproblematac. As

one critic puts it, the poem fuses.18

words and ideas which stem from the Anglo-Saxon world rather than from theworld of the Bible. In the Dream of the Rood, these two traditions are broughttogether. Chnst is portrayed as the young hero, reigning from the Cross; but,at the same time, he is described as cruelly stretched out, weary of limb, enduringsevere torment.

J. C. Pope reminds us, however, that these traditions can be 'brought together'

in quite different ways:

Old English poetry shows at tunes the collision, but often the harmoniousfusion, of Christianity and a submerged paganism, Mediterranean civilizationand a more primitive but not always inferior Germanic world.19

In what way are these two traditions poetically 'brought together' in the

Dream, when they are so obviously and in so many respects entirely incom-

patible? Fusion or collision? It is one thing to draw parallels from narratives,

Page 7: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 353

archetypes and symbols in different belief-systems; it is quite another toreconcile them. Certainly the figure of the heroic warrior can readily expresscertain types of divine power. The key role of the Anglo-Saxon lord or kingas dispenser of gifts in return for loyalty and service could easily be assimilatedto the Christian doctrine of grace. Even the death of a pagan hero or kingm battle, and his memonaUsation in ritual, song and poetry, could be seen asparallel to the death and resurrection of Christ.

But there the resemblances end. The combat undertaken by Jesus hasobjectives quite different from those of an Anglo-Saxon raid or battle. It isnot undertaken with a view to achieving political power or securing wealththrough spoil or tribute. It is not a fight to settle a score or fulfil a vow ofvengeance. Victory cannot be rendered visible by the defeat and subjugationof enemies; nor can the lord's authority be established by generosity mmaterial rewards. Though Jesus may display Himself to onlookers as courage-ous ('modig on manigra gesythe, I.41), the success he aims at has a goal moreambitious than the protection of a community or the defence of a kingdom:nothing less, indeed, than the universal Redemption of all mankind: ' Tha hewolde mancyn lyseri (I.41).

In short, this deployment of the Teutomc tradition as a formal vehicle fora narrative of the Christian Passion tends if anything to polarise rather thansynthesise the alternative cultural perspectives. This is nowhere more apparentthan in the mental torment of the Cross itself, which stoically bears physicalpunishment in sympathy with its lord, but endures a sharper pang in thepsychological double-bind of incompatible ethical imperatives. As has beencorrectly argued, the Cross sees itself to some degree as a loyal retainer inthe comitatus of Christ.20 As such his duty is to defend his lord, to struggleagainst his lord's enemies, and if necessary to die protecting him. As oneimbued with that heroic ethic, and bound by this high chivalric concept ofnobility in service, the painful destiny of the Cross is to witness in enforcedhelplessness his lord's voluntary subjugation.

Though all earth falteredAnd flinched with fear, I didn't dareTo bend or to break. I'd have fallen full-length,Flat to the earth, but was forced to stand firm.I could have crushed each of those enemies,But by Christ's command I had to stand fast. (53-8)

Certainly at this point the heroic and triumphalist Christianity that doubdessappealed to pagan Anglo-Saxons happy to give their loyalty to a sovereigneven greater, more glorious and more generous than those to whom theywere bound on earth, co-exists uneasily with the Pauline doctrine of redemp-tion through suffering, triumph through passivity.

Page 8: Sign Cross Dream Rood

354 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

V

It is necessary at this point to take a step back and to reconsider the relationshipbetween Christian and heroic traditions. Earlier criticism tended to assumethat the epic strain in the poem belongs to the language of its composition,and that its heroic values are those of its own Anglo-Saxon social context.The Dream is very clearly a Northern European poem, its affiliations stretchingoutwards towards the territories from which the Germanic settlers broughttheir language and their pagan beliefs. But it is equally orentated towards theMediterranean source of its Christian tradition and Roman inheritance. It isof course accurate to link the poem's language of heroic struggle and militaryvictory to the hegemonic values of Anglo-Saxon society. But the writerswho formulated their contemporary and local applications of an ancientheroic code knew that synthesis of Christian and pagan-heroic values frommuch earlier literary examples.

Though Christianity emerged from a cultural context already nchly sup-plied with a vocabulary of apocalyptic militarism, its early foundationsdeveloped in contradistinction to Judaism; and it was Rome that enacted thetheological oddity of merging the warnor code of a violent imperialism witha gospel of peace. While the cult of Jesus clearly derives from the evangehcalwntmgs of the early Church, especially those of St. Paul, the cult of HisCross begins some three centuries later, with the story of the EmperorConstantine's conversion to Christianity. On the eve of the battle at theMdvian Bridge in 312, Constantine had a dream or vision of a cross thatassured him victory over Maxentius: 'in hoc signo vinces'. The Cross became,by adaptation of the existing labarum, the Roman battle-standard; andConstantine's troops marched to war with the Cross, in Gibbon's words,'guttering on the helmets, and engraved on the shields of his soldiers'.21

Christianity became a religion of power and conquest. The Cross was bythese means established as central to the Christian religion; but at the sametime, made synonymous with the weaponry and force majeure of imperialmilitary power:

Only after the vision of Constantine and his subsequent victory did the Crossbecome the universal symbol of Christianity . . No certain representations ofthe Crucifixion are found before these events ... henceforth the mystery of theCrucifixion would be expressed in terms of conquest over foes: 'The crosswhich was the justice of thieves' ... says St Augustine ... 'is now become thesign of glory on the foreheads of emperors.'22

Together with the Dream in the Vercelh Book is Cynewulf's poem Elene,which begins with an account of these events, and provides us with afascinating insight into the relations between Christian and heroic values,

Page 9: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 355

since it narrates a story of fourth-century Rome in the combined idioms ofAnglo-Saxon heroic and religious verse. Roman virtus is here formulated inthe language of an English heroic ethic. The Christian Cross is shown arisingfrom that transhistorical encounter, to become the tutelary protector of bothRoman imperialism and Anglo-Saxon militarism. To Constantine are attrib-uted all the stock virtues of the Anglo-Saxon warlord:23

he, the battle-pnnce, was raised up to be army-leader in the kingdom of theRomans. The protector of his people, valiant •with the shield, was graciousto men.

