Produce such leaves, such fruit, such flowers.
Sweet are the nails and sweet the wood,
Which bore a weight so sweet and good.”
“O lovely tree, whose branches bore
The royal purple of His gore,
How glorious does thy body shine,
Supporting members so divine.
Hail, cross! our hope, on thee we call
Who keep this paschal festival;
Grant to the just increase of grace,
And every sinner’s guilt efface.”
There is something unusually remarkable about the popularity of the cross; we can hardly point to a time when, or to a part of the world where, it has not been in favour. It has entered into the constitution of religions of the most opposite character, has been transmitted from one to another, and though originally belonging to the rudest form of pagan idolatry, is now esteemed highly by those who profess to have adopted the loftiest ideal of civilised worship. After mentioning the fact of its popularity in the pagan world, Mr. Maurice remarks: “Let not the piety of the Catholic Christian be offended at the preceding assertion, that the cross was one of the most usual symbols among the hieroglyphics of Egypt and India. Equally honoured in the Gentile and the Christian world, this emblem of universal nature—of that world to whose four quarters its diverging radii pointed—decorated the hands of most of the sculptured images in the former country, and in the latter stamped its form upon the most majestic shrines of their deities.”
Here we may profitably glance at a few different parts of the world and at some of the past ages, in tracing out the possible origin and meaning of this symbol. In Britain there have been found monuments so ancient and with such surroundings that but for certain peculiar marks they would unhesitatingly have been put down as Druidical. They are marked with the cross, and in the estimation of some, as we have already pointed out, that is regarded as conclusive proof of Christian origin. The inference, however, is a false one, the monuments are too old for Christianity, and the cruciform etchings upon them belong to another religious system altogether. It is known that the Druids consecrated the sacred oak by cutting it into the shape of a cross, and so necessary was it regarded to have it in this form, that if the lateral branches were not large enough to construct the figure properly, two others were fixed as arms on either side of the trunk. The cross having been thus constructed, the Arch-Druid ascended and wrote the name of the Deity upon the trunk at the place of intersection, and on the extremities of the arms.
The peculiar interest attached to this idol lies in the fact that it is described by the best authorities as the Gallic or Celtic Tau. “The Tau,” says Davies in his Celtic Researches, “was the symbol of the Druidical Jupiter. It consisted of a huge grand oak deprived of all its branches, except only two large ones which, though cut off and separated, were suspended from the top of its trunk-like suspended arms.” The idol, say others, was in reality a cross, the same in form as the linga.
A few years ago, near the hill of Bardon, in the middle of Charnwood forest, in the county of Leicester, there grew and perhaps still grows, a very old tree called the Copt Oak. This tree, there is reason to believe, was more than two thousand years old, and once formed a Celtic Tau. Forty years ago, a writer who knew the tree well, said that its condition then suggested very distinctly the possibility of the truthfulness of the story. It was described as a vast tree, then reduced to a mere shell between two and three inches only in thickness, perforated by several openings, and alive only in about one-fourth of the shell; bearing small branches, but such as could not have grown when the tree was entire; then it must have had branches of a size not less than an oak of ordinary dimensions. This was evident from one of the openings in the upper part of the shell of the trunk, exactly such as a decayed branch would produce. The tree was evidently of gigantic size in its earlier days, as shown by its measurement at the date we are speaking of. The remains of the trunk were twenty feet high, the height proper for the Tau, and the circumference at the ground was twenty-four feet; at the height of ten feet the girth was twenty, giving a diameter of nearly seven feet. This tree, we have said, was called the Copt Oak; the epithet copt, or copped, may be derived from the Celtic cop—a head, and evidently indicates that the tree had been headed and reduced to the state of a bare trunk. The idol, as already described, was formed by cutting away the branches of the tree, which was always a large one, and affixing a beam, forming a cross with the bare trunk.[1]
From time immemorial the Copt Oak has borne a celebrity that bears out the tradition of its ancient sacredness. Potter, the historian of the forest of Charnwood, writes that it was one of the three places at which Swanimotes were held, always in the open air, for the regulation of rights and claims on the forest; and persons have been known even in late times to have attended such motes. “At this spot,” he says, “it may be under this tree, Edric the Forester is said to have harangued his forces against the Norman invasion; and here too, in the Parliamentary troubles of 1642, the Earl of Stamford assembled the trained bands of the district.” “These facts,” says Dudley, “mark the Copt Oak extraordinary, and show, that notwithstanding the lapse of two thousand years, the trunk was at that distant period a sacred structure, a Celtic idol; and that it is illustrative of antiquarian records.”
Still further back in history than the foregoing are we able to trace this singular figure. If we visit the Assyrian galleries of the British Museum we shall observe life-size effigies in stone of the kings Samsi-Rammanu, B.C. 825, and Assur-Nazir-Pal, B.C. 880; suspended from the necks of these monarchs and resting upon their breasts are prominently sculptured Maltese crosses about three inches in length and width; they are in a good state of preservation, and will amply repay anyone for the trouble of an inspection, should they be desirous of pursuing this enquiry. In the Roman Catholic dictionaries we find these ornaments described as pectoral crosses—crosses of precious metal worn at the breast by bishops and abbots as a mark of their office, and sometimes also by canons, etc., who have obtained the privilege from Rome. It is stated these pectorals were not generally used by the Roman ecclesiastics till the middle of the sixteenth century; however that may be, it is a fact, as proved by the Assyrian sculptures, that they are nearly, if not more than, three thousand years old, and not the least interesting feature distinguishing them is their perfect similarity of design. It is strange that we moderns—the disciples of Christ—should have had supplied to us at that remote period the pattern of an ornament or symbol which we are accustomed to regard as emblematic of essential features of our religion, but it is true.
Look across now to Egypt and we find monuments and tombs literally bedizened with the cross, and that too in a variety of shapes. Long, long before Christ, the Ibis was represented with human hands and feet, holding the staff of Isis in one hand, and a globe and cross in the other. Here we are in one of the most ancient kingdoms of the world—a kingdom so ancient that its years are lost in obscurity—yet still the cross is found. Whatever it may have represented in other countries, and whatever may be its meaning here, from the positions in which it is found and from its constant association with ecclesiastical personages and offices, it was evidently one of the most sacred of their symbols. Two forms, among others, are common, one a simple cross of four limbs of equal length, the other that shaped like the letter X; the first is generally known as the Greek cross, the second as that of St. Andrew, both however being of the same form and owing their different appearance only to the position in which they are placed.
It is well known, probably, to most of our readers that the astronomical signs of certain of the planets consist of crosses, crescents, circles, and in ancient Egypt these were precisely the same as those now used. Saturn was represented by a cross surmounting a ram’s horn, Jupiter by a cross beneath a horn, Venus by a cross beneath a circle, the Earth by a cross within a circle, Mercury by a cross surmounted by a circle and crescent, and Mars by a cross above a circle. These may still be seen in almanacs, and on the large coloured bottles in the windows of the druggist. In the hands of Isis, Osiris, and Hermes, corresponding with the Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury of the Greeks, are also found the above signs.
When the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, was destroyed by one of the Christian emperors,