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THE CROSS.
[Illustration: SOMERSBY CROSS.
_From a photo by Carlton & Son, Horncastle._]
The Cross
IN
Ritual, Architecture, and Art
BY THE
REV. GEO. S. TYACK, B.A.
LONDON:
WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., 5, FARRINGDON AVENUE.
WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO
THE HULL PRESS
Preface.
In this work my aim has been to deal in a popular way with the manifold
uses of the Cross as the symbol of the Christian Faith. The attempt
necessitates certain limitations; to give prominence to controversial
points, to go to foreign lands for illustrations and examples when so many
apt ones are to be found at home, or to load the pages with
references--any of these things would have been opposed to the object
which I have set before myself. If my outline be sufficiently broad and
clear, and the details, so far as they go, accurate--and to attain this no
pains have been spared--I shall be content.
Before closing this brief preface, it is to me both a pleasure and a duty
to express my grateful thanks to my friend and publisher, Mr. William
Andrews, for the use of his collection of works, notes, and pictures
relating to the Cross, and from his own productions I have gleaned some
out-of-the-way information.
GEO. S. TYACK,
CROWLE, DONCASTER,
_August, 1896_.
Contents.
PAGE
1. INTRODUCTORY--The pre-Christian Cross--Primitive
cross-forms--The "Graffito blasfemo"--The vision of
Constantine--Finding of the "True Cross"--The
Crusades--Heraldic Crosses--The Templars, etc.--The
Cross in the arms and badges and coinage of modern
state 1
2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CRUCIFIX--Early symbols of
Christ, the Vine, Good Shepherd, etc.--The Agnus Dei--
The Vatican Cross--Conciliar authority for Crucifix--
The Iconoclasts--Eastern attitude towards images--
Character of early crucifixes--Crucifixion scenes--
Italian sacred art 14
3. THE CROSS IN RITUAL--Prophetic types of the Cross--Sign
of the Cross primitive--Method of making--Used in
public offices: Eucharist, ordination, baptism,
confirmation, public prayer--Processional Cross--
Archbishop's Cross--Pectoral Cross--Cross in
consecration of churches--Cross of Absolution--
"Creeping to the Cross"--Feasts of the Cross--Invention
and exaltation--Dedication to S. Cross or Holy Rood 28
4. THE CROSS AS AN ORNAMENT OF THE CHURCH, ETC.--Cruciform
churches--Altar Cross--Genevan aversion to--The rood
and rood-loft--English roods--The "Rood of Grace"--
Destruction of roods--Modern revival of use of--
Embroidered crosses on vestments--The fylfot on bells--
Spire-cross--Churchyard crosses destroyed and renewed--
Weeping Cross and Palm Cross 44
5. PUBLIC CROSSES--Universal use of cross-forms in old
England--Removal of crosses--Crosses chiefly secular in
use--Edinburgh Cross: its history--English
market-crosses--Destructions and recent restorations--
Chichester and other crosses--Preaching crosses--S.
Paul's: its history--Other English preaching crosses 63
6. MEMORIAL CROSSES--S. Oswald's Cross--Neville's Cross--
Cross in Leeds--Alpine and Spanish Crosses--Eleanor
Crosses and modern copies of them--Newark and Wedmore
Crosses--Sandbach, Iona, Monasterboice, etc.--Crowle
Stone--Hall Cross, Doncaster--Dartmoor Memorials 87
7. WAYSIDE AND BOUNDARY CROSSES--Whiteleaf Cross--Uses of
wayside crosses--Dartmoor Crosses--Cornish Crosses--
Notable crosses elsewhere in England: Burythorpe,
Tottenham, Henley, etc.--Well Crosses 106
8. CONCLUSION--Popularity of Symbolism--Totems--Kobong--
Heraldic Symbols--Symbol of the Cross: What it implies? 120
THE CROSS IN RITUAL, ARCHITECTURE, AND ART.
CHAPTER I.
Introductory.
It is strange, yet unquestionably a fact, that in ages long before the
birth of Christ, and since then in lands untouched by the teaching of the
Church, the Cross has been used as a sacred symbol. The Aryan tribes,
ancestors of most of the European nations, so regarded a cross of curious
form, whose four equal arms were all turned midway at a right angle. The
excavations of Dr. Schliemann on the site of ancient Troy have brought to
light discs of baked clay stamped with a cross. It is well known that the
_crux ansata_, or Tau Cross (=T=), sometimes with the addition of a ring,
as if for suspension, at the top, is found in Egyptian inscriptions. The
Greek Bacchus, the Tyrian Tammuz, the Chaldean Bel, and the Norse Odin,
were all symbolized to their votaries by a cruciform device. The Spanish
conquerors of Mexico found the cross already an object of reverence among
the Aztecs, carved on temple walls, on amulets, and on pottery; so, too,
in North America, specimens of shell-work, engraved with crosses of
various forms, have been unearthed from mounds raised by the native Indian
tribes.
