HIGH CROSSESthe probable change of location of at least some of
the crosses in recent centuries. The idealized plan of
St.Mullins in Carlow, found in the Book of Mulling,
would suggest that some crosses stood near the
entrance to the enclosure; others may have marked
boundaries, and apparently none were grave-markers.
The majority were presumably erected in order to
bring those who stood and knelt beside them closer to
God, and crosses carved with biblical scenes would
have had the dual purpose of being able to explain the
sacred scriptures pictorially and inducing feelings of
piety in the beholders. However, inscriptions (even
ones poorly preserved) found at the bottom of some
cross-shafts and most legible to those kneeling in front
of them show that the crosses were not purely religious
in character, but also had a political dimension. These
inscriptions include the names of two High Kings,
father and son, Máel-Sechnaill I and Flann Sinna
(whose reigns span the years 846 to 916) and another,
Tairrdelbach (Turlough) Ua Conchobair (1119–1156),
showing that the church and secular rulers had coop-
erated in erecting the crosses whose inscriptions helped
to glorify the political dynasts. One name that recurs
oncrosses is that of Colman, who could conceivably
have been the master sculptor of some of them, though
we cannot say whether the carvers of the crosses were
monks, or masons of a traveling workshop.
The crosses, however, are unlikely to have been
developed in the stone form that we see today. It is
likely that they were preceded by crosses made of other
materials—a wooden core covered, at least partially,
in bronze, is made extremely likely by crosses such as
that at Dromiskin, County Louth, where decorative
squares or bosses are almost certainly modeled on
bronze originals. On the North Cross at Castledermot,
County Kildare, the mason has even copied the heads
of the nails (used to attach the spiral-ornamented
bronze sheet to the wooden core) of the model on
which the stone cross was based, and surviving pieces
of bronze in Irish, British, and Norwegian museums
may have formed part of such “prototype” crosses. We
should thus envisage existing crosses in the landscape
as the final and most lasting step in the development
of the High Cross, which would have started in wood
and bronze (and possibly other materials as well)—
and probably on a much smaller scale before they
reached the monumentalized stone form that we see
today.
The Irish probably copied the idea from Britain,
where stone crosses had become popular in the eighth
century. Chronologically, the Irish crosses can be sep-
arated into a ninth- and tenth-century group and a
twelfth-century group, while leaving open the possi-
bility that the dating of each group could be expanded
somewhat. Françoise Henry envisaged the develop-
ment of the first group taking place in Donegal, where
she saw the Fahan stele and the Carndonagh cross as
emerging in the seventh and eighth centuries from
upright cross-decorated standing stones, and then
equipped with independent arms and figure carving.
She supported her argument by pointing out that the
Fahan stone bore a Greek inscription “Glory and
Honor to the Father.. .” that used a formula approved
by the Council of Toledo in 633. But the dating of
these two crosses is still a matter of debate, and both
can be seen as being closer to developments in Scotland
than in the rest of Ireland.
Late twentieth-century thought would instead prefer
to see the High Crosses evolving from upright pillars,
not in Donegal but at Clonmacnoise, where they are
decorated with horsemen, interlace of the ribbon and
human varieties, spirals, and lions, emerging probably
at a time when the papal throne was occupied by one
bearing their name, Leo III (796–816). Among the
half-dozen monuments of this group clustered around
Clonmacnoise, there are some which were certainly
crosses and not pillars, as can be seen at Twyford,
where an inscription refers to a Tuathgal who may—
but is certainly not proven to—have been the same as
an abbot of Clonmacnoise of that name who died in- The same preference for animals—presumably
having a symbolic meaning for those who carved
them—is found with what is probably a roughly con-
temporary group of granite crosses at Finglas, County
Dublin, and, more particularly at Moone, County
Kildare. At Moone, at first on a cross with a hole at
the centre, and later on the more-famous tall cross
sculpted (perhaps with the other two) by the same
master, we find a profusion of animals, some of which
have a clearly Italian ancestry.
But the base of the tall cross at Moone introduces
us here for the first time to a series of Old and New
Testament scenes designed to relate Adam and Eve to
the Crucifixion, and to show how the Lord shields the
innocent from danger, while also featuring the desert
hermits Paul and Anthony. This pair also appears on
other granite crosses in the area, particularly those at
Castledermot, County Kildare, a foundation of the Céli
Dé, members of a reform movement whose return to
ascetical monastic rule may be symbolized by Paul
and Anthony, and whose interest in reading the Bible
might illuminate the appearance of scriptural scenes
on crosses in the Barrow Valley. But the emergence of
the “classical” High Cross—sandstone, with large
ring, and with much of the surface covered with a much
greater variety of biblical images than are present at
Moone and Castledermot—is to be found in the east,
the midlands, and the north of Ireland at much the
same time or marginally later. The question of when
that time was has been a matter of considerable debate,