A few years ago, near the hill of Bardon, in the middle of Charnwood forest, in the county of Leicester, there grew and perhaps still grows, a very old tree called the Copt Oak. This tree, there is reason to believe, was more than two thousand years old, and once formed a Celtic Tau. Forty years ago, a writer who knew the tree well, said that its condition then suggested very distinctly the possibility of the truthfulness of the story. It was described as a vast tree, then reduced to a mere shell between two and three inches only in thickness, perforated by several openings, and alive only in about one-fourth of the shell; bearing small branches, but such as could not have grown when the tree was entire; then it must have had branches of a size not less than an oak of ordinary dimensions. This was evident from one of the openings in the upper part of the shell of the trunk, exactly such as a decayed branch would produce. The tree was evidently of gigantic size in its earlier days, as shown by its measurement at the date we are speaking of. The remains of the trunk were twenty feet high, the height proper for the Tau, and the circumference at the ground was twenty-four feet; at the height of ten feet the girth was twenty, giving a diameter of nearly seven feet. This tree, we have said, was called the Copt Oak; the epithet copt, or copped, may be derived from the Celtic cop—a head, and evidently indicates that the tree had been headed and reduced to the state of a bare trunk. The idol, as already described, was formed by cutting away the branches of the tree, which was always a large one, and affixing a beam, forming a cross with the bare trunk.[1]
From time immemorial the Copt Oak has borne a celebrity that bears out the tradition of its ancient sacredness. Potter, the historian of the forest of Charnwood, writes that it was one of the three places at which Swanimotes were held, always in the open air, for the regulation of rights and claims on the forest; and persons have been known even in late times to have attended such motes. “At this spot,” he says, “it may be under this tree, Edric the Forester is said to have harangued his forces against the Norman invasion; and here too, in the Parliamentary troubles of 1642, the Earl of Stamford assembled the trained bands of the district.” “These facts,” says Dudley, “mark the Copt Oak extraordinary, and show, that notwithstanding the lapse of two thousand years, the trunk was at that distant period a sacred structure, a Celtic idol; and that it is illustrative of antiquarian records.”
Still further back in history than the foregoing are we able to trace this singular figure. If we visit the Assyrian galleries of the British Museum we shall observe life-size effigies in stone of the kings Samsi-Rammanu, B.C. 825, and Assur-Nazir-Pal, B.C. 880; suspended from the necks of these monarchs and resting upon their breasts are prominently sculptured Maltese crosses about three inches in length and width; they are in a good state of preservation, and will amply repay anyone for the trouble of an inspection, should they be desirous of pursuing this enquiry. In the Roman Catholic dictionaries we find these ornaments described as pectoral crosses—crosses of precious metal worn at the breast by bishops and abbots as a mark of their office, and sometimes also by canons, etc., who have obtained the privilege from Rome. It is stated these pectorals were not generally used by the Roman ecclesiastics till the middle of the sixteenth century; however that may be, it is a fact, as proved by the Assyrian sculptures, that they are nearly, if not more than, three thousand years old, and not the least interesting feature distinguishing them is their perfect similarity of design. It is strange that we moderns—the disciples of Christ—should have had supplied to us at that remote period the pattern of an ornament or symbol which we are accustomed to regard as emblematic of essential features of our religion, but it is true.
Look across now to Egypt and we find monuments and tombs literally bedizened with the cross, and that too in a variety of shapes. Long, long before Christ, the Ibis was represented with human hands and feet, holding the staff of Isis in one hand, and a globe and cross in the other. Here we are in one of the most ancient kingdoms of the world—a kingdom so ancient that its years are lost in obscurity—yet still the cross is found. Whatever it may have represented in other countries, and whatever may be its meaning here, from the positions in which it is found and from its constant association with ecclesiastical personages and offices, it was evidently one of the most sacred of their symbols. Two forms, among others, are common, one a simple cross of four limbs of equal length, the other that shaped like the letter X; the first is generally known as the Greek cross, the second as that of St. Andrew, both however being of the same form and owing their different appearance only to the position in which they are placed.
It is well known, probably, to most of our readers that the astronomical signs of certain of the planets consist of crosses, crescents, circles, and in ancient Egypt these were precisely the same as those now used. Saturn was represented by a cross surmounting a ram’s horn, Jupiter by a cross beneath a horn, Venus by a cross beneath a circle, the Earth by a cross within a circle, Mercury by a cross surmounted by a circle and crescent, and Mars by a cross above a circle. These may still be seen in almanacs, and on the large coloured bottles in the windows of the druggist. In the hands of Isis, Osiris, and Hermes, corresponding with the Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury of the Greeks, are also found the above signs.
When the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, was destroyed by one of the Christian emperors, it is related by several historians, Socrates and Sozomen, for instance, that beneath the foundation was discovered the monogram of Christ; and that considerable disputing arose in consequence thereof, the Gentiles endeavouring to use it for their own purposes, and the Christians insisting that the cross, being uneasy beneath the weight or dominion of the temple, overthrew it.
If we turn to India we find the cross almost as common as in Egypt and Europe, and not the least interesting feature of the matter is the curious fact that a number of the pagodas are actually cruciform in structure. Jagannath is the name of one of the mouths of the Ganges, upon which was built the great pagoda where the Great Brahmin or High Priest resided. We were told years ago, by travellers, that the form of the choir or interior was similar in proportion to all the others, which were built upon the same model, in the form of a cross. The pagoda at Benares, also, was in the figure of a cross, having its arms equal. After the above, in importance, was the pagoda at Muttra; this likewise was cruciform. One of these temples, that at Chillambrum on the Coromandel coast, is said to be four miles in circumference. Here there are seven lofty walls one within the other round the central quadrangle, and as many pyramidal gateways in the middle of each side which form the limbs of a vast cross, consisting altogether of twenty-eight pyramids. There are, therefore, fourteen in a row, which extend more than a mile in one continuous line.
What has been called, and perhaps justly so, the oldest religious monument in the world was discovered a few years ago by Mariette Bey, near the Great Pyramid. For ages it had lain there, buried in the sand—how many we cannot tell, but very many we know; enough to carry us back to a very remote past. And this, too, like the Indian temples, was in the shape of a cross. Renan visited it in 1865, and though he found it in many particulars different from those known elsewhere, he described the interior, which much recalled the chamber of the Great Pyramid, as in the form of T, the principle aisle being divided in three rows, the transverse aisle in two.
Mr. Fergusson, the architect, also saw it, and, while admiring its simple and chaste grandeur of style, with some astonishment described the form of the principal chamber as that of a CROSS. And this was the plan of both tomb and temple in the earliest ages, testifying to the great veneration paid to this symbol.
There is a remarkable resemblance between the Buddhist crosses of India and those used by the Christian Roman Church. The cross of the Buddhist is represented with leaves and flowers springing from it, and placed upon a Calvary as by the Roman Catholics. It is represented in various ways, but the shaft with the cross-bar and the Calvary remain the same. The tree of life and knowledge, or the jamba tree, in their maps of the world, is always represented in the shape of a cross, eighty-four yoganas, or 423 or 432 miles high, including the three steps of the Calvary.