It is further interesting to note that the sign was frequently regarded as
an emblem of deity, or as a symbol of favourable import. To the Egyptians
it spoke of a future life; to the Aryans of fire, itself emblematic of
life; the Mongolians lay it, drawn on paper, on the breasts of their dead;
and the Buddhists of Thibet see in it a mark of the foot-print of Buddha.
In all this the Christians of the first age would have rejoiced, claiming
it as a world-wide prophecy of the Cross of the Redeemer, just as they
drew a similar lesson from the frequency with which the cross forms, more
or less roughly, the shape of the ordinary implements of man's handicraft.
"Consider all things in the world," writes Justin Martyr, in his apology
addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, "whether without this form they
could be administered or could have any community. For the sea is not
crossed except that trophy which is called a sail remain safe aboard the
ship; nor is the earth ploughed without it; diggers and mechanics do not
their work except with tools of this shape. And the human form differs
from that of brute beasts in nothing but in being erect, and having the
arms extended. The power of this figure is even shown by your own symbols,
on what are named 'vexilla' and trophies, with which all your processions
are made, using these, even though unwittingly, as signs of your authority
and dominion."
Although we should be unwilling to-day to accept as argument all that a
pious, yet simple, fancy, or the warmth of a fervid rhetoric, suggested to
men of former times; it would, nevertheless, be equally, or more absurd
for us to follow others, who have endeavoured to trace the mere survival
of heathen custom in the Christian use of the Cross. That such is not the
case is clear, in spite of a few parallels in teaching as curious as those
above referred to, from the fact that the Cross amongst us symbolizes the
Faith, not as an arbitrary or mystic sign, but as the natural expression
of an historical fact.
The Christians of the first two centuries, however, seldom employed any
material image of the Cross, and never the Crucifix. This is only what,
under the circumstances, was to be expected. To erect crosses in their
houses, or to wear them on their persons, was impossible in the times of
heathen ascendancy, without risking insult to the holy sign, and danger to
themselves. Moreover, in days when crucifixion was still in use as the
most degrading of all forms of punishment, and the cross to the world at
large a more infamous figure than the gallows is now to us, it must have
been difficult even for the followers of the Crucified to rise entirely
above the common sentiment of their age. The absolute horror with which
the "accursed tree" was regarded before hallowing associations ennobled
it, is well illustrated by the exclamation of Cicero in one of his
orations: "Let the very name of the cross be banished, not from the bodies
only, but from the eyes, the ears, the thoughts of Roman citizens!" The
earliest known attempt to depict the Crucifixion of the Saviour
illustrates the fact that it was the worship of a Crucified Man which
struck the contemporary heathen as especially incomprehensible. In the
year 1857, a wall in the Palatine Palace at Rome, which had been hidden
from sight for centuries, was laid bare, and displayed a rude sketch,
which has been named the "graffito blasfemo." Stretched on a cross is a
human figure with an ass's head, before which stands a man in a short
tunic with his arms upraised, while beneath, in very roughly-formed Greek
characters, runs the inscription: "Alexamenos adores his God." The work,
scratched on the wall, doubtless by some palace slave in ridicule of a
comrade, is assigned to the end of the second century, and obviously
alludes with blasphemous scorn to the manner of the Saviour's death, and
to the strange calumny, first flung by the Gnostics at the Jews, and then
by the heathen at Jews and Christians alike, that they paid divine honours
to an ass.
At this time the faithful contented themselves with a mere suggestion of
the sign, such as the combined X and P, the first two letters of the name
of Christ in Greek, sometimes indicating the X with a transverse stroke
across the P. Nothing more definite than this, and dating from primitive
times, is to be found in the many inscriptions in the Roman Catacombs,
where the Christians worshipped and buried their dead down at least to
A.D. 260. In their private devotions, however, and in public also if
occasion demanded an open profession of the faith, they early adopted the
habit of making the sacred sign. They prayed, as is shown in the
caricature just described, with arms spread crosswise, and amid the
tortures of martyrdom, when the savage uproar drowned their voices or
their failing strength denied them power to speak, their arms crossed
above their heads bore their mute testimony to the steadfastness of their
faith. "In every undertaking," writes Tertullian in the second century,
"on coming in and going out, on dressing or washing, at the bringing of
lights, on going to bed, in whatever occupation we are engaged, we imprint
our foreheads with the sign of the Cross." To this testimony of the
universal use of the practice in the primitive ages might be added that of
many of the most eminent of the fathers, as, for instance, Lactantius, S.
