Date
The cross is similar in many respects to the Ruthwell Cross, though the inscriptions are simpler, and seem to have a memorial function; together they are the largest and most elaborately decorated Anglo-Saxon crosses to have survived mostly intact, and they are generally discussed together.
The dating of both remains controversial, though Éamonn Ó Carragaáin, writing in 2007, says that "although there is lively discussion about the dates of these monuments, there is a growing consensus that both are to be dated to the first half of the eighth century: as it were, to the “Age of Bede” (who died in 735) or to the generation after his death"
There have been suggestions that neither cross was originally a single piece of stone completed in one phase of work, and both have been proposed as the earlier. The theory that the cross is probably the work of the team of masons and sculptors brought in by Benedict Biscop from the 670s to expand the monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey, then one of the leading centres of culture in the Kingdom of Northumbria is still supported by the Bewcastle website; this reflects the dating of scholars such as Meyer Schapiro.
Read more about this topic: Bewcastle Cross
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