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‘The Dream of the Rood’ and Anglo-Saxon Monasticism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

John V. Fleming
John V. Fleming*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

The earliest text of The Dream of the Rood consists of a few lines of runic inscriptions carved around the edges of a North English high cross now at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire. It represents no more than a fragment of the text as we find it in the Vercelli MS, a short passage describing the Crucifixion and the ordeal of the Cross. The precise relationship between the Ruthwell runes and the Vercelli poem is a matter of conjecture and dispute. To some critics the Ruthwell inscriptions represent an ‘earlier poem,’ of which the Vercelli text is an expansion or a later revision or both. It is a question to which I shall wish to devote some attention in due course. For the present, I would suggest that the runic inscriptions provide a valuable clue to the interpretation of the Vercelli poem along lines so far left unexplored; for the runes form a part of a rich iconographic program, developing a unified meaning closely connected with the figurative meaning of The Dream of the Rood.

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Articles
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Traditio , Volume 22 , 1966 , pp. 43 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

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4 Throughout this article I use the terms ‘Benedictine’ and ‘Benedictinism’ in the very loose sense employed by monastic scholars since the time of Mabillon. They refer to the principal form of cenobitic monasticism in the West, founded wholly or in part on the Regula of St. Benedict of Nursia. The terms are of quite modern coinage. See Gillet, R., ‘Spiritualité et place du moine dans l'Église selon Saint Grégoire le Grand,’ Théologie de la vie monastique (Paris 1961) 323.Google Scholar

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