CROSSES OF LORRAINE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1939, Page 9

CROSSES OF LORRAINE

CHURCHES AND HIGHWAYS. Lorraine, the country of President Lebrun, has a large number of crosses, both inside its churches, in its churchyards and set up on the highway. These have formed the subject of a book, "Les Croix de Lorraine,” by M. J. P. Kirch, which has been noticed favourably in France. In the first centuries of Christianity the cross, instrument of infamy, was little represented, and in its early forms it is found shaped as an anchor, symbol of hope, to lessen the stigma of a scaffold, on which criminals died. Sometimes the inscription 1.N.R.1. was replaced by a crown, symbol of eternal kingship. In Lorraine, as in the rest of Christendom. it was 'hardly earlier than the seventh century that the body of Christ appeared on crosses. And in these early representations it is less a suffering Christ than a Christ triumphant over death and become king of souls that is shown. Under the influence of the great currents of mysticism, the author points out. the figuration of the cross becomes more pathetic. Christ on the cross is later crowned with thorns, and before the cross the witnesses of his sufferings are placed, his mother, Saint John, and others. On the base of the cross, scenes of the Passion are shown, the personages growing in number. From inside the churches, where they could be seen only at certain hours, the crosses spread to the churchyard and to the roadside.

Crosses of Lorraine vary from the simple to the elaborate. Many set up by the roadside are there just to comfort the weary,, but others have been set up to mark some special event. Of these is the cross at Pontipierre, called "Au Dieu perdu" (to the lost God), elected as reparation of a sacrilege. The chalice, with the sacred Hosts, had been stolen from the church in 1733. Some labourers on their way to work found the holy objects shining with a strange light. They were returned to the church, and a wooden cross was set up on the spot where they had been found, replaced in 1803 by the present cross. Many crosses in Lorraine are accompanied by effigies of the saints most honoured in that region, to St. Nicholas, St. Sebastian, and St. Martin. There are many crosses erected to St. Hubert, not only patron saint of hunters, but prayed to by relatives of persons bitten by mad dogs or animals, more prevalent than today. Many of the crosses bear inscriptions, not only in Latin, but in French and German, and in the sign of peace is the promise of triumph over petty animosity between two great races.