Embattled to face the Goths and Huns across the Danube, but fearing defeatfrom the outnumbering enemy, Constantine is visited in sleep by an angelwho reveals to him a vision of the Cross:

He saw upon the roof of the clouds the glorious cross m its beauty, gleamingwith adornments, decked with gold; gems glittered. The bright tree was inscribedwith letters brilliantly and clearly: 'With this sign shalt thou overcome the enemym the perilous onset, thwart the hostile host.'

A cross is constructed and used as a battle-standard, with the predictable result:

The heathen perished; the barbarians fell ... Then it was plain that the Kingalmighty in that day's work had granted to Constantine victory, glorious honour,triumph under the heavens, by his rood-tree.

Though the two poems have so much m common, Elene is far more obviouslya heroic and martial narrative than a meditative devotional poem. It is farless concerned than the Dream with unfolding the Christian mysteries via thepower of dream and prophecy; far more concerned to assimilate Christianvalues to the old heroic code, and to demonstrate the irresistible power ofthe Cross to subdue the 'heathen'. Just as the Cross was taken into Romanculture as a symbolic weapon, so in Elene the Cross does not provide a meansof interrogating the heroic ethic, but becomes merely an instrument inits service.

One very clear link between the Dream and that Roman heroic andtriumphalist Christianity can be found in the Latin hymns of VenandusFortunatus (530-609), which are still used in Anglican worship, at the celebra-tion of Passionode and Good Friday.24 Though the parallels could beexplained by reference back to a common liturgical source, they are veryclose and convincing. ' Vexilla regis' depicts the Cross as a batde-standard, thecrucifixion as a military triumph. Again, where the Passion narrative in thegospels explicitly separates the condemned and sacrificed victim from the

Page 10: Sign Cross Dream Rood

356 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

resurrected and ascendant Saviour, Venantius merges suffering and triumph,victim and king:

regnatnt a ligno deus

("The universal Lord is he,Who reigns and triumphs from the tree').

'Pange, lingua' begins by even more explicitly figuring the redemption as asuccessful war of conquest:

Pange, lingua, gloriosi protlium certaminis,Et super ctucis twpaeo die triumphum nobilem

('Sing, my tongue, the glonous battle,Sing the ending of the fray,O'er the Cross, the victor's trophy,Sound the loud triumphant lay ...')

But the martial rhetoric culminates in a paradox that calls into question themoral basis of the heroic ethic; for this warrior triumphs, not by conquest,but by subjugating himself to victimisation:

Qualiter Redemptor orbis immolatus incerit

('Tell how Chnst, the world's Redeemer,As a victim won the day')

In Venantius's hymns, then, Christian values are certainly in part subordinatedto a heroic code. But equally Christianity, in substituting for the classicalwarrior the crucified Hero-Victim, is assimilating the heroic tradition in theform of a theological symbology. The battles in which the Cross serves as afigurehead and standard are as likely to be theological conflicts, doctrinalcontroversies or moral struggles—Christ against Satan; the church againstpaganism; the Christian soul against the world, the flesh and the devil—asmilitary engagements. Thus as early as the sixth century, and in poems likelyto have been known to the Dream-poet(s), new Christian and old paganheroic values are polarised rather than merged, collocated but not reconciled,co-existent as 'collision' rather than as 'fusion'.

VI

The collocation, in a single complex poetic language, of diverse culturaltraditions, clearly facilitates a varying emphasis on divergent aspects ofChristian theology. Insofar as Christ can be seen not as nailed in subjection,

Page 11: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 357

but as voluntarily assuming the Cross, a ready-made symbol of authority andpower, then He can be immediately made to declare, from that position,both theological godhead and secular mastery: 'regnavit a ligno deus.' Thisperception, which is one of the effects of the poem's heroic language, tendsto eliminate physical suffering and to elide the corporeality of the incarnateChnst. J. C. Pope speaks of'the heroic aspect of the action, an aspect whichthe poet is all along at pains to emphasise as proper to Christ in His divinenature'.25

Yet that heroic language also derived from a world-view that was, despiteits apparent religious dimensions, far more secular and materialistic, far lessspiritual and other-wordly, than Christianity. It is that essentially worldlycultural perspective that aligns Chnst with the noble warrior whose beingwould naturally inhabit a social world of communal pleasures, 'hall-joys',ceremonies of ring- and gold-giving, child-like enjoyment of bright metalsand precious stones—the world so vividly represented, often in terms of itsloss, in Anglo-Saxon heroic and elegiac poetry. That attachment to the body,and to the material objects by means of which the body was situated in thesymbolic order, was clearly not dislodged by Christianity from the Anglo-Saxon imagination. We only have to cite the perpetuation of grave-goods inChristian bunals such as that of St. Cuthbert,26 to exemplify the co-existenceof a pagan conception of the body as surviving in some form (and thereforehaving need of material objects), and the conception of a body parted fromits spirit at death (and therefore having no use for them). Certainly in duecourse grave-goods disappeared: but during the time of their persistence, itis impossible to define a point at which such objects were used for theirsymbolic value rather than their practical utility. The body in the Germanictradition, as represented in the poems, is a real body that enjoys pleasure,suffers pain and is subject to death. Insofar as the Christ of the Dream isrepresented within that tradition, the poem is stressing the human andincarnational torment, rather than the abstract theological triumph, of theCrucifixion.

The Cross in the poem certainly suffers, and suffers with a graphic andvivid particularity:

Black nailsBattered through me, opening wideThe wounds of wickedness. When they scoffedAt the Saviour, their spit spatteredMe. In His blood when it sprangFrom His side, was my splintered surfaceSoaked. (11.64—70)

Critics have argued, on the one hand, that the Cross shares the pain of theCrucifixion—

Page 12: Sign Cross Dream Rood

358 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

... the tree is so closely identified with Chnst that its trembling suggests hisagony in Gethsemane ...2?

