Of crosses, bells and pigs

(I promise this is my last post about Twelfth Night this year!)

One of the best gifts anyone gave me this Twelfth Night was a little gold cross. It was the gift of a friend to whom it was personally meaningful, and who thought I would likely appreciate both the cross and the meaning. I do.



This is a type of cross called a Tau cross, shaped like a capital T (Tau in Greek). It's a little over an inch high, and hollow. On the front it has a representation of the Holy Trinity (you can see God on his Throne and Christ on the Cross -- and supposedly a dove at God's right hand, though I can't make it out). On the back is the Virgin and Child. The engraving is done mostly in short, angled strokes, and there are distinctive, cross-hatched triangular "flowers" in the corners.

The more I looked at this cross, the more intrigued I became, because it looked familiar. I was sure I'd seen it before. So I started pulling books off my shelf and looking for pictures. My hunch was that this was one of the handful of named medieval crosses from England: there are several, of which some have descended through families and others have been found in archaeological contexts.

Sure enough, I found a tau cross with a name -- the Winteringham Cross. After considerable hunting, I discovered I did have a photo, in my copy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York's Mirror of the Medieval World. Here it is:



Clearly it's a match.

The Winteringham Cross was found by an amateur archaeologist with a metal detector, near Winteringham in north Lincolnshire, and was acquired by the Met in 1990. I was able to find out a good deal more about it from a paper published in 1992 in the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin, accessible in libraries or through academic paper sources like JSTOR (if you have access to that).

The paper, written by the curator of the Cloisters medieval collection, compares this cross with other medieval crosses, such as the Clare cross, the Matlaske and Bridlingham crosses, and another one found in Bath. It's worth looking at as an example of how artifacts like this are studied.

Metal detecting is far from ideal from an archeological point of view, since items found this way are seldom dug up with careful attention to soil layers, associated pottery shards, color changes in nearby soil, and other clues archaeologists are trained to look for. These can often be very helpful in determining an object's date and context. On the other hand, there are no doubt plenty of medieval objects that fell out of someone's pocket in the Middle Ages and don't have much context anyway.

One way to make at least an educated guess at the date of such objects is to look at the artistic style. For paintings, this has been studied by art historians in intensive detail, such that they can often tell just by style who painted something. In this case, there are similar motifs, including the cross-hatched flowers, on two English rings, one associated with Wytelsey, archbishop of Canterbury. These suggest a date for the Winteringham cross of around 1485. (Of course, dating by style assumes you do have a reliable date for at least one object you're comparing a new one with.)

Another helpful clue to an object's meaning is iconography, that is, what people or motifs are shown on it. Since we often have documentary evidence of when and where certain stories or things became common, sometimes this provides clues to possible dates or origins for a displaced object, as well. Here's where the bells and pigs come in.

In this case, while tau crosses are associated with St. Francis of Assisi, the story of Moses, the apostles Philip and Matthew, and Christian stories about the Passover, what drew the author's attention in particular was its association with St. Anthony Abbot. This St. Anthony was a fourth-century Egyptian hermit, one of the "Desert Fathers" of the early church. A Tau-shaped staff was an early symbol of bishops and other authority figures, an earlier symbol in fact than the later curly-headed crozier or shepherd's crook. There are several surviving bishops' staffs with this shape and it's still common in the Eastern church. It is also associated with Egypt, and its crutch-like shape may relate to the fact that St. Anthony is supposed to have lived a very long life.

Saint Anthony is said to have founded a hospital in Egypt, and an order of canons, the Hospitalers of Saint Anthony (different from the more familiar Hospitalers of St. John in Palestine), was established in Paris around the beginning of the 13th century. By mid-century they had hospitals in London and York.

To raise funds for the hospital, they went around town ringing bells to announce their presence, rather like a medieval version of the Salvation Army. They also sold little Tau crosses and bells of bronze or lead, similar to the pilgrim tokens sold by shrines to those who came to visit.

Associations of lay supporters, like the modern "Friends of..." associations, quickly sprang up, and a number of paintings such as this and this show people wearing a collar or chain with a Tau cross with a bell suspended from it. The Winteringham cross also has a hole at the bottom, which may have held an attachment loop, suggesting a bell may have hung from it originally. (But as you can see, that's speculation rather than evidence.)

The pig often shown with St. Anthony may have originally symbolized the evil spirits with which he struggled in the desert. But the Antonine canons in London obtained the privilege of letting their pigs run free in the streets, foraging on whatever food they could find. They were identified as "St. Anthony's pigs" by bells tied around their necks, and it was considered an act of charity to feed them.

