The Tau Cross in the Writings of Ademar of Chabannes

Abstract

Chapter 46 of Book 3 of the Chronicon of Ademar of Chabannes presents a vision that this monk of Aquitaine had ca. 1010 when he was in his early twenties. It states, In these times there occurred signs in the heavens, severe dry spells, very much rain, many plagues, severe famines and numerous failures of the sun and the moon. The Vienne River dried up at Limoges for three nights for a great distance. And the above mentioned monk, Ademar, who at that time was living with his famous uncle Roger in Limoges at the monastery of Saint-Martial, was awakened by a storm at night. While he was looking into the sky, he saw in the south in the highest heaven a great Cross, as if affixed in the sky, and a figure of the Lord hanging on the Cross weeping a great river of tears. He, however, who saw this was astonished and could do nothing other than to pour forth tears from his own eyes. Indeed, he saw both the Cross as well as the figure on the Cross in a fiery and blood-red color for a period of one half hour until it ceased. And what he saw, he always kept in his heart until he wrote this, and the Lord is the witness that he saw this. Clearly the context of the piece is a response to the destruction of the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem in 1009 by the Egyptian caliph al-Hakim.2 Ademar intends the image to recall Christ bemoaning the fall of Jerusalem and predicting the destruction of the Temple and the signs that shall come before the Last Judgment in the apocalyptic chapter 24 of the Gospel of Matthew.3 Some of the signs that Ademar sees in his vision are the same as appear in this chapter in Matthew, such as the failure of the sun and moon.

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