The attribution of personality, and therefore volition, allows a moral as well asphysical parallel to be established between Chnst and the cross. Thus it is thatthe words of the Cross can bnng us dramatically close to the events of theCrucifixion, enabling the reader to share in a unique imaginative reconstructionof Christ's suffering . M

—and on the other (in a curious theological displacement) that it bears the

pain on Christ's behalf, thus protecting his divinity from the imputation of

mere corporeality:

... He [Chnst] is greviously stretched ou t . . . all the other sufferings are associatedwith the tree.29

With the agony transferred to the cross, Chnst can sensibly be seen to rule fromthe gallows.30

Both these critics ultimately discern in the poem a careful and judicious

balancing of those divergent interpretations of the Crucifixion that formed,

within the Christian church, the key theological controversies of the day.

H o w did the divine and human natures of Christ actually inter-act through

the Passion, and particularly at the point of death?

O n e theological school insisted that Christ had only one nature, combining

the human and divine (hence 'monophysicism'). The logical extreme of this

view was that held in the fifth century by Eutyches, w h o stated that in the

one nature the divine predominated to a degree that precluded physical

corruption or even agony. T h e other pole of the controversy, formulated

chiefly by Severus of Anaoch , proposed a divine nature utterly permeated

by humanity. Clearly either position, developed to an extreme conclusion,

would represent a heretical subversion of the fundamental Christian doctrines

of the Incarnation and Redempt ion: one produces a manlike G o d w h o was

never really man at all; the other a godlike man whose credentials as a deity

would inevitably at some point come under suspicion. Recognising these

dangerous shifts towards positions that would much later become Deism and

Humanism, the Church authorities attempted to hold a middle course,

acknowledging the two natures in an undivided person. In the seventh

century a 'monotheh te ' revision was offered by Heraclius, w h o averred that

the two natures of Christ, although distinct, were subject to one will ('thelos').

At the Lateran Council of 694 western churchmen affirmed their disagreement

by positing two wills to match the two natures, each mysteriously separate

though integrated, and with the human will always naturally conformable to

Page 13: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 359

the divine. This position was firmly established by the English church at theCouncil of Hatfield in 679.31

By anthropomorphising the Cross, the Dream could be argued as reflectingthat controversy, since it dramatises a Crucifixion in which there is bothsuffering (though of a strangely sensate inanimate object), and triumph (of adivine being who has always already departed from the scene of the Passion—'he haefde hisgast onsended1,1.49). The controversy obviously tended to separate,in imaginative and pictorial terms, Christ from the cross: Swanson citesexamples from early Christian iconographic sources of crosses without Christ,and of Christ without a cross.32 The Godhead assumes a crucified position,but without physical entrapment; the cross stands alone as an abstract symbolof the Christian way. Both Swanton and Bennett suggest, following earlierscholars, that the poem displays a clear awareness of these debates, and effectsan adroit reconciliation of the theological difficulties, with a diplomaticavoidance of docrinal controversy:

That the cross itself thus suffers, allows the agony of the Saviour to be succinctlyand dramatically reperesented without putting unwarranted words into themouth of Christ himself The device thus allows the poet to maintain a finebalance between Eutychan and Severan points of view, offending neither thosewho maintained that the incarnate Logos could expenence no suffering northose who insisted upon its real human frailty.33

... the English alliterative lines ... epitomize the perfect balance between 'dolour-ism' and 'triumphalism' that characterizes the whole poem.34

VII

Hraew colode:faegere feorgbold (II.72-3)

In The Dream of the Rood, the Cross's narrative leaves Christ at this point, apoint which in human terms can only be conceived of and named as death.The beautiful body ('faegere/hraew') that proves to have been merely a dwell-ing-place for the spirit (feorgbold') lies empty and abandoned, chilling inordinary mortal corruption ('colode'). The poem contains no empty tomb, noreassuring angelic visitors, no risen Lord. Christ is certainly imagined, at theend of the poem, returning in full divine glory to harrow Hell. But thatreference is a 'flashback' within the closing narrative of the dreamer, separatedin time and space from the death on Cross, a past example informing hisown sure and certain hope for the future. In the central narrative of theCross, which pursues the established story of the gospels, we are left withnothing more encouraging than a dead body.

Page 14: Sign Cross Dream Rood

3<5o THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

The poem's apparent truncation at this point of the essential Christianstory can indeed be defended, either on narrative or liturgical grounds: butthe available defences remain finally unconvincing. The account of theCrucifixion is presented from the Cross's 'point-of-view': hence only thoseevents immediately within its field of vision and range of experience areincluded. Thus there is no journey from the Praetorium to Golgotha, andno representation of the gospels' closing and crucial events. But this is atechnical point, an effect of the narrative technique, not an explanation ofthe narrative's foreclosing on the crucial revebtion of the essential Christianmystery.

Perhaps more convincing would be an argument that located the poemwithin the church liturgies of Passiontide, and especially Good Friday. In thevirtual reality of the Christian calendar, something approximating to a death,and a consequent period of mourning for bereavement, intercabtes betweenthe death on the Cross and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. In the ritual'Stations of the Cross', the fourteenth and last object of meditation is thepbcmg of Jesus's body in the tomb. The poem could be seen as enactingexactly such a process, delineating a dead zone of time in which the worldcan feel the temporary absence of its Saviour, and know the emptiness of lifewithout God.

There is however, within the poem, a resurrection: it simply is not thatof the risen Christ:

For a second toneThey savagely felled me, npped up my roots,Cruelly cast me in a deep pit.Earth closed coldly over my eyes, eyesThat had seen God's dying. Days,Years passed: and I perceived onlyComfortless clay, and the darkness of deathThen the earth parted, and in pain I was pulledFrom the world's womb, bom again to the brightnessOf light. God's disciples dug me up,Heaved me heavenwards, raised me and dressed meIn raiment of silver, garments of gold. (11.103-14)

It is the Cross, not the Christ, that experiences deposition, burial, exhumation,resurrection, and even ascension into divine glory.

The poem certainly therefore divides Christ from His Cross, and representsthem as separable entities. But it seems to me difficult to interpret thatabandonment of God in the depiction of mere physical death, and thecorresponding isolation of the Cross as a living embodiment and a speaking

Page 15: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 361

sign of the Christian mystery, as a delicate balancing of antitheticalChristological philosophies into a 'perfect balance'35 of harmoniously resolvedtheological disputation.

