V. On Palm-tree Crosses

Abstract

In the Crucifixion scene on the remarkable bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, cast for Bishop Bernward in 1015, appears a cross with a series of curious protuberances regularly disposed all round its edge. Dibelius, writing of this cross, has suggested that it represents a cross constructed of unhewn palm-trunks, conventionalized in form, and has cited, as early examples of similar crosses, the representations of crosses on some of the Monza ampullae, attributing these representations to a presumed tendency, on the part of a Palestinian craftsman, to show the Saviour's cross as if made of a wood common in Palestine. I am dealing elsewhere with the suggestion that the cross on the Hildesheim door represents palm-wood, concluding that logs of palm-trunk are not represented in that cross and that the latter is no more than one of a class fairly common, formed of conventionalized living vegetation; and I am there discussing, in considerable detail, Dibelius's further suggestion that the crosses, common in medieval times and during the early Renaissance, represented as if made of rough wood, have been derived from crosses intended to represent pieces of palm-trunk set crosswise. Although since preparing that study I have seen no reason to ascribe the origin of roughwood crosses to prototypes representing palm-trunks, either dead and as the material substance of which our Lord's cross was constructed or as living, and representing symbolically the Tree of Life, the iconographical questions–first, as to actual representations of palm-tree crosses; and, second, as to the symbolical meanings underlying such representations–suggested by Dibelius's conjectures have seemed to me to be worthy of the investigation of which I present the results below.