The Ruthwell cross: papers from the colloquium sponsored by the Index of Christian art, Princeton University, 8 December 1989 (review)

Reviews 121 the medieval Benedictines who were the image's audience, to offer meanings from Biblical, animal fable, and everyday contexts. His essay delights because of its determined resistance to any 'fundamentalist' single interpretation. The excellent plates with which this book is so richly supplied assist in CamiUe's multi-angled 'detective-story' investigation. Other noteworthy pieces are Richard Trexler's 'Gendering Jesus crucified' and the late Howard Mayer Brown's 'Cleriadus et Meliadice: a fifteenth-century manual for courtly behaviour'. The former explores the gendering of the deity, starting with Bynum, Steinberg, and Wirth, but rejecting then conclusion that the genitalia of Jesus did not make him open to being construed as a sexual object. Trexler presents an infinitely complex and stimulating argument that the potential of the naked Jesus to be a seductive object especiahy to women, justified the Church's cover-up. Brown's essay explores the relationship between texts, images, and music in three manuscripts of Cleriadus et Meliadice to augment knowledge of medieval musicological practice. The plates enable the reader to follow the points being made in a highly entertaining and satisfying manner. Whether 'iconography' is truly at a 'crossroads' remains unproven. However, this collection of essays is a generally stimulating window on to the current practice of the discipline. Carole Cusack School of Studies of Religion University of Sydney Cassidy, Brendan, ed., The Ruthwell cross: papers from the colloquium sponsored by the Index of Christian art, Princeton University, 8 December 1989 (Index of Christian art, occasional papers I), Princeton, Index of Christian art/Department of art and archaeology, 1992; paper; pp. xiv, 205, 14figures,66 plates; R.R.P. ? The Princeton Index of Christian art series has a spectacular start with this beautifully produced large-format volume, which provides both an analysis of the ever-fascinating Ruthwell cross and also some virtuoso scholarship on its date and iconography. Brendan Cassidy has written an urbane introduction to recapitulate both the m o d e m history of the cross and the evolution of its art history. However, as editor he should have been more 128 Reviews willing to cut the successive introductions to the four major essays, all of which also recapitulate the m o d e m story. H e could also have been more ruthless with the plates, which are unnecessarily repetitive and of uneven quality. A third of the volume is taken up by a dazzling essay by Paul Meyvaert, subtitled 'Ecclesia and vita monastica', which uses archaeology, patristics, art-history, and local history to construct a subtle, multi-faceted, and tremendously exciting interpretation of the decorative programme on the cross. H e concludes that it was conceived not by Bede himself but rather by 'a Northumbrian m o n k brought up in the Lindisfarne tradition, who was familiar with the work of Bede'. There are elements 'in a line of Irish exegetical tradition of which Bede can hardly have been unaware, but which he chose not to adopt'. Meyvaert accepts the mid eighth-century date given earlier in the volume by Douglas MacLean in a short but convincing paper which disentangles the complexities of Rheged and Northumbrian politics. David Howlett analyses the design and text of both the Latin and the runic inscriptions. Regrettably he does not comment on Meyvaert's opinion that the runes were added later, after the cross was erected, though still in the eighth century. H e notes that the tenth-century Dream ofthe rood appears to be an expanded version of the Ruthwell text, and uses MacLean's mideighth -century date and a connection with the bishopric of Pecthbelm at Whithorn, to suggest that the original work was by Aldhelm, Pecthelm's mentor. However, Robert T. Farrell in an acerbic essay on 'Construction, deconstraction, and reconstruction', points out that Howlett's interpretation 'depends to a considerable part on early representations of the cross and on conjecture' and that Meyvaert's cross 'is neither the Ruthwell cross as i t exists at present nor, I suspect, as it was conceived and executed in the eighth century'. Farrell's comments certainly hold for Paul Meyvaert's surprising notion that the cross was set up within the Anglo...