HOLY WEEK in medieval England involved elaborate ceremony and intense religious emotion. The ceremonials began on Palm Sunday during which the entire community processed around the church courtyard behind a shrine with a silken canopy containing the Blessed Sacrament.
A crucifix was placed in an often elaborate sepulchre on Good Friday. Lay people would “creep to the cross” — a practice later abolished as superstitious during the Protestant Reform. It involved walking barefoot on one’s knees
In The Middle Ages, Thomas J. Shahan writes:
In the very popular fifteenth-century religious manual already referred to, the “Dives et Pauper,” the devotion to the crucifix, and especially the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday known as the “Creeping to the Cross,” is explained with admirable correctness and terseness. Few modern English books of devotion can boast a language so chaste and idiomatic, or so much clearness and conciseness of statement, or so much unction and pathos. And are not the following lines a noble paraphrase of the great mediaeval hymn to the dolors of Jesus Christ Crucified, notably the “Salve Caput Cruentatum “?
When thou seest the image of the crucifix think of Him that died on the cross for thy sins and thy sake, and thank Him if His endless charity that He would suffer so much for thee. See in images how His head was crowned with a garland of thorns till the blood burst out on every side, todestroy the great sin of pride which is most manifested in the heads of men and women. Behold and make an end to thy pride. See in the image how His arms were spread abroad and drawn up on the tree till the veins and sinews cracked; and how His hands were nailed to the cross and streamed with blood, to destroy the sin that Adam and Eve did with their hands when they took the apple against God’s prohibition. Also He suffered to wash away the sin of the wicked deeds and the wicked works done by the hands of men and women. Behold and make an end of thy wicked works. See how His side was opened and His heart cloven in two by the sharp spear; and how it shed blood and water to show that if He had more blood in His body, more He would have given for men’s love. He shed His blood to ransom our souls and water to wash us from our sins.
