The wood of which it was made is as unsettled as its shape. The Venerable Bede says that our Lord’s Cross was made of four kinds of wood: the inscription of box, the upright beam of cypress, the transverse of cedar, and the lower part of pine. John Cantacuméne avers that only three woods were employed: the upright, cedar; the transverse, pine; and the head in cypress. Others say that the upright was cypress, the transverse in palm, and the head in olive; or cedar, cypress, and olive. Most authorities seem to concur that it was made of several woods, but there is a legend that it was made from the aspen tree, whose leaves still tremble at the awful use the tree was put to; whilst that veritable traveller, Sir John Maundeville, says: “And also in Iherusalem toward the Weast is a fayre church where the tree grew of the which the Crosse was made.” Lipsius says that it was made of but one wood, and that was oak; but M. Rohault de Fleury (to whose wonderful and comprehensive work, Mémoire sur les Instruments de la Passion de notre Sauveur Jesus Christ, I am deeply indebted, says, “M. Decaisne, member of the Institut, and M. Pietro Savi, professor at the University of Pisa, have shewn me by the microscope that the pieces in the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem at Rome, in the Cathedral at Pisa, in the Duomo at Florence, and in Notre Dame at Paris, were of pine.” And he adds, in a footnote, “Independently of the experiments which M. Savi kindly made in my presence, he wrote me the results of other observations, which tended to confirm.”
Starting with the Invention of the Holy Cross, the loving, but fervid, imaginations of the faithful soon wove round it a covering of imagery, as we have just seen in the case of the several woods of the Cross, and the sacred tree became the subject of a legend (for so it always was only meant to be), which was incorporated in the Legenda Aurea Sanctorum, or Golden Legend of the Saints, of Jacobus de Voragine, a collection of legends connected with the services of the Church. This book was exceedingly popular, and, when Caxton set up his printing-press at Westminster, he produced a translation, the history of which he quaintly tells us in a preface.[A]
Caxton’s Golden Legend
As this Golden Legend is the standard authority on the subject, and as it will much assist the intelligent appreciation of the wood-blocks, I reproduce it, premising that I have used throughout the first edition, 20 Nov., 1483:—
3Page 39.
4Laughed or smiled.
5Obtained true mercy.
3 But alle the dayes of adam lyvynge here in erthe amounte to the somme of
[B] yere / And in thende of his lyf whan he shold dye / it is said but of none auctoryte / that he sente Seth his sone in to paradys for to fetch the oyle of mercy / where he receyuyde certayn graynes of the fruyt of the tree of mercy by an angel / And whan he come agayn / he fonde his fader adam yet alyve and told hym what he had don. And thenne Adam lawhed4 first / and then deyed / and thenne he leyed the greynes or kernellis under his faders tonge and buryed hym / in the vale of ebron / and out of his mouth grewe thre trees of the thre graynes / of which the crosse that our lord suffred his passion on / was made by vertue of which he gate5 very mercy and was brought out of darknes in to veray light of heven / to the whiche he brynge us that lyveth and regneth god world with oute ende.