Another theory about the pig is that it's associated with St. Anthony because he was the saint invoked against a degenerative disease that resulted in gangrene and the amputation of arms and legs. One theory is that this disease was erysipelas, a bacterial infection of deep skin and fat tissues once thought to be associated with pigs. In fact, it was more likely ergotism, also called St. Anthony's fire. This is now known to result from eating bread made from rye grain infected with the ergot fungus. It causes impaired circulation in hands, feet, arms and legs, and in the Middle Ages its cause was not known, and there was no treatment for it except amputation.

The paper goes on at some length about this association, also suggested by a gold Tau cross found in Bath, which is engraved with a figure of St. Anthony holding a bell and accompanied by a pig. The author suggests that because the Winteringham cross is a Tau cross and hollow, it may have contained either saints' relics or protective herbs against St. Anthony's fire.

That's certainly possible, but nothing about the Winteringham cross supports it specifically. Crosses are often hollow, Tau crosses not necessarily more often than any other type. Nothing about the images shown on the Winteringham cross suggests St. Anthony. He was certainly a popular saint, and perhaps would have been the most common to associate with a Tau cross in the late Middle Ages. But it's important to be clear how much of this reasoning is from actual evidence and how much is speculation.

I wouldn't be so arrogant as to suggest that my interpretation is necessarily any better than that of a museum curator who probably has ten times my education and background in the subject. But my point is that museum curators also engage in guesswork and speculation. Dates, identifications, and meanings are not set in stone just because they are on a museum label. If we're interested in something, we have a responsibility to gather the evidence and think for ourselves.

The cross is something I'm delighted to have. It's an excellent reproduction of a piece with a lot of history behind it, and being the gift of a friend makes it even more valuable. I don't think my friend knew its full history and significance, but a gift that leads me to new discoveries is a gift indeed.

Still more 16th-century crosses

part iii

As I mentioned in a couple of previous posts, I keep my eyes open for photos of interesting 16th- and 17th-century crosses, especially those suitable for paternosters or rosaries. Collecting photos trains my "eye" for what is and isn't appropriate for the period -- and most of what's currently produced is not, since fashions have changed.

In this post, I have photos of two crosses that no one would dream of producing nowadays -- and probably the prices on any like them for sale would be in the tens of thousands of dollars. But we can all look at them and drool, anyway....

I've mentioned before that there are a number of 16th-century pieces -- including chalices, reliquaries and at least one rosary -- that contain elaborate miniature religious scenes carved from boxwood. The truly distinctive feature of this group of carvings, though, is that the scenes have a background of carefully inlaid, iridescent feathers. These are thought to be pieces made in the Spanish domains in the New World, and the featherwork seems to have developed out of Native American artistic tradition.

Here is an entire cross composed of these carvings, overlaid with transparent rock crystal. It is quite stunning, and in excellent condition.



The scenes mostly seem to be from the childhood of Jesus: starting with the Annunciation at the left end of the crossbar, Mary's visit to Elizabeth in the center (though I'm not entirely sure of this one, it fits here logically), and the Nativity on the right side of the crossbar.

Below the crossbar, the next scene seems to be the Presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple -- though this one is rather cryptic. The clues I'm looking at are the pointed hat on the man at left, and the small pillar or whatever it is below the infant.

Below that is the Flight into Egypt (to escape from King Herod's massacre of all young infants -- which we actually celebrated yesterday, December 28th, as the Feast of Holy Innocents).

I'm not certain what the bottom scene is. Logic would suggest the finding of the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple, where he was preaching to the elders. At any rate, it resembles some other depictions of this scene, which show the young Jesus standing in a sort of pulpit or under a canopy.

At the very top of the cross, the scene is very clearly the Resurrection -- Jesus climbing out of a horizontal tomb chest.

In the closeup view, you can see details of a few of the scenes, and a slightly better look at the feather background, especially in the scene below at right.



The second "ohmigosh, no one could afford this" cross is another one primarily of rock crystal, and this time, compartments in the crystal hold various relics.

I can't identify any of the relics from this view: if they have labels, they aren't visible, and the photo is not good enough to tell whether lettering is engraved on the oval "frame" around each one. It would be interesting to know what they are. Like the boxwood cross above, this could be a group of relics telling the story of Christ, or it may just be a collection of individual relics of someone's favorite saints.



The third cross here is, on the other hand, something that probably could be reproduced fairly readily by a modern jeweler. It's made of rock crystal (See? there is a theme here), though we can't tell how many pieces or how they are fitted together in this view. They are capped and held together by metal fittings, probably silver and perhaps originally gilded (because silver often is). The center fitting includes a small figure of Christ on the cross.



