582 



CROSS 



malefactors of the lowest class were subjected to 

 it by the Romans. Among the Carthaginians, 

 and probably also among the Phoenicians and 

 allied races, it was employed as an instrument 

 of sacrifice to Baal. Thus the Carthaginian 

 general, Malcus, invested his son, Cartalo, in royal 

 raiment, with a crown on his head, and crucified 

 him to obtain a special favour from Baal. It has 

 been suggested that there may be some allusion, to 

 these crucifixions to the sun in Num. xxv. 4 ; Josh, 

 viii. 29 ; x. 26. Among the Gauls, as shall be noted 

 later, a cross of equal arms was a solar symbol. 

 It was customary among the Romans to proclaim 

 the name and offence of the person crucified, or 

 to affix a tablet (album) to the cross, on which 

 they were inscribed. Malefactors were sometimes 

 fastened on a simple upright stake, and so left to 

 die, or they were impaled upon it, and to this up- 

 right stake the Latin name crux was originally and 

 more strictly applicable ; but very generally a cross- 

 piece (patibulum) was added to the stake, to which 

 the arms of the criminal were tied, or to which his 

 hands were nailed. When the cross-piece was 

 fastened at right angles below the summit of the 

 upright stake, the cross was called crux immissa ; 

 when the cross-piece was fastened at right angles 

 across the top of the upright stake, the cross was 

 crux commissa; and when it was formed of two 

 beams crossing one another obliquely, it was crux 

 decussata. There was often a projection, on which 

 the body rested, as on a seat. The cross was erected 

 without the gates of towns, but in places of frequent 

 resort. The person crucified often lived for days 

 upon the cross. 



The death of Christ by crucifixion led Christians to 

 regard the cross with peculiar feelings of reverence, 

 and to make use of the sign of the cross as a holy and 

 distinguishing sign. The custom of crossing one's 

 self in honour and commemoration of Christ, can be 

 traced back to the 3d century. It was customary, 

 probably from apostolic times, for the Christians to 

 pray with extended arms ; and Justin Martyr and 

 Origen explain this attitude as representing that of 

 Christ on the cross. In this manner Christians are 

 represented in the early paintings in the catacombs 

 as praying. The Emperor Constantine, after obtain- 

 ing the victory over Maxentius, through the influ- 

 ence, as he believed, of the sign of the cross, caused 

 crosses to be set up in public places and upon public 

 buildings ; but the so-called cross of Constantino, 

 or Labarum, was not really a cross, but a circle 

 containing the XPI, the first three letters of the 

 name of Christ in Greek, and was merely an 

 adaptation of a symbol of a Gaulish solar deity 

 (see Gaidoz, Le Dieu Gaulois du Soleil), which con- 

 sisted of a wheel of six spokes, or sometimes of 

 four. After the Invention of the Cross, or finding 

 of the alleged true cross of Christ in Jerusalem, 

 which was supposed to have taken place in a search 

 made on Calvary by the Empress Helena (q.v. ) in 

 326 A.D., a surprising quantity of the relics 

 of the cross were distributed through all parts of 

 Christendom. When a portion of the cross was 

 given to St Radegund by Justin II., emperor of the 

 East, and she desired to have the relic received 

 with honour into the city of Poitiers, the Bishop 

 Maroveus peremptorily refused to allow it. She 

 was obliged to appeal to King Sigebert, and he 

 ordered the Archbishop of Tours to receive the 

 relic. Maroveus left the town rather than coun- 

 tenance what he regarded as a superstitious act. 

 For this occasion Venantius Fortunatus wrote the 

 famous hymn ' Vexilla regis,' and it was first sung 

 on the introduction of the relic processionally into 

 Poitiers, circa 580. Various other protests were 

 made against the extension of the worship of the 

 relics, but in vain. The sign of the cross is made 

 not only by Roman Catholics, but by the members 



of the Eastern churches also ; by the Westerns from 

 left to right, by the Easterns from right to left. 

 It is admitted by the Lutherans as a commemora- 

 tive sign of the atoning death of Christ, but by 

 many Protestants is rejected as a human invention 

 in worship, and as tending to superstition. It was 

 very generally used during the middle ages, and 

 still is among the less enlightened peasantry in 

 some Roman Catholic countries as a sort of charm, 

 or as affording some security, like an amulet, against 

 all evil, and particularly against evil spirits and 

 witchcraft. The festival of the Invention of the 

 Cross is celebrated on the 3d of May ; that of the 

 Elevation of the Cross commemorates the re-erect- 

 ing of the cross at Jerusalem by the Emperor 

 Heraclius in 628, after it had been carried away 

 by the Persians. See Legends of the Holy Rood, 

 edited by Richard Morris for the Early English 

 Text Society (1871); and the Legendary History 

 of the Cross, by Ashton and Baring-Gould (1887). 



The earliest mention of representations of the 

 crucifixion are by two writers in the 6th century. 

 Gregory of Tours relates that such a picture was 

 in one of the churches of Narbonne, and gave offence 

 because it was nude ; and the rhetorician Choricius 

 says that in a church at Gaza was a representa- 

 tion of Christ crucified between two thieves. See 

 CRUCIFIX. As neither of these writers remarks 

 on the novelty of such representations, it may be 

 supposed that they were not infrequent in the 

 6th century. Early crucifixes were, in contradis- 

 tinction to that mentioned by Gregory, clothed to 

 the feet. In the treasury of Monza are two such, 

 one given by Gregory the Great in 599 to Adalwald, 

 son of Queen Theodolinda, and another of the 

 6th century with a Greek inscription. The use 

 of the cross without a figure of Christ is much 

 earlier. As already mentioned, it was employed 

 as a sign made with the hand, or by extension 

 of the arms, at an extremely early Christian 

 epoch ; but no crosses are found represented in the 

 catacombs of Rome before the 5th century, except- 

 ing the so-called cross of 

 Constantine, a, which is 

 not a cross but a mono- 

 gram. This symbol is 

 found first in the begin- 

 ning of the 4th century. 

 Then it became a plain cross, e. A very complete 

 list of all the representations of the cross in its 

 various forms in the Roman catacombs and other 

 Christian monuments of the first five centuries 

 will be found under the heading 'Kreuz,' in 

 Kraus, Realencydopadie d. Christlichcn Alterthumer 

 (1886). 



It appears that the sign of the cross was in use 

 as an emblem, having certain religious and mystic 

 meanings attached to it, long before the Christian 

 era ; the crux ansata, or cross with a handle to it, 

 c, is common on Egyptian monuments. It was 

 the symbol of immortality. The cross with equal 

 arms, and the cross with re- 

 turned arms or fylfot, d, is a 

 symbol found on prehistoric 

 relics in Italy and elsewhere 

 ( see Mortillet, Le Signe de la 

 Croix avant le Christianisme, 1866). The Spanish 

 conquerors were astonished to find it an object of 

 religious veneration among the natives of Central 

 and South America, where it was a symbol of the 

 god of rains. 



The forms given to crosses in art are endless ; but 

 the two leading types are the Latin cross, e, or 

 crux immissa, supposed to be that on which Christ 

 suffered, and the Greek cross, f, both of which are 

 subject to many fantastic variations. The Greek 

 cross forms the well-known cross of St George, 

 which was the national ensign of the English 



a 



f 



b 



It also took the form b. 



1- 



f 



X 



9 



