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The Brussels Cross or Drahmal Cross is an Anglo-Saxon cross-reliquary of the early 11th century, now in the treasury of the St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral, Brussels, that bears engraved images and an inscription in Old English.
Badly damaged and with its once jewelled front missing, the Brussels Cross takes the form of a large piece of cross-shaped wood covered with a silver plate bearing medallions engraved with the evangelists' symbols at the end of the arms and an Agnus Dei at the center. Across the arms the artist has inscribed his name in large Latin letters: + Drahmal me worhte (‘Drahmal made me’). An inscription around the edges reads: + Rod is min nama; geo ic ricne Cyning bær byfigynde, blod bestemed (‘Rood is my name. Trembling once, I bore a powerful king, made wet with blood’). These lines bear a close relationship to ll. 44 and 48 in the Old English poem, 'The Dream of the Rood'. This is followed by a common form of dedication: þas rod het Æþmær wyrican and Aðelwold hys beroþo[r] Criste to lofe for Ælfrices saule hyra beroþor (‘Æthlmær and Athelwold, his brother, ordered this rood to be made so as to praise Christ for the soul of Ælfric, their brother’). The Anglo-Saxon inscription is contained on a silver strip which runs around the edges of the cross. It is written not in runes, but in Roman letters, in a curious mixture of Latin-style majuscules and minuscules. The letters 'NE' of ricne, 'NG' of cyning and 'ME' of bestemed are written as ligatures. Although it has not proved possible to identify with any certainty the persons named in the inscription, the text is in late West-Saxon which would ascribe it to the late tenth century or perhaps later.
The Brussels Cross and its two-line inscription in Anglo-Saxon verse were first brought to public attention in modern times by H. Logeman in 1891. Traditionally reputed to contain the largest extant fragments of the True Cross, it has been preserved at the Cathedral of SS. Michel and Gudule since the middle of the seventeenth century. The cross is 46.5 by 28 cm. (18.3 by 11 inches) in size. The front was once covered by a jewelled gold plate, probably taken away by French soldiers under Dumouriez in 1793; the back is still covered with silver, with the symbols of the four evangelists at the ends of the four arms and the symbol of the Agnus Dei in the centre. The earlier Lothair Cross is a comparable work that is still intact. The name of the craftsman, Drahmal, is probably Norse and from the northern England, but nothing more can be deduced about him. Judging from the language of the inscription as well as from the epigraphy and the style of the images, the cross most likely dates from the beginning of the 11th century. The images are in a "stolid" version of the early "Winchester style". [1]
The Brussels Cross was created in England, but the three brothers, Ælfric, Æthelmær and Æthelwold, cited in the prose part of the inscription, have never been positively identified. The language is a fairly regular late West-Saxon, with one Anglian form, bestemed, and a few irregular spellings, such as byfigynde (with 'y' for 'e' in the ending) in the verse, wyrican and beroþor (both with an intrusive vowel) in the prose. The form bestemed (for West-Saxon bestiemed, bestymed) does not necessarily indicate a northern origin for the inscription; it is usually explained as a traditional spelling taken over from older poetic vocabulary.
Some scholars have identified Ælfric, Æthelmær and Æthelwold with Africus, Agelmarus and Agelwardus of Worcester around the year 1007. Others have suggested that the Æthelmær is the well-known patron of Ælfric, who founded the abbey at Eynsham in 1005, but offer no identification of the other two names. It is possible, furthermore, that the holy relic which forms part of the present cross is the same as the lignum Domini ('Wood of the Lord') sent by Pope Marinus to King Alfred in 883 or 885. None of these possibilities is susceptible to proof. The Belgian scholar Simone D’Ardenne offers the most plausible analysis. She favors the identification of the relic with Alfred’s lignum Domini ('Wood of the Lord'), and she has studied all the available evidence to present a highly plausible account of its later history. According to her, the relic remained in the hands of the West-Saxon royal family until near the end of the tenth century, when it left the possession of the direct line. Its new owners had it enclosed in a reliquary (the present cross) and presented it to Westminster Abbey. It later found its way to the Netherlands, probably during the reign of the last Norman King of England, Stephen (1135–1154), when numbers of Flemish soldiers were in England.
Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses literature written in Old English, in early medieval England from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066. According to Bede, the 7th century work Cædmon's Hymn is considered as the oldest surviving poem in English. Poetry written in the mid-12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. For example, The Soul's Address to the Body found in Worcester Cathedral Library MS F. 174 contains only one word of possible Latinate origin, while also maintaining a corrupt alliterative meter and Old English grammar and syntax, albeit in a degenerative state. The Peterborough Chronicle can also be considered a late-period text, continuing into the 12th century. The strict adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th century work – as is evident in the works cited above – and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
Æthelweard, descended from the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred I of Wessex, the elder brother of Alfred the Great, was an ealdorman and the author of a Latin version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as the Chronicon Æthelweardi.
TheDream of the Rood is one of the Christian poems in the corpus of Old English literature and an example of the genre of dream poetry. Like most Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative verse. Rood is from the Old English word rōd 'pole', or more specifically 'crucifix'. Preserved in the 10th-century Vercelli Book, the poem may be as old as the 8th-century Ruthwell Cross, and is considered one of the oldest works of Old English literature.
Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric the Grammarian, Ælfric of Cerne, and Ælfric the Homilist. In the view of Peter Hunter Blair, he was "a man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of his mind even with Bede himself." According to Claudio Leonardi, he "represented the highest pinnacle of Benedictine reform and Anglo-Saxon literature".
The Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula is a medieval Roman Catholic cathedral in central Brussels, Belgium. It is dedicated to Saint Michael and Saint Gudula, the patron saints of the City of Brussels, and is considered to be one of the finest examples of Brabantine Gothic architecture.
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The Benedictional of St. Æthelwold is a 10th-century illuminated benedictional, the most important surviving work of the Anglo-Saxon Winchester School of illumination. It contains the various pontifical blessings used during Mass on the differing days of the ecclesiastical year along with a form for blessing the candles used during the Feast of the Purification. The manuscript was written by the monk Godeman at the request of Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester.
Anglo-Saxon art covers art produced within the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, beginning with the Migration period style that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from the continent in the 5th century, and ending in 1066 with the Norman Conquest of England, whose sophisticated art was influential in much of northern Europe. The two periods of outstanding achievement were the 7th and 8th centuries, with the metalwork and jewellery from Sutton Hoo and a series of magnificent illuminated manuscripts, and the final period after about 950, when there was a revival of English culture after the end of the Viking invasions. By the time of the Conquest the move to the Romanesque style is nearly complete. The important artistic centres, in so far as these can be established, were concentrated in the extremities of England, in Northumbria, especially in the early period, and Wessex and Kent near the south coast.
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The poetic text of the Brussels Cross is fully edited and annotated, with digital images of its engraved inscriptions, in the Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project: https://oepoetryfacsimile.org/