[All]: This st. is the first in a catalogue (sts 31-7) devoted to figures of the Cross: as key, blossom, ship, ladder, bridge, scales and altar. Several of these figures, with attendant details, appear in Pange lingua and Vexilla regis, the famous Cross hymns of Venantius Fortunatus (C6th) used in Good Friday liturgy as well as in feasts of the Cross (Connelly 1957, 79). Almost all of them occur in the Lat. hymns collected by Dreves and Blume in AH, which range from mid C11th to early C13th, as well as in exegetical texts and iconography. (Such analogues are pointed out in the Notes to the individual sts.) The late medieval Gimsteinn (102-15) contains a similar catalogue of figurur (102/1): ladder, road, altar, Noah’s ark, ointment, key, rod of Aaron, David’s staff (ÍM I.2, 327-30).