The Place of the Cross in
Anglo-Saxon England.
Edited by Catherine E. Karkov, Sarah Larratt Keefer, and Karen Louise Jolly.
Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 4. Woodbridge,
Suffolk and Rochester, NY: boydell Press, 2006. Pp. xx + 172. $85.
Veneration of the cross on Good Friday is thought to have begun in the seventh
century when Rome adopted the practice from the Church in Jerusalem, which
possessed a fragment of the true Cross and had included devotions to the
cross in its services since the fourth century. In the symbol
of the cross, Christians have traditionally perceived the immensity of the
human experience, the depredations of original sin, and the infinite love
of God. As the essays in this volume make clear, the multifaceted symbol
of the cross as a literary concept, physical object or inscription, and
gesture played a profound role in the devotional culture of Anglo-Saxon
England.
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