The Legendary History of the Cross A Series of Sixty-four Woodcuts from a Dutch Book Published by Veldener, A.D. 1483 — A Closer Reading

Movement Between Sacred and Rural Spaces

The woodcuts repeatedly juxtapose the holy with the everyday. In Plate E, the scene of the Cross’s discovery is set not in Jerusalem but in a forest, where an old labourer and a bill-man appear alongside deer nibbling trees. This rural setting, as Ashton notes, departs from the Golden Legend’s urban location. The effect is to domesticate the miraculous, grounding it in a landscape familiar to a Dutch audience.

Similarly, Plate F shows St. Helena carrying the Cross into Jerusalem while angels play celestial music above, but the lower register depicts a king adoring the Crucifix—likely Constantine—in a scene that could be read as either Jerusalem or Byzantium. The ambiguity of place reinforces the legend’s fluidity across time and geography.

The Tau Cross as a Recurring Visual Motif

Throughout the series, the Cross is consistently depicted in the Tau form—a T-shaped cross without the upper arm. This is not merely an artistic choice but a theological statement: the Tau cross was associated with the Old Testament mark of salvation (Ezekiel 9:4) and with the cross of Christ in some medieval traditions. Ashton observes that even the Christian flag in one plate bears the Tau cross.

The motif recurs in the burial of Adam, where Seth places three pips of the Tree of Life into Adam’s mouth—a detail from the Creation window at S. Neot’s Church. The woodcuts thus weave together multiple layers of typology, linking the Cross to the Tree of Life and to the salvation history that begins with Adam.

Fragmented Labels and the Role of Text

Many of the woodcuts include labels that are now partially illegible, but the surviving fragments reveal how text and image worked together. In Plate D, the label reads: “Here Seynte helyne examy (neth) the I (ews for) y e Holy cros … Iulius cyryacus (saith that he knew w) here hete was.” The gaps force the viewer to reconstruct the narrative from visual cues alone.

Ashton’s commentary often speculates on what the missing words might have said, as when he notes that Plate F’s label “evidently relates to that portion of the Cross which remained at Jerusalem, because it speaks of Chosroes.” The interplay between legible and illegible text mirrors the fragmentary survival of the legend itself, which Ashton describes as “made up by some romancer out of all kinds of pre-existing material.”

Heraclius and the Gate: A Lesson in Humility

Plates G and H depict the story of Emperor Heraclius carrying the Cross back to Jerusalem. According to the Golden Legend, the city gate miraculously closed when Heraclius approached in royal attire, and an angel rebuked him for riding in state where Christ had walked in meekness. The woodcut’s label, though mutilated, preserves the phrase “As the nobul kynge eraclyus com rydynge towarde y e cytte of Ierusalem beryng y e crosse so grete pryde.”

Ashton notes that the gate’s closure and the angel’s reproof are central to the moral of the legend: the Cross demands humility, not pomp. This episode, like the rural setting of the discovery, emphasizes the contrast between human pride and divine simplicity—a theme that runs through the entire cycle.

Readers approaching this volume should attend to the interplay between the woodcuts and Ashton’s annotations, which often highlight discrepancies between the images and the written sources. The Tau cross, the rural landscapes, and the fragmentary labels are not mere decorative details but keys to understanding how a medieval legend was reshaped for a new audience. By comparing the plates with the Golden Legend or with surviving stained-glass cycles, one can trace the evolution of a story that once appeared in churches across Europe.

That rainy afternoon, the Dutch woodcuts kept returning to that humble Tau cross, rooted in farmland as much as scripture. It made me think of how legends settle into the earth. Later, idly, I found myself in Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei From "Modern Philology" vol. 13 (1915) — A Closer Reading, where a rock and a river murmur their own old tale.