The bemg of Christ in the Dream is represented, in my view, as the bodyof Germanic tradition: a strong and beautiful body, which fights bravely andconquers its enemies, but dies m the struggle, and is depicted finally as a deadhero, lying on the deserted battle-field, keenly cherished and bitterly mournedby those who owed its occupant their love and loyalty. The Resurrection ofthe poem is not of that body, but of the Cross, a sign ('baecett') of the Passionand Redemption. As such it can be possessed as a material object, and reveredfor its organic symbolising of the mystery in which it participated. It can bedecorated with the gold, silver and precious gems that were so beloved ofAnglo-Saxon culture, and which so richly decorate the poetry as well as theartistry of the period. But above all it can function, in the form either ofmaterial object of veneration, or of abstract sign, as a ritual profession offaith, a liturgical focus of devotion, or a potent accessory to prayer.

I am, of course, positioning the poem in some perilous theological territory,among speculations that would certainly in the seventh century have beenidentified as contrary to Christian doctrine. But it seems to me, unless wewish to complete the poem's theological scheme by supplying additionalreferences that it in fact leaves out, an inescapable conclusion. And althoughthe doctrinal perils of such a cultural eclecticism are self-evident, they arealso likely to be of interest to modern theological concerns. My interpretationwould suggest that the poem admits to a radical uncertainty about theResurrection itself, finding it literally unimaginable (or at least shirking thechallenge of imagining it). The veneration of the Cross as an independentimage solves the problem the poem sets itself, by abstracting from theChristian narrative a concrete symbol of its central truths, an object thatremains with us after the divinity it shared has returned to its proper home.

The sign of the Cross can be considered, in other words, as more realthan what it signifies; or in semiotic parlance, the signified is circumscribedby the signifier. Far from reconciling the theological antinomies of the day,the poet has superseded them by boldly denying the historical veracity of theResurrection, and erecting in its place an image, the Sign of the Cross. Thepossibility, or even local prevalence of such idolatry is illustrated by Claudiusof Turin, who in 820 'published a fierce attack on the adoration of crosses,ordering their removal from all churches in his diocese'.36

VIII

While openly confronting the intractable difficulties encountered here inteasing out from a devotional poem the essence of its imaginative theology,

Page 16: Sign Cross Dream Rood

362 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

we should not underestimate the complexity and sophistication of its profferedsolution. I am proposing that the Dream gathers its Christian and Germanicinheritances into a medium of violent paradox, constructing an imaginativefullness that includes acute intellectual tension. Scholars have demonstratedhow underlying the poem can be found the rhetorical device of 'communicatioidiomatum', a figure developed within contemporary theological controversiesto reconcile the human and divine natures of Christ into a single paradoxicalaffirmation—e.g. 'genamon hie thaer aelmightigne God" (1.6o) ('then they seizedAlmighty God'). But such paradoxes, like metaphors, inevitably highlightdiscrepancy as well as parallelism, the incongruity as well as the reconciliationof differences. If, as T.S. Eliot affirms, 'the impossible union/Of spheres ofexistence is actual',37 the actuality still remains impossible. The Dream can inthis way be seen to speak directly to those modern Christians for whom faithentails the acceptance of impossibility, an intellectual humility prepared atcertain points to renounce knowledge in favour of mystery, the mystery ofthat 'Iesus Chnst: Whom hauing not seene, yee loue, in whom diough nowye see him not, yet beleeuing, ye reioyce with ioy vnspeakable' (1 Peter,I.7-8).

At die same time, the poem doesn't simply substitute a symbolic Cross fora literal resurrection, exchange a lifted sign for a risen Chnst. The Cross ofthe poem is represented not as an abstract symbol, but as a living bemgwithin whose nature both the agony and the mystery of the Passion areinternalised. The sharing of Christ's agony by the anthropomorphised Crossis emphasised not in order that it might carry a burden of theological anxiety,but so as to render the agony of the Crucifixion present to the imagination,realised in sensory terms, and on a partially human scale. In his Vision of theCross, the Dreamer sees not a fixed and abstract symbol, but a 'lively' anditerable sign, capable of signifying simultaneously agony and tnumph:

Still through the gold my eyes descriedAn ancient injury, the world's first wound,Purple on gold, the passion and the glory,As blood broke forth from the rood's right side.

Pierced with pity, and filled with fearI was, as I saw that shifting signAlter its appearance, its colour change:Now it was wet with the sweat of agony,Now with brilliance of treasure bedecked. (11.22-30)

What the Dreamer is looking at here is Chnst Himself, incarnated in thepain and majesty of the Cross: always mortally wounded, always ascendinginto glory. The Cross has acquired those qualities by its sympathy in suffering,

Page 17: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 363

its proximity to the Passion: physically soaked in tangible sweat and blood,literally damaged by the violence of victimisation. Hence the poem's imagin-ing of the Cross as a variable and living sign is informed, via the legend ofthe True Cross and its discovery, by that vivid sensuous apprehension of itsoriginal ordeal.

By virtue of that participation in the Passion, the Cross acquires a potentcapability not only of expressing its mystery, but of facilitating the ritualmemorialisation, and more importantly the imaginative re-enactment, of theCrucifixion itself. The kind of contemplation represented in the poem'sDream-Vision is essentially a form of 'spiritual exercise' in the method laterformulated by St. Ignatius:39 an imaginative reconstruction, in the spacebetween the meditating mind and the object of contemplation, of a revealedtheological truth.

It is at this point that the poem transcends its naturalistic and paganinheritance. For here material things—gold, silver, gems, even the bodyitself—become implements of devotional exercise and spiritual concentration,rather than objects of value in themselves. The gold and jewels formerlydistributed by the generous Anglo-Saxon lord have attained a new signifyingpotentiality as elements of a devotional icon. In that poignant description ofthe dead hero, the poem bids a sad but resigned farewell to its pagan ancestry.

