Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/609

 CROYLAND

541

CROYLAND

the Bald. One was sent by Hugh the Great to the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan in 927 on the occasion of certain marriage negotiations, and eventually found its way to Malmesbury Abbey. Another was presented to a Spanish princess about 1160, and again another was taken to .\ndechs in Germany in the year 1200.

In 1238 Baldwin II, the Latin Emperor of Constan- tinople, an.xious to obtain support for his tottering em- pire, offered the Crown of Thorns to St. Louis, King of France. It was then actually in the hands of the Venetians as security for a heavy loan, but it was re- deemed and conveyed to Paris where St. Louis built the Sainte-Cha|)elle (completed 1248) for its reception. There the great relic remained until the Revolution, when, after finding a home for a while in the Bibliotlip- que Nationale, it was eventually restored to the Church and was deposited in the Cathedral of Notre- Uame in 1806. Ninety years later (in 1896) a magnificent new reliquary of rock crystal was made for it, covered for two-thirds of its circinnference with a silver case splen- didly wrought and jewelled. The Crown thus pre- served consists only of a circlet of rushes, without any trace of thorns. Authorities are agreed that a sort of helmet of thorns must have been platted bj' the Ro- man soldiers, this band of rushes being employed to hold the thorns together. It seems likely according to M. deM(?ly, that already at the time when the circlet was brought to Paris the sixty or seventy thorns, which seem to have been afterwards distributed by St. Louis and his successors, had lieen separated from the band of rushes and were kept in a different reliquary. None of these now remain at Paris. Some small fragments of rush are also preserved apart from the sainle Cou- ronne at Paris, e. g. at Arras and at Lyons. AA'ith re- gard to the origin and character of the thorns, both tra- dition and existing remains suggest that they must have come from the bush botanically known as Zizyph im Sjiina Christi, more popularly, the jujube-tree. This reaches the height of fifteen or twenty feet and is fovmd growing in abundance by the wayside around Jerusa- lem. The crooked branches of this shrub are armed with thorns growing in pairs, a straight spine and a cvirvedone commonly occurring together at each point. The relic preserved in the Capella dcUa Spina at Pisa, as well as that at Trier, which though their early his- tory is doubtful and obscure, are among the largest in size, afford a good illustration of this peculiarity.

That all the reputed holy thorns of which notice has survived cannot by any possibility be authentic will be ilisputed by no one. M. de Mely has been able to enu- merate more than 700 such relics. The statement in one medieval obituarj' that Peter de Averio gave to the cathedral of .\ngers " unam de sjiinis q\ia? fuit apposita corona; spinea> nostri Redemptoris" (de Mely, p. 362), meaning seemingly a thorn which has touched the real Crown of Thorns, throws a flood of light upon the prob- able origin of many such relics. Again, even in com- paratively modern times it is not always easy to trace the history of these objects of devotion, which were often divided and thus multiplied. Two "holy thorns" are at present venerated, the one at St. Mich- ael's church in Ghent, the other at Stonyhurst College, both professing, upon what seems quite satisfactory evidence, to be the thorn given by Mary Queen of Scots to Thomas Percv Earl of Northumberland (see " The Month ", April. 1882, .510-.5.56). Finally, it should be pointed out that the appearance of the Crown of Thorns in art, notalily upon the head of Hirist in rcj)re- sentations of the ( 'rucifixion, is [losterior to the time of St. Louis and the building of the ."^ainte-Chapelle. Some archaeologists have professed to discover a figure of the Crown of Thorns in the circle which .sometimes surrounds the rhi-rlm emblem \R; on early Christian sarcophagi, but it seems to be /f\ (piite as probable that this is only meant for a laurel-wreath..

The one recent and autlioritalive study of the whole subject is that of DE Mki.y. forming the tiiirri volume of Riant, Exuvioe ConttantinopotUana: (Paris, 1904). See also: de MfcLY, La

Couronnc d'cpiTWs in the Revue de Vart chretien (1899 and 1900); Monms, EnolM Itdicji in Tlir Mimlh (London, April and .\uEil=t. ]-<■;■_>': I T-jfTRr in n,,! .1. I,, lUI.I, n':iMs. 1897). II,

lOSS; l;,ii,,. I r I.I ri.riiv 1/, , /. : ■: u „mrnls de la

Pas,,.,, i,. l-,-|i, I'i'i j.;i: \l M,n , \ ■....:,, de la Pas- sion il';,n., I^'.l7. ,,.is .i Ir,; I c.Mi.i., I/. ! ,,,:;„n..„ n Vexalta- lion di iu C,o,.c a'ans, lyu.j; Ir. lyilM, i;is sqij.; GossELIN, Notice historique sur la sainle Couronne d'epuies (Paris. 1828).

Herbert Thurston.

Croyland (or Crowland), Abdey of, a monastery of the Benr<lictinc Order in Lincolnshire, si.xteen miles from Stamfortl and thirteen from Peterborough. It was founded in memory of St. Guthlac, early in the eighth century, by Ethelbald, King of Mercia, but was entirely destroyed and the community slaughtered by the Danes in 866. Refoimded in the reign of King Edred, it was again destroyed by fire in 1091, but re- built about twenty years later by Abbot Joffrid. In 1170 the greater part of the abbey and church was once more burnt down and once more rebuilt, under .\bbot Edward. From this time the history of Croy- land was one of growing and almost unbroken pros- perity down to the time of the Dissolution. Richly endowed by royal and noble visitors to the shrine of

St. Guthlac, it became one of the most opulent of East Anglian abbeys; and owing to its isolated position in the heart of the fen comitry, its security and peace were comparatively undisturbed during the great civil wars and other national troubles. The first abbot (in Ethelbald's reign) is said to have been Kenulph, a monk of Evesham; and one of the most notable was Ingulphus, who ruled from 107.5 to 1109, and whose pseudo-chronicle was long considered the chief au- thority for the history of the abbey, though it is now acknowledged to be a compil.-ition of the fifteenth cen- tury. .\t the time of the Dissolution the abbot was John Welles, or Bridges, who with his twenty-seven monks subscribed to the Royal Suitremacy in 1.534, and five years later surrendered his house to the king. The revenue of the abbey at this time has been vari- ously estimated at £1083 and £1217. The site and builclings were granted in I'^dward ^'^s reign to Ed- ward Lord Clinton, and afterwanls came into the pos- session of the Hunter family. The remains of the abbey were fortified by the Royalists in 1643, and be- sieged and taken by Cromwell in May of that year. The abbey church comprised a na\-e of nine bays with aisles, 183 feet long by 87 witle, an apsidal choir of five bays 90 feet long, a central tower and detached bell-tower at tho. east end. The existing remains con- sist of the north aisle, still used (as it was from the earliest times) as the parish church ; the .splendid west front, the lower (twelfth century) and the tipper part {fourteenth Century) elaborately decorated with areading and statues, it is thought in imitation of Wells cathedral; and a few piers and arches of the nave. Much careful restoration and repair has been carried out since 1860, under Sir (iilbert Scott, Mr. J. L. Pearson, and other eminent architects.