https://doi.org/10.21852/sem.2016.3.14
Next to the high altar, which formed the centre of the sanctuarium of the Cistercian convent church, and faced by the monks’ choir, the Altar of the Holy Cross (altare crucis), located before the rood screen, constituted the second essential element in the church furnishing and the centre of liturgical space of the Cistercian church. The altar, located in medio ecclesiae and facing the conversi’s choir, liturgically and artistically constituted the most important place in the western part of the convent church. Apart from providing space for liturgical ceremonies, the altar was used to display relics. From the very beginning, its composition entailed a monumental crucifix crowning the screen separating the monks’ choir from that of the conversi. Its presence together with the wooden matter and painted effigy of Crucified Christ were found in the instructions of the oldest provisions of the General Chapter of 1134. The oldest crucifixes of the type come from the Cistercian Abbeys in Loccum, Pforta, and Sorø. The three oldest ones, crowning the rood screed and Altars of the Holy Cross in medio ecclesiae, typically combine the crux gemmata and lignum vitae iconographies, which, in effect, composes into a triumphal image of the cross: crux triumphalis. Monumental crucifixes shown as a glorious tree of life implement the ideal of a Cistercian church as the paradise with the tree of life in its centre: ecclesia est paradisus et lignum vitae est in medio paradisi. The subsistence of this ideological concept would be still confirmed in the mid-14th century, best testified by the monumental lignum vitae crucifix above the rood screen and the Altar of the Holy Cross in the Doberan Abbey Church.
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