At 11:29 AM 2/13/01 -1000, you wrote:
> the Anglo-Saxon evidence ...is
>clear that church leaders strongly encouraged the laity to make use of
>the sign on a regular basis (e.g. daily) and as a protection from evil
>(AElfric's homilies, among others). It is
>also a commonplace in hagiography, where saints use the gesture in
>powerful ways.
Some caution is required here. In early hagiographical and other
sources that refer to the "signum crucis" it is not always certain that the
phrase means the gesture rather the crucifix. Thus, for example, when
Sulpicius's Martin of Tours, facing impending doom as gleeful pagans
attempt to fell a tree on him, responds with the sign of the cross (which
causes the tree to spin around and nearly crush them), does this mean that
Martin crossed himself? Or that he whipped out a crucifix like a Hollywood
vampire slayer?
You may have this problem in Saxon England. An abundance of
wayside crosses witnesses the devotion to the crucifix. These signa were a
major of part of lay piety. For example, in Huneberc's late eighth-century
Vita Willibaldi, we read how the future saint--then a three year old near
death--was offered up by his parents '"before the holy cross of our Lord
and Savior. And this they did, not in a church but at the foot of a cross,
such as is the custom for nobles and wealthier men of the Saxon people to
have erected on some prominent spot in their estates, dedicated to our Lord
and held in great reverence for the convenience of those who wish to pray
before it." In such a world, injunctions to resort to the sign of the
cross cannot automatically be assumed to refer to the gesture.
--John Howe, Texas Tech