Ultimately the poem is a meditation on, and an example of, the spiritualvalue of devotional art. A Cross that speaks can exist only m the poetry thatspeaks it. The Cross that exhorts the Dreamer to put its self-revelation intowords, does so in the words of the poem that have already made such anexhortation possible. And while the Dream internalises this spiritual aestheticinto a highly sophisticated literary form, it is the Ruthwell Cross—a 'preach-ing Cross', bearing its evangelical speech inscribed upon itself-—that exempli-fies m its totality the multi-cultural (and 'multi-media') character of thissacred art. In such great stone memorials (as many as 1500 of which stillsurvive) Anglo-Saxon Christians could directly apprehend, in word andimage, the mystery of the Passion, and imaginatively recreate in their ownlives the suffering and triumph of their Saviour. The capacity of such imagesto internalise m concrete form a precis of the whole Christian gospel can bewitnessed in the complaints of Boniface, who in 744 complained 'that worshipat such crosses was detracting from attendance at regular churches'.40 Andmuch later when the Covenanters, implementing the Church of Scotland's1604 Act of Assembly against 'idolatrous monuments', devastated theRuthwell Cross,'41 they were testifying to its anaent catholic power, as wellas bearing witness to their own Pauline insistence on the purer, immaterialspirituality of the risen Christ.

Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Education, University of Hertfordshire, WallHall, Aldenham, Watford WD2 8AT, UK

Page 18: Sign Cross Dream Rood

3 6 4 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

REFERENCES

1 The basic text of The Dream of the Roodaddressed and employed in this essay is thatof Bruce Dickins and Alan Ross (London-Methuen, 1934, 4th edn 1954, revisedi960). I have also made much use of thescholarly and critical apparatus supplied byMichael Swanton m his edition of thepoem (Manchester Manchester UP, 1970,revised edn, Exeter. Exeter UP, 1987) Indie knowledge drat direct access to theAnglo-Saxon language is an increasinglyrestricted privilege, the poem is presentedand cited in the form of my own, to somedegree 'free', verse translation My quota-tions from the Anglo-Saxon are fromDickins and Ross, and use their line num-bering. In-text translations are either literaland unreferenced, or refer to the line num-bers in the verse translation (pp. 20—5). Ihave modernised obsolete orthographicforms such as dipthongs; and rendered theletters 'thorn' and 'eth' as 'th', althoughthey possessed phonetically different valuesThe translation unconditionally accepts dieedited text of Dickins and Ross.

2 Dickins and Ross, pp 1-13, Swanton,PP 9-38

3 Dickins and Ross, pp 13-16.A Aethelstane of Wessex had clear control

of the whole of England and Scodand by927, and is conventionally regarded as thefirst 'King of all England'. See Lloydand Jennifer Laing, Anglo-Saxon England(Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1979, London.Granada, 1982), p 180

5 'Obviously incomplete and metricallyimperfect', Swanton, p. 40.

6 Dickins and Ross, p 17. The quotation issomewhat unfair, they are actually quitesceptical about such speculations, and tendtowards the hypothesis that the poem ofthe Ruthwell Cross was an earlier versionsubsequendy developed in a lost expansion,written in the Anglian dialect, which inturn provided the source of the Dream.

1 See G Thomas Tanselle, A Rationale ofTextual Criticism (Philadelphia: Universityof Pennsylvia Press, 1989), pp. 14-15.

8 One of the Riddles, die solution to whichis 'beam' (a word that could, and here does,

mean tree, ship, log, cup or cross) conveysthis tactile veneration of the Cross: 'Friendsoften pass me from hand to hand/And Iam kissed by ladies and courteous men.'For a translation see The Battle of Maldonand Other English Poems, trans. KevinCrossley-Holland, ed Bruce Mitchell(London- Macmillan, 1965), p 62. All threeforms of relationship to the Cross are alsofeatured in the Dream, where the Cross is'widely worshipped' (Li 19), worn or tracedas an insignia 'no-one who bears/ Brightin his breast diis best of all signs' (II.155—6),and formulated in words- 'reveal yourvision to the world in words' (1 134).

' The alien language and poetic forms weencounter in modern editions of Anglo-Saxon verse may well seem strange enoughin themselves to the modern reader.But those modern editions have alreadyinvolved considerable processing, stand-ardisation and editorial mediation from theoriginal MS texts The familiar pattern ofalliterating half-lines separated by a caesura,reflected in both the edited texts and sometranslations, is a pattern that does notappears in the MSS There verse is notlineated or regularly punctuated as verse,so what we know as the standard pattern istherefore a modern editorial refinement.Editorial decisions on lineaaon are madeon the basis of rules abstracted from theunhneated corpus itself, so are likely to beat least dtscutable. The modem texts arealways emended, often radically, sometimesquestionably Some modern editions,denved from the bibliographical policies ofF P Magoun, introduce to the texts adialectal standardisation of spelling andgrammar they did not themselves possess,the principles of such standardisation beingdrawn from systematizations of gramma-tical rules that have in turn been denvedfrom the wntten literary corpus Theseobservations are offered in no hostile spint.I have no pretensions to the Old Englishscholarship of diose scholars and editors,and am merely concerned to distinguishbetween The Dream of the Rood in its earliesthistoncal manifestations, and as it appears

Page 19: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 365

in the modem edition The responseafforded to my unwelcome forays of1992—96 into Shakespearean bibliography,focused in the publication of the seriesShakespearean Originals, has cured me of allinterest m scholarly quarrels. I enter thehall of the Anglo-Saxon scholars in peace,leaving all polemical weapons in the sword-rack by the door

10 See Walter Benjamin, 'Theses on thePhilosophy of History', Illuminations, trans.Harry Zohn (Jonathan Cape, 1970,London Fontana, 1973), p 258.

11 See Richard Hamer, ed., A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Vent (London. Faber and Faber,J979)- P lS9- Earlier editors and criticsthought the poem consisted of two halves,possibly by different hands, the second halfcertainly regarded as poetically inferior (seeEhckins and Ross, p. 18) But compareSwanton, who declares the poem 'a coher-ent and unified whole' (p 76)

12 For the ambivalence oflaene' see ChristineFell, 'Perceptions of Transience', in theCambridge Companion to Old EnglishLiterature, eds Malcolm Godden andMichael Lapidge, p . 174.

13 For translations of these nddles, helpfullytitled (so you don ' t have to guess thesolution), as Sword-Rack and Beam, seeCrosslcy-Holland and Mitchell, pp . 6 1 - 2 .

