Chapter 4 discusses the sign of the cross, another gesture with a long history going back to the early church. In the Middle Ages the cross was believed to have power to protect against evil, and was widely used both as a gesture of everyday blessing and in rituals and charms of healing. After the Reformation its use was discouraged, but it survived in the Prayer Book rite of baptism, where the minister was instructed to trace a cross on the child’s forehead. This necessitated a radical transformation in its meaning, removing the associations with exorcism and purification and redefining it simply as a symbol of allegiance to Christ. Yet the belief in the apotropaic power of the cross persisted in early modern England and was reflected both officially, in the ritual of the royal touch, and unofficially, in the use of the gesture as a form of protection against witchcraft. Even among theologians who regarded the cross as symbolic, there was still a sense that it was not ‘merely’ symbolic but retained some kind of operative power to effect change.

As this volume’s other chapters demonstrate, the primary material for accessing the person and character of Jesus of Nazareth will always be the New Testament texts. But the last two thousand years have witnessed a profusion of non-textual media rendering this endlessly absorbing figure. This chapter attends to the ways that artists through the ages have chosen to present him in modes other than words alone, considering visual art and music in particular.

Oral witness is also the basis for the account of what Margery Baxter, charged with heresy at Norwich in 1428, has said and done. Her friends and neighbours are called to witness against her, and through their words we learn not only of the shocking things she has said which confirm her contempt for the Church, but details of the women’s lives.