What is a crucifix especially one that is set on on a beam or a screen at the entrance to the chancel of a church?

Answer 1

Rood, rood-screen, and rood-loftFrom very early times it seems to have been not unusual to introduce a plain cross in such a way into the mosaics of the apse or of the main arch (Truimphbogen) as to dominate the church. Notable examples may be found at S. Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna, at S. Pudenziana in Rome, and at the Lateran basilica. There are also, as already noticed, incontestable examples both of crosses surmounting the ciborium over the altar, and of the large crosses suspended, with or without a corona, from the under side of the ciborium. It must, however, be pronounced very doubtful whether the rood, which in so many churches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries occupied the great arch, can be regarded as a development of this idea. This point will be more fully treated under ROOD-SCREEN. It will be sufficient to notice here that in the thirteenth century a practice grew up of screening off the choir from the nave of the greater churches by a structure broad enough to admit a narrow bridge or gallery spanning the chancel arch and most commonly adorned by a great crucifix with the figures of Our Lady and St. John. The rood-loft of the cathedral of Sens, as described by J. B. Thiers (Traité sur les jubés) affords a valuable hint of how this process was effected. It consisted, he tells us, of two stone pulpits quite separate from each other, supported by columns, and with a crucifix between them, each having an entrance on the choir side and an exit down into the nave, on either side of the principal door of the choir. From this it seems probable that the two ambos from which the Gospel and Epistle were sung in earlier times became gradually connected by a continuous gallery upon which was erected a great crucifix, and that in this way we may trace the development of the rood-loft, or jubé, which was so conspicuous a feature in later medieval architecture. There can at least be no doubt that this loft was used on certain occasions of ceremony for reading the Epistle and Gospel and for making announcements to the people. The great rood above the rood-screen was saluted by the whole procession, as they re-entered the church on Palm Sunday, with the words: Ave Rex noster.