Rock crystal these days is not all that expensive, so given the motivation, I'd think a cross like this would be quite possible to reproduce for a reasonable price. The labor would be the biggest cost.

The market for historical reproductions of all kinds is lively, and still growing, so perhaps someone will take up this challenge. I'd be happy to see the result.

More 16th c crosses

part 2

I collected some photos in a previous post that I keep around as a guide to what 16th and 17th-century crosses generally look like. Those were relatively plain ones; here are some of the fancier ones.

One type that's represented in quite a few museum collections is a cross made primarily to show off inset jewels: diamonds in the one on the left below, amethysts on the right. Some have solid backs, others have open-backed settings so that light can pass through the jewels. This is part of an overall trend in jewelry, beginning in the early 17th century and extending into the 18th and 19th, to emphasize the stones themselves, at the expense of the settings. Many medieval and Renaissance jewels have elaborate, heavily enameled settings around their jewels, sometimes with additional jewels, pearls or beads set in them. By the eighteenth century, brooches are often so thickly set with jewels that the settings are hidden, and you can't always even tell whether they're gold or silver without turning them over.



The crosses below show a bit more of the settings than the ones above. The one on the left is Spanish and set with emeralds (the original is in Barcelona, but I couldn't find a color photo).

Another thing to notice here, and in the previous post, is how many of the crosses have pendant pearls, either just at the foot of the cross, or from both the foot and the side arms. These pendent pearls are very characteristic of a lot of 16th-century jewelry; you see them on jewels shaped like ships, dolphins, castles and so forth. Even when the pearls have not survived, you can sometimes see attachment loops where they would have hung.



More elaborate again is the following, shown front and back, which has lots of enameled curlicues around the edges. The back has an elaborate pattern in enamels -- undoubtedly in color, again I couldn't find a color photo of this one, but compare it to the last one in the previous post.



I find it very helpful to look at actual examples like this when going shopping for suitable crosses to use for replicas (even though I often can't find any!). I find that, with time and experience, my eye for what period crosses actually look like does get better. And in particular, better at discriminating between crosses that actually do come from the Renaissance, and the crosses so many suppliers put out that are called "Medieval" or "Renaissance" but actually look nothing like them. Only the best of the 19th century fakers, such as Reinhold Vasters, seem to have studied the real Renaissance closely enough to produce something that's even slightly convincing.

Some 16th and 17th c. crosses

I have a couple of things I'd like to write about that are turning out to involve more research than I expected, so this is an "in the meantime" post.

I've been meaning to say something, anyway, about some photos I've been collecting of 16th and 17th-century crosses. These are one of my examples of how historical rosary parts can be quite different in style from anything I can find through "creative shopping" on the current market. (Adding to the angst of anyone like me who is trying to make reproductions without being able to do my own metal casting!)

If tradition is correct about the first two of these, they are definitely 16th century, as they are both supposed to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, who died in 1582. The second one is from the gold filigree rosary that she is said to have carried to her execution.




Several of the other photos I've found are of crosses from the Iberian peninsula, which may be 16th or possibly 17th century. In the absence of accompanying information, crosses like this are very difficult to date -- unlike, for instance, dress styles, which changed more often and more obviously. Crosses of gold and precious stones frequently have survived the centuries mostly because of their precious-metal content, and second, because of their artistry, and previous owners often have discarded any historical information as a detail of little importance.



My sources for these photos, by the way, demonstrate that the best sources of information about historical rosaries are often books about quite different subjects: in this case, not books about religious devotion, but books about jewelry. I found the Hispanic pieces in two excellent books: Jewels in Spain, 1500-1800 by Priscilla E. Muller (1972, The Hispanic Society of America) and Five centuries of Jewelry by Leonor d'Orey (1995, Institut Portuguese de Museus, Zwemmer).

First is a Spanish cross almost identical to the one on Queen Mary's rosary above, but showing a bit more detail:



The cross below, shown front and back, is probably from Portugal. Many pieces of 16th and 17th-century jewelry, including pendants, lockets and watches, had enameled designs like these on the backs. I love the colors on this one.



The last two crosses here are very good examples of styles of decoration that I wish modern jewelers would reproduce. You'll note that none of these crosses have flared or elaborated ends at the top, bottom or ends of the arms. While that style is not unknown in the 16th century, somehow in more recent times it has become the dominant style, making it hard to find crosses with plain straight ends.