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Cross of Scriptures
The city of the seven churches, Clonmacnoise, was founded by St Ciaran in 548 A D and lasted a thousand years. Today it is a quiet ruined abbey, but at its full flowering it was a bustling important centre, a university city on a major Irish highway - the River Shannon.
Clonmacnoise was a centre of classical and religious learning, of art, calligraphy, design, and of gold and silver craftsmanship. Kuno Meyer, the German Scholar who was professor of Irish at the University of Liverpool at the turn of this century, wrote of this period that ‘Ireland drew upon herself the attention of the whole world as the great seminary of Christian and classical learning’. Clonmacnoise grew and prospered and by 800 AD a Gaelic poet was writing:
Ailill the king is vanished, Vanished Croghan’s fort, Kings to Clonmacnoise now, Come to pay their court little places taken, First by twos and threes, Are like Rome reborn, Peopled sanctuaries. (Translation Frank O’Connor ‘Kings, Lords and Common’. New York 1959)
It was around this time that the Cross of the Scriptures was carved and erected. It has elaborate carvings both of Scriptural and contemporary scenes as well as animals and birds. One panel on the East face shows an ecclesiastic and a warrior with a sword and between them a staff with leaves or flowers. It is intriguing to think that this may depict St. Ciaran’s staff, and that the panel may be showing ‘a swearing on the staff’, a custom which is known to have existed but the details of which are lost.
The Last Judgment is shown at the centre on the East face, and on the West face, the Crucifixion. There is a lovely touch at the bottom of the West shaft where there is a panel showing Our Lord’s body in the tomb. Two snoozing soldiers are sitting on the tomb while in Our Lord’s mouth a small bird breaths life – a symbol of His imminent resurrection.