14 J C . Pope, Seven Old English Poems (NewYork- Bobbs-Mernll, 1981), p. 43.

15 Bede paraphrased, but did not include, thehymn m his account of Caedmon, HistonaEcclestastka Gentis Anglorum, Book IV, ch.24 (trans C Plummer , Venerabilis BedaeOpera Histoncae, Oxford Clarendon Press,1896). It was added marginally to the Latinversion by scribes, and included in the OldEnglish version in place of Bede'sparaphrase

16 See S Allott, Alcuin of York (York, 1974),pp 165—6.

17 Crossley-Holland and Mitchell, p 126." Barbara C. R a w , 'Biblical Literature: the

N e w Testament ' , in Godden and Lapidge,eds, pp. 238-9 .

19 Pope , p . 44.20 Raw in Godden and Lapidge, p. 240, J A.

W . Bennett , Poetry of the Passion (OxfordOxford University Press, 1982), p . 23

21 Bennett , p 8; Swanton, pp . 42—3.22 Bennett, pp 7 - 8 .23 Quotations from R K.Gordon's prose

translation of Elene, Anglo-Saxon Poetry(London: Dent, 1926, revised 1954),pp. 211-12.

24 T h e translations cited are those in theNew English Hymnal (Norwich: CanterburyPress, 1986)- 'Pange, lingua', H y m n s 78 and517, where it forms part of the Good Fridayliturgy for die Veneration of the Cross;'Vextlla regis', H y m n 79.

25 Pope, p . 66.26 See Lloyd and Jennifer Laing, pp . 145—8.

T h e contents o f Cuthber t ' s coffin areillustrated m The Anglo-Saxons, ed JamesCampbell (London: Phaidon, 1982),pp . 80—1.

27 Bennett , p 20.28 Swanton, p . 68.29 Bennett , p . 4.30 Swanton, p 7131 See H . R . Patch, 'Liturgical influence

in The Dream of the Rood,' PMLA,xxxiv (1919), 233-57; Rosemary Woolf,'Doctrinal influences on The Dream ofthe Rood1, Medium Aevum, xxvu (1958),137—53; J A Burrow, 'An approach to TheDream of the Rood', Neophtlologus, xlni

(1959), 123-33-32 Swanton, pp 53, 5533 Swanton, p . 6934 Bennett , p . 1935 Bennett , p . 1936 Swanton, p . 5537 T . S Eliot, "The Dry Salvages', Collected

Poems 1909-1962 (London- Faber and Faber,1963), p . 213.

38 For further reflections on 'faith' in contra-distinction to 'belief', see my ' "Kn igh t -enan t of fai th" ' . Monsignor Quixote as"Cathol ic Fict ion '" , Literature and Theology,7:3 (1993), especially pp 275-6

39 See Saint Ignatius of Loyola, PersonalWritings, trans. Joseph A. Muni tz and PhilipEndean (Harmondsworth- Penguin, 1996).

40 Swanton, p . 4741 Dickins and Ross, p . 2.

Page 20: Sign Cross Dream Rood

366 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

The Dream of the RoodFor the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Bedford Park

l

The day's deep midnight, once it was,When all earth's creatures' exhausted eyesClosed, and sleep their shadows shrouded.Then night's vast womb a dream delivered:The fairest of all fantasies.

An astounding structure 5I seemed to see soar in the sky,Its beams bathed in the brightest of light.Gleaming gold enveloped that vision:A scatter of jewels sparkled on its shaft,Yet brighter the five stones encrusting its cross-beam. 10

This was no gangster's gallows, no cross for a criminal:For all Creation's creatures, all sons of soil,And a heavenly host of all God's angels,In beauty of paradise perpetually brightAdmired eternally this vision of victory, 15This cross of conquest, that triumphal tree.

I was smeared with sin, diseasedWith gangrene of guilt, foul with my faults;Yet I saw this wondrous work, gay and gloriousWith glimmering gold, joyfully jewelled, 20Shimmer in splendour: the cross of Christ.

Still through the gold my eyes descriedAn ancient injury, die world's first wound,Purple on gold, the passion and the glory,As blood broke forth from the rood's right side. 25

Pierced with pity, and filled with fearI was, as I saw that shifting signAlter its appearance, its colour change:Now it was wet with the sweat of agony,Now with brilliance of treasure bedecked. 30

A long while I lay, struck to my soul,Saddened at the sight of the Saviour's tree;But imagine die wonder, when diis woodWords uttered, silence broke, spokeTo me!

Page 21: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 367

2

From time's dark backward 35

And abyss, I imagine the hour of my hewing,

When from the wood's end my trunk was toppled,

Wrenched from its roots by the fiercest of foes.

With power they impounded, and made me a spectacle,

A picture of punishment, to rack and to crack 40

The ribs of their criminals. On their shoulders they hefted me,

And on a hill hoisted.

It was then that I saw a splendid Saviour

Approach with alacrity and courage to climb.

Hastily, the young hero stripped Him 45

For action, girded like a gladiator

Ready for the ring. In the sight of spectators,

Fearless and firm, keen for the combat,

He clambered on the cross. He sought no insignia

Of cruel conquest, no brows bound 50

With victorious wreaths: His reward

Was mankind's Redemption, salvation of souls

His only prize.

Though all earth faltered

And flinched with fear, I didn't dare

To bend or to break. I'd have fallen full-length, 55

Flat to the earth, but was forced to stand firm.

I could have crushed each of those enemies,

But by Christ's command I had to standfast.

With shocks I shuddered, when the warrior wound

His strong arms about me: but I daren't stir. 60

More forbidding than fear was the Lord's Word.

Crude and rough-hewn, a cross of wood I was:

Yet I lifted on high the Lord of Hosts;

I held aloft the might of majesty.

3

Black nails

Battered through me, opening wide 65

The wounds of wickedness. When they scoffed

At the Saviour, their spit spattered

Page 22: Sign Cross Dream Rood

368 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

Me. In His blood when it sprang

From His side, was my splintered surface

Soaked. In the thrust of a spear 70

Was His spirit's expense,

When all was accomplished,

When life he relinquished,

And gave up the Ghost.

A fearful fate

I endured on that high hill, 75

A dreadful destiny. I saw the Almighty

In agony racked, the corpse of the Ruler

Concealed in clouds. Darkness eclipsed

The original brightness, shadows buried

The Light of the World. All Creation wept 80

At a King's killing; all creatures cried

For Christ on the cross.

