Holy Ghost in the Machine: The Debate Behind the Miraculous Medieval Crucifix of Boxley Abbey

It is the middle of the fifteenth century and Catholic pilgrims from all across Europe are flocking to the County of Kent near the town of Maidstone in the southeast of England.

These devout pilgrims journey by the thousands, twice each year on Easter Sunday and on the day of the Ascension, to witness one of the most holy miracles of the Middle Ages in action--the Rood of Grace.

The Rood of Grace is located among lush green rolling fields and hills in the center of the church at Boxley Abbey.  Boxley Abbey was founded in the year 1148 by a Flemish mercenary turned scholastic monk named William of Ypres and in the middle of the 15th century it is home to a flourishing order of Cistercian monks.

Boxley Abbey as Depicted Before it Fell into Ruins

Sometimes referred to as the Rood of Boxley Abbey, the Rood of Grace, is a representation of a crucified Jesus on a wooden cross that is said to move and to even speak to worthy pilgrims as if it is alive.

To journey to Boxley Abbey and to be able to behold the Rood of Grace move and speak is considered a great honor and proof of a Catholic believer’s purity and devoutness.  Pilgrims who have seen the Rood are given a badge, a small pin made of a lead alloy, that is believed to have the power to cure the sick and make intercession on behalf of the faithful to Lord Himself.

There is much debate, even in the fifteenth century, over how this crucifix is able to talk and to move of its own accord.  But many who come to see the Rood of Grace are believers in its miraculous powers and gifts of movement and speech.

Boxley Abbey Pilgrim's Badge

Contemporary observers report that the crucified Christ, twice yearly on those two most holy of days, will, “Bende its brows; bow down and shake itself and give a lively expresse.”

At the time the word “rood” was used to denote a specific crucifix located above a section of a medieval church called a “Rood Screen”.  A rood screen is simply an ornate partition created to differentiate the area between the nave and chancel, or roughly speaking the front entrance area of a church from the location of the altar at the back of a church in medieval architecture.

To approach the altar, all worshippers and pilgrims must pass beneath the rood screen and therefore, in the case of Boxley Abbey, walk beneath the arguably miraculous Rood of Grace.

Rood Screen with Crucifix of Medieval Church

According to Catholic tradition, sometime around the year 1400, the Rood of Grace was miraculously brought to Boxley Abbey on the back of a riderless stray horse.  The monks of the abbey then, supposedly, mounted the crucifix atop the partition at the center of their church where it would bless all those who walked beneath it with its miraculous powers.

However, despite the fact that the fame of the Rood of Grace had, by the sixteenth century spread far and wide across England, Wales and even into mainland Europe, no known recorded miracles attributed to the Rood itself were ever recorded, or if they were, those miracles have since been lost to history.

All that visitors did record was that the Rood was capable of lifelike movement and of speech.  This has caused many historians to speculate that, perhaps, medieval audiences were aware of the fact that the Rood of Grace was an intricate machine, an “automata” in the language of the times, and that this in and of itself, was the miraculous power that drew countless pilgrims to Boxley Abbey during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Present Day Ruins of Boxley Abbey

Today, many people think of Medieval Europe as a backward place, devoid of technology and creativity, trapped in a sort of church-induced “Dark Age” of superstition, fear and theologically erroneous hypocrisy.  But in reality nothing could be farther from the truth.

Medieval Europe was, in many instances, a place of artistic and literary innovation and lively theological debate.  Catholic monasteries were often the centers of learning, and western medicine as well as the sites of scientific advancement.  Nobles and commoners alike, by the fourteenth century, may have been more aware of human-machinery than we may think.

In her work Machines in the Garden author and historian Jessica Riskin of Stanford University writes that, “Not only did automata appear first and most commonly in churches and cathedrals, the idea, as well as the technology of human-machinery was indigenously Catholic.”

The truth behind the creation of the Rood of Grace is that it was probably created by the Cistercian monks themselves, or it may have been made by an English carpenter, or clock-maker, who had been taken captive by the French and made the crucifix in order to ransom his way to freedom.  At least, this is the theory behind the Rood of Grace’ creation propounded by English antiquarian and fervent Protestant and church reformer William Lambarde in his book of local lore and history from the year 1570 entitled Perambulation of Kent.

In the year 1538 the Rood of Grace located in Boxley Abbey was examined by a commissioner from the English Church and pronounced to be a fraud.  In the early days of the Protestant Reformation iconoclasts in England supposedly proved that the Rood was, in fact, operated by a series of interlocking gears and that hair-thin wires, being pulled and operated by deceitful monks located out of sight, were responsible for its seeming lifelike facial expressions and mannerisms.

Keep in mind, though, that those early English Protestants who declared the Rood to be a “fraud and fake” had much to gain both politically, and evangelically, from portraying deceitful Catholic monks as being behind the Rood’s miraculous gifts of speech and movement.

It would have been in the best interest of Protestant iconoclasts, in the early days of the Reformation, to not only portray Catholic monks and other clergy as immoral, but also to portray the Catholic Church itself as a technologically backward institution at the head of a gullible and unquestioning laity that followed their religious leaders blindly like a flock of ignorant sheep.

However, historically speaking, as Stanford University author and historian Jessica Riskin states, “The Church (Catholic) was a primary sponsor of the literature that accompanied the technology of life-like machines, and the body as machine was also a recurrent motif in Scholastic writing.”

Perhaps, rather than proving that medieval worshippers were ignorant, or superstitious, the Rood of Boxley Abbey proves to us just how technologically advanced and scientifically-minded medieval Christians actually were.  

A noted British historian of theater writing in 2011 named Kara Reilly in her article on the technology behind medieval mystery plays  entitled Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History wrote in reference to the Rood of Grace that, “Catholic audiences had seen mechanical theatrical mirabilia or miracles in the medieval cycle plays for generations.”

Medieval Catholics would often have seen, in seasonal plays based on the liturgical calendar, such mechanical devices as an animated serpent winding its way around the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, Satanic representations that breathed smoke and fire or mechanical doves used to celebrate the day of Pentecost by ascending seemingly all the way to Heaven on strings of wire.

A Medieval Mystery Play

Given the prevalence of the use of advanced technology within the church itself, perhaps, the pilgrims who journeyed to Boxley Abbey to witness the Rood of Grace in lifelike action came knowing full well that what they were witnessing was not a trick of the eye, or a mystical experience from Heaven.  but rather, maybe devout Catholic pilgrims perhaps came by the thousands to Boxley Abbey to knowingly witness the greatest miracle of all--the advancement of human achievement.

The Rood of Grace was destroyed by iconoclastic Protestant reformers who were hellbent on eradicating England's Catholic past in 1538. Today not much remains of the original Boxley Abbey.  The full truth behind what the Rood of Grace actually was, and what people believed it to actually be, may never be known.