Rood

Rood is an archaic word for pole, from Old English rōd 'pole', specifically 'cross', from Proto-Germanic *rodo, cognate to Old Saxon rōda, Old High German ruoda 'rod'.

The alternative term triumphal cross (Latin: crux triumphalis, German: Triumphkreuz), which is more usual in Europe, signifies the triumph that the resurrected Jesus Christ (Christus triumphans) won over death.

This original arrangement is still found in many churches in Germany and Scandinavia, although many other surviving crosses now hang on walls.

Numerous near life-size crucifixes survive from the Romanesque period or earlier, with the Gero Cross in Cologne Cathedral (AD 965–970) and the Volto Santo of Lucca the best known.

The prototype may have been one known to have been set up in Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel in Aachen, apparently in gold foil worked over a wooden core in the manner of the Golden Madonna of Essen,[8] though figureless jeweled gold crosses are recorded in similar positions in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in the 5th century.

Rood screens were found in Christian churches in most parts of Europe by the end of the Middle Ages, though in Catholic countries the great majority were gradually removed after the Council of Trent, and most were removed or drastically cut down in areas controlled by Calvinists and Anglicans.

Rood screens are the Western equivalent of the Byzantine templon beam, which developed into the Eastern Orthodox iconostasis.

Folklorists have commented on the garland crosses' resemblance to human figures, and noted that they replaced statues of St Mary and Saint James the Great which had stood on the rood screen until they were destroyed during the Reformation.

Until the 1850s, the larger garland cross was carried in a May Day procession, accompanied by morris dancers, to the former Benedictine Studley priory (as the statue of St Mary had been, until the Reformation).

Meanwhile, the women of the village used to carry the smaller garland cross through Charlton,[15] though it seems that this ceased some time between 1823 and 1840, when an illustration in J.H.

Parker's A Glossary of Terms Used in Grecian, Roman, Italian, and Gothic Architecture shows only one garland cross, centrally positioned on the rood screen.