ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a similar collision of love and duty in a poetic masterpiece from Northumbria which was probably composed ten years or so before 700. The Dream of the Rood poem tells the story of Christ's Crucifixion. The Tree of Life was an important religious symbol, not only in the Mediterranean world from which early Christianity came, but also in the old world of Anglo-Saxon paganism. An Anglo-Saxon reader working his way through the texts in the Vercelli Book certainly needed to hear something cheerful at this point of the manuscript. At the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, an artist incorporated a version of the Old English Crucifixion narrative, possibly even from The Dream itself, into another cross. The Brussels Cross gets its name because it can now be seen displayed in the treasury of the Cathedral of Saints Michael and Gudule at Brussels.
