Irish High Crosses

Legacy

     

       Time and weather have stripped the Irish high crosses of their paint, but their legacy lives on. Williams is shocked to discover that “the monuments had been adopted as signs of a burgeoning [Irish] cultural identity in the course of the nineteenth century.” [1] Writing in 1954, Flower claims, “It is to this period that the Irish high crosses belong. They stand on the sites of the monasteries of that age, and are an expression in sculptured stone of the monastic civilization.” [2] Almost all of the high crosses have since been replaced by replicas and stored in insulated environments so they will not continue to break, but the Irish are still proud of their magnificent high crosses - as well they should be.

 

 

 

[1] Margaret McEnchroe Williams, The Sign of the Cross: Irish High Crosses as Cultural Emblems (Online: Williams, Margaret McEnchroe, 2000), 1, ProQuest Ebrary.

 

[2] Robin Flower, “Irish High Crosses,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 17, no. 1/2 (1954): 93, accessed January 31, 2015, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/750133.

 

 

Background Image: John Caplis Photography: High Crosses of Clonmacnoise