A rich man, a follower, arrived from afar,

And begged God's body. Uncertain, anguished,

Humbled with hurt, I surrendered the Saviour 85

To his outstretched arms. They took Him up

Tenderly, torn from His torture,

Left me blood-boltered, impaled by the points

Of annihilating nails. They stretched out His limbs,

Wounded, war-weary; stood at His head 90

To say their good-byes; grieved at his going,

They laid the exhausted hero to rest.

Full in the sight of me, His murderer,

A tomb they constructed, hewn from bright rock,

Sculpted in stone; and there they interred 95

The God of glory. A mournful hymn

They voiced at evensong; and as darkness deepened

Reluctantly departed.

They left Him

Alone there: He needed no companions.

We too were left, three crosses stark 100

Against an anguished sky: three gaunt gallows

On a hill of skulls. The long day waned:

Shadows chilled. In the cool of the evening

The Saviour stiffened.

Page 23: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 369

4For a second time

They savagely felled me, ripped up my roots, 105

Cruelly, cast me in a deep pit.

Earth closed coldly over my eyes, eyes

That had seen God's dying. Days,

Years passed: and I perceived only

Comfortless clay, and the darkness of death. n o

Then the earth parted, and in pain I was pulledFrom the world's womb, bom again to the brightnessOf light. God's disciples dug me up,Heaved me heavenwards, raised me and dressed me

In raiment of silver, garments of gold. 115

5So now you know, my friend in faith,

That though bitterly abandoned I was to sharp

Sorrow, now by all Creation's wondering

Creatures I'm widely worshipped:

Men in multitudes pray to my power, 120

Beseech this sign. On me God's baim

In the pride of His Passion, knew on the cross

Punishment's pain: hence I'm now raised in glory

High under heaven, and him can I heal

Who my force fears.

Once I was known 125

As the tree of torture, a sign of injustice;

Till I set all men on the road to righteousness.

See how through suffering I became highly favoured

By the world's Ruler, above all the wood's trees;

Just as Mary, God's mother, 130

Found grace and great favour

In the worid, among women.

6

Now in love I invite you your dream to disclose,

Reveal your vision to the world in words.

Show all creatures the cross on which Christ redeemed 135

Mankind's many sins, and forgave Adam's fault.

Page 24: Sign Cross Dream Rood

370 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

ft was he, our grand parent, who first death tasted;

But the Almighty ascended, the Redeemer arose

To heal that hurt.

He died; He is risen;

And He will return, at the day of doom, 140

The Almighty Lord, with all his angels,

To seek out mankind on this middle-earth

And deliver His judgement. With the power

Of justice to all people He'll deal

Their just deserts, as each has deserved 145

In this little life. There's no-one so foolish

As to feel no fear when the Lord

Speaks His sentence. From that great crowd

Of the quick and the dead, He'll single out each,

And ask him to say, in God's honest truth, 150

If it's death he desires, the pangs of perishing,

Punishment's pain, as he Himselffelt it

When fastened to the cross. Then they'll be

Tongue-tied, not know what to say

To the crucified Christ. 155

But no-one who bears,

Bright in his breast this best of all signs

Need feel any fear. Far from earth's confines,

Through the might of the cross, that man will find heaven,

And live with the Lord.

7And so it befell

That alone, unbefriended, yet happy in heart 160

I acknowledged the cross. My spirit was stirred

To adventure a voyage, to fearlessly seek out

What fate holds in store. The height of my happiness

Is that this cross, before all appeals,

Accepts my prayers; so my hope of protection 165

Rests in that rood. I've no powerful companions

Alive on this earth to shield me from harm;

Hence they've departed to seek out the King,

To sojourn in glory with God Almighty

High in the heavens.

Daily I long 170

For the day when that cross, clearly revealed

Page 25: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 371

To me in a dream, will fetch me forthFrom this empty existence, and in paradise place meWith the people of God in perpetual bliss,Where I will find entire fulfilment 175And endless joy. He who here among menSuffered for our faults, gave Himself on the gallowsFor our souls' sake, I know as my friend.

Such hope was restoredOf blessing and bliss, and many a poor soul 180From death delivered, sparedFrom the pains of Hell's punishment,When the Son in splendour, peerless in power,Harrowed all Hell, and from darkness to lightReleased innocent souls joyfully to join 185The angelic host. Then that choice company,Partners in praise, all raised one voice:Sang Holy! and Holy! as the Highest came.Absorbed in adoration, all angels rejoiceAt the Hero's return to His heavenly home. 190

trans. Graham Holdemess

The Seafarer

The Seafarer, like its companion-piece The Wanderer, also synthesisesChristian theology with pagan Germanic perceptions and emotions. Thesocial life of the comitatus, with its close physical relationships and vividly-realised pleasures, is strongly featured, but again as loss. Secular joys lie inthe past, or visit the imagination as deluding dreams. In The Wanderer thatinconsolable sense of loss and of the harshness of an inhospitable worldvirtually forces the exile to turn to Christ. But The Seafarer aligns elegaiclament with religious renunciation. The pagan world of 'hall-joys' is notmislaid but superseded; and the embarcation that represents a farewell toearthly pleasures is also a peregrination towards the new life of faith andhope in the eternal.

1

My self's own story I truthfully tell,My traveller's tale, how day after day

Page 26: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 371

To me in a dream, will fetch me forthFrom this empty existence, and in paradise place meWith the people of God in perpetual bliss,Where I will find entire fulfilment 175And endless joy. He who here among menSuffered for our faults, gave Himself on the gallowsFor our souls' sake, I know as my friend.

Such hope was restoredOf blessing and bliss, and many a poor soul 180From death delivered, sparedFrom the pains of Hell's punishment,When the Son in splendour, peerless in power,Harrowed all Hell, and from darkness to lightReleased innocent souls joyfully to join 185The angelic host. Then that choice company,Partners in praise, all raised one voice:Sang Holy! and Holy! as the Highest came.Absorbed in adoration, all angels rejoiceAt the Hero's return to His heavenly home. 190

trans. Graham Holdemess

The Seafarer

The Seafarer, like its companion-piece The Wanderer, also synthesisesChristian theology with pagan Germanic perceptions and emotions. Thesocial life of the comitatus, with its close physical relationships and vividly-realised pleasures, is strongly featured, but again as loss. Secular joys lie inthe past, or visit the imagination as deluding dreams. In The Wanderer thatinconsolable sense of loss and of the harshness of an inhospitable worldvirtually forces the exile to turn to Christ. But The Seafarer aligns elegaiclament with religious renunciation. The pagan world of 'hall-joys' is notmislaid but superseded; and the embarcation that represents a farewell toearthly pleasures is also a peregrination towards the new life of faith andhope in the eternal.

