OLD CROSSES AND
LYCHGATES
I. INTRODUCTION
IN pursuance of the Christian policy of instituting an innocent practice to take the place of each of the old, vicious customs of heathendom—the substitution of the festival of Christmas for the former orgies of the Saturnalia is perhaps the best known instance in point—the Emperor Constantine (324 to 337 A.D.) caused crosses to be erected along the public ways at various points where previously had been situated terminal statues. Thence are believed to have originated the shrines and crucifixes, conspicuous by the roadside at the entrance of towns and villages in the Catholic countries of the Continent. Nor throughout the Middle Ages, until the sixteenth century, when the English people were torn from the unity of the unreformed faith, was our own country behind any other in its pious observance of the ancient traditional usage. The reason thereof is explained by a passage in Dives et Pauper, a popular treatise on the Ten Commandments, which was printed by Wynken de Worde at Westminster in 1496. The purpose of the erection of standing crosses is therein expounded as follows:—"For this reason ben Crosses by ye waye, that whan folke passynge see the Crosse, they sholde thynke on Hym that deyed on the Crosse, and worshypp Hym above all thynge."
2. WOLVERHAMPTON
DANES' CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD
MONOLITH TYPE
3. BEWCASTLE, CUMBERLAND