Ruthwell Cross, Ruthwell, Dumfries

An unmissable diversion just off the route of the epic St Ninian’s Way

Highlights

• Masterpiece of early Christian art

Desecration by extremist Protestants, botched reconstruction and general wear and tear cannot lessen this world-class piece of art. Its setting, an apse-like addition to the village church, is vaguely reminiscent of Michelangelo’s David.

The comparisons don’t end there in this book either. Both are the same height, just over 5m. And both are wonders of Biblical stone sculpture. The Ruthwell Cross is 750 years older, an artwork so sophisticated it still amazes experts today.

For a start, it is miles away from the great monasteries of the late 7th or early 8th centuries, the period when it was carved. It is craftsmanship of the highest order, and offers a coherent scheme of the Crucifixion, backed up by Latin texts. It incorporates a runic inscription from the oldest poem in the English language, The Dream of the Rood.

So magnificent is the sculpture it even survived the Reformation untouched, finally succumbing to Protestant iconoclasm 100 years later. It wasn’t down for that long either, being restored in 1818 by Henry Duncan, the local minister. His reconstruction has left the head of the cross the wrong way round, but an untrained eye would never notice.

The cross’s arms had to be created anew, since they were lost, but otherwise the Ruthwell Cross stands pretty much as it did more than a millennium ago. It was designed to aid preaching and evangelism, functions it can still perform.

A high-resolution 3D scan was performed in 2012, the stunning results published three years later and online (see details at the end). The top image on each side should be transposed: the north face had all four evangelists around the cross head.

As it stands, the depictions from top to bottom show:

‍South face

• St John the Evangelist, with eagle [1823 additions]
• An archer
• Martha and Mary
• Mary Magdalene anointing Jesus’ feet
• Jesus healing the man born blind
• The Annunciation
• The Crucifixion‍

North face

• An eagle [1823 additions]
• St Matthew
• God the Father
• Christ standing on two beasts
• St Paul and St Anthony sharing bread
• Jesus and his family’s flight to Egypt

Christ standing on two beasts is a rare image, appearing also in an 11th-century manuscript called the Crowland Psalter. This shows the same scene more clearly: Christ standing on a lion and a dragon. The image echoes Psalm 91, verse 13: “You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.”‍

The Dream of the Rood is a long poem, telling the story of the Crucifixion from the point of view of the cross (a ‘rood’ in Anglo-Saxon). Ruthwell has just a few verses from the poem, including the line about Christ’s deposition from the cross: “With arrows wounded, they laid him down, weary in limb.” I wonder if this inspired the archer on the south face, which is otherwise of unknown significance.

The cross is much too tall to fit into the church, and so sits in a specially dug pit. This makes it easier to see the sculptural figures up close. Even greatly foreshortened, the Ruthwell Cross dominates British devotional art of the first millennium.

Directions‍

Ruthwell Church, Bankend, Ruthwell DG1 4NP

‍http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/cross

W3W: unzips.pianists.salt

GPS: 55.0003N 3.4073W

The cross is in Ruthwell church, about half a mile north of Ruthwell village. There are plenty of signs to it as you drive along the B724, which passes just north of Ruthwell itself. If you find the church locked, there is a notice about a neighbouring keyholder.