High Crosses

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High Crosses

First named as such in The Annals of the Four Masters in the year 957, these stone crosses reach a height of up to 20 feet. More than two hundred survive, many bearing panels illustrating biblical scenes, and they were sculpted from sandstone, granite, or limestone by master craftsmen who occasionally inscribed their names but never their status (e.g., monk or layman). The crosses were probably copied from (smaller) examples in other media, including wood and metal, and may originally have been painted.

They were erected at two different periods—the ninth/tenth century and the twelfth. A few examples may be earlier, but the normally accepted eighth-century dating for the Ahenny group of crosses in counties Tipperary and Kilkenny is now being challenged in favor of the ninth. The earlier group is characterized by a ring ("Celtic cross") which probably combined a structural function (preventing the arms from snapping off) with a cosmic symbolism, making Christ's Crucifixion at the center of the circle the crucial event in the history of the universe.

The ring first developed in the Mediterranean area, and it was probably Rome that provided the ultimate inspiration for the biblical carvings and the unusual idea of applying them to the surface of a cross. While the interpretation of some of the figured panels is controversial, the identifiable scenes—like similar continental frescoes—portray stories from the Old and New Testaments and the lives of the desert fathers Paul and Anthony. Though the subjects selected for illustration differ from cross to cross, they generally concentrate on showing how God helps the faithful in time of danger, and illustrate the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. The crosses are also decorated with sophisticated geometrical patterns of bosses, interlace, and so forth, whose symbolic meanings remain enigmatic.

Crosses of the earlier group are located on eastern and northern monastic sites, as well as in the midlands where inscriptions deciphered in the 1970s and 1980s reveal patronage from successive Uí Néill high kings in the erection of the crosses. Similar patronage from the O'Connor high kings of Connacht was involved in creating crosses of the later group at Tuam, Co. Galway, and the O'Brien dynasty and others were instrumental in raising further examples of this later group in north Munster, where they were probably associated with the religious reform movement of the twelfth century. These later crosses frequently bear high-relief figures of Christ and an ecclesiastic.