1

My self's own story I truthfully tell,My traveller's tale, how day after day

Page 27: Sign Cross Dream Rood

372 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

In dark of despair I endlessly enduredHeartache's hurt on the water's waste,Surges of sadness on weltering waves.Void were my vigils at the mast's foot,Waste the night-watches, when my boat was batteredAnd tossed against cliffs. My feet were frozen,Fettered with frost, cramped with cold;In the ache of anguish, hot was my heart.Keen as a knife, desire drew inwardsTo stab at my soul.

Those living on landWho prosper in plenty amongst fair fields,Can't possibly know of the poor man's pain,Who, woeful as winter—forlorn of his fatherland,Kept from his kin—weathers the wavesOf the ice-cold sea. Hammered by hail,Savaged by snow, my ears heard onlyThe sound of the sea, splash of the surgeAnd the swan's song. The clamour of gullsMy only glee; the call of the curlew,No man's mirth; the mew's plaintIn place of mead. Where storms beat on stone-cliffsThe icy-winged eagle and frost-feathered ternCompete m their clamour.

There's no loving lordTo embrace the exile, or fondly befriend,With outstretched arms, the friendless man.A life of luxury's made for that manWho sojourns in cities, caressed with comfortsAnd warmed with wine. He feels not a fractionOf the seafarer's sorrow, the hateful hardshipsAn exile endures. He'll never know,This creature of comfort, how some of us sufferOn diat vast voyage.

Darkness deepensWith drifts of snow, shadows of nightBring sleet from the north. Hail falls hard.Frost grips the ground.

Page 28: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 373

2

And so my heart heaves to wander the waves,The unplumbed oceans, and taste of the tangOf the salt-sea's spray; to seek the deep streamsAnd their restless rolling. There I might seekFriendship in foreign lands, there I might findHomeless, a home on an alien shore.Again and again an impulse invites me,A peregrine urge to fare far forth;A mood of migration irks me to travelThe pilgrim's passage, the wanderer's way.

No-one in this world is so haughty in heart,So generously gifted, nor so peerless in pride,So daring in deeds, nor so loved of his lordThat he feels no fear before he embarks,Of what will befall him on the far seas:What seafarer's lot the Lord holds in store.

He hears no harping, sees no bright hall,No place of pleasure. Hollow his heart,And drained of desire; vacant and voidIs the spirit that's set on the traveller's trail,The mind that's fixed on the whelming waves.

Blossoms burst, fields grow fair,Forests flourish, the country quickens.All motions move the stirnng spiritTo prepare for departure, and fathom the flood.The cry of the cuckoo, singer of spring,Brings sharp sorrow to the sailor's breast.Only the longing of seafaring lasts:The hunger of a heart that desires the deep.

3So, stirring, my spirit raps at my ribs,Flutters her feathers, then quits her cageTo soar on the wing, to fathom the flood-ways,The earth's expanses, the haunts of the whale.Wheeling and hovering, my heart's hawk yells,Eagerly inciting the unappeased spiritTo seek the sea's stretches, where the dead lie deep.

Page 29: Sign Cross Dream Rood

374 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

Then circling, homing, my falcon stoops,Repossesses her perch, full of fierce feelingsOf desperate desire: longing for Love she is,Greedy for Grace.

See, then, why God's giftsMean more to me than the petty pleasuresOf this little life! I can see clearlyThat no human happiness endures for ever.There are three deaths, that tall destiny's dayStand still in doubt: illness, old age,The sword's sharp edge. Each of these snatches atLife unsuspecting, dreaming of new dawns,Doomed to depart. What's said afterBy still-speaking tongues is a man's memorial:It's memory that matters. So strive to accomplishActions of worth, do down the devilAnd confound your foes, that your meed may be sungBy the sons of men, and echoed by angelsAs high as the heavens. For ever and ever,As life eternal, your fame will be foundIn the heavenly host.

4Dead are the daysOf ancient magnificence, the glories are goneThat once were on earth. No more do we seeCaesars and kings, those givers of goldWho were hailed as heroes, and loved as lords.They depart into darkness, earth knows them no more.The great men have gone, their empire on earthThe meek have inherited: men insignificantCling in their weakness to the world's wealth.Gone is all glory, all splendour spent,All empire interred. Antique nobilityDroops and decays. Time's always m motionOn this middle-earth. A man ages:Gaunt and grey-haired, he dreams of departedDays when his loved lord graced him with gifts;He remembers the royalty of that peerless patron,Given to ground now, enveloped in earth.

Page 30: Sign Cross Dream Rood

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS 375

The spirit's sanctuary is fragile fleshThat melts in mortality, crumbles to clay.When Ufe leaves that flesh-house, all bodily being—Pleasure's sweet taste, the torment of pain,The touch of a hand, the hastening of thought—Snuffs out like a flame. A man may hoardIn hidden heaps, a trove of treasureTo safeguard his soul; bereaved, a brother,Broken with grief, will bury bright goldIn his brother's grave, hoping to light himOn his shadowy way. But what good's goldTo the sinful soul, when empty-handedIt goes before God? The wealth of the world'sToo poor a price, to placate and pacifyThat awful power.

5Great is the glory,The grandeur of God. Though He fixed the foundations,Established the earth, the seas and the sky,Yet will the world fall down before HimIn fear of His wrath. If a man doesn't knowWhen his death will arrive, unannounced, unexpected,Like a thief in the night, he's a fool not to feelA dread of the Lord. Blessed the manWho's humble in heart, for the Lord's mild mercyWill melt in his soul. Blessed the manWho holds his faith firm: his fate is forgiveness,And his gift will be Grace.

trans. Graham Holderness

December 1996