Athanasius, S. Basil, S. Ephrem, S. Cyril of Jerusalem, and his namesake
of Alexandria, S. John Chrysostom, S. Ambrose, and S. Augustine of
Hippo--all writers flourishing in the fourth century of our era.
The growth of the use of the material cross was greatly accelerated by two
important historical events, the conversion of the Emperor Constantine,
with which we may put the claim of the Empress-mother, S. Helena, to have
discovered the true Cross, and the outbreak of the Crusades.
The story of the first of these events has been recorded for us by
Eusebius, the friend and biographer of Constantine, as it was told to him
by the Emperor himself; and the account is too well known to require
repetition in detail here. It will be sufficient to recall the fact that
in the year 312 A.D., as Constantine was marching against Maxentius, a
vision of the Cross, with the legend "In this sign conquer," was
vouchsafed to him, and that a dream subsequently instructed him to
inscribe that symbol on the imperial banners. In obedience to this command
a splendid banner was made, consisting of a cross-staff, from which,
embroidered in jewels on a silken square, hung the sacred monogram; and
under this standard, the _labarum_, the army marched to victory.
From this time Christianity was not only tolerated, but placed under
imperial protection; crucifixion, moreover, ceased to be employed as a
form of punishment, and the Cross began to be treated with honour. A cross
of gold, adorned with precious stones, was placed, by Constantine's
orders, in the chief hall of the palace; and the imperial coinage is found
to bear, with increasing frequency, the holy sign. Sometimes, as in a coin
of Constantius II., the Emperor is depicted holding the labarum in his
hand, or, as on those of Jovianus, he carries a globe surmounted by a
cross; while later emperors stamped their coinage with the cross itself,
often surrounded by a laurel crown.
The fear of insult to sacred places and religious emblems being thus
removed, the Christians began to build themselves churches more worthy of
their holy rites than the rooms or the catacombs with which they had
formerly been compelled to be content, and in the decoration of these the
cross began to take its appropriate place. A couple of centuries later, in
the reign of Justinian (527-565), it was even ordered that every church
should have a cross surmounting it.
Closely connected with the conversion of Constantine is the alleged
discovery of the true Cross by S. Helena.
It was in the year 325, the year of the first General Council of the
Church, which met at Nicaea to condemn the heresy of Arius, that the
Empress, endowed with ample means and with the fullest authority, went to
Jerusalem and began the search for the instrument of our redemption. The
site of the Crucifixion having been preserved in tradition, excavations
were made on the spot, which first disclosed the Holy Sepulchre, over
which, both to conceal and to desecrate the spot, a temple had been
erected to Venus; and afterwards was brought to light, in a pit hard by,
those venerable pieces of wood which Christendom hailed as "the very
Cross," to one of which was still affixed a board with an inscription in
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
To determine the exact value of the story thus briefly summarized, is not
so easy a matter as many have assumed it to be. On the one hand, no one
questions the sincerity of Helena herself, nor the fact that she actually
did find the wood in the excavations which she had made. S. Cyril of
Jerusalem, writing from that spot no more than twenty years later, refers
to the event, and most of the fathers and chroniclers of the Church who
follow him notice it, both he and they evidently accepting as facts the
claims made on behalf of the wood. Moreover, it is not without its bearing
on the matter that the date of the discovery coincides with a great crisis
in the Arian controversy, when the eagerness of the heretics to attack and
discredit the Catholics in any and every way would present a special
difficulty to any attempt to pass off a fraud upon Christendom. And,
finally, it is not easy to see who could plan and carry out so vast a
deception in the face of all the persons of authority both in Church and
State, who were then in Jerusalem; nor the object which the deception
would be intended to attain. The great argument on the other side, and one
difficult to overcome, and impossible to ignore, is the silence of
Eusebius on the subject; yet he was present in Jerusalem at the actual
time of the discovery, or very shortly afterwards, and in his life of
Constantine he records others of the works undertaken in the Holy City by
that Emperor through his mother, such as the erection of the church of the
Holy Sepulchre. It is impossible but that Eusebius knew of the assertion
with which Jerusalem and the world rang, that the wood discovered was the
true Cross, yet he makes no allusion to it.
Whatever conclusion we moderns may come to on the matter, it is beyond
question that all Christendom at that time accepted the story as true, and
greeted the sacred wood with unbounded enthusiasm; and the devotion thus
excited cannot fail to have had a marked influence on the use of the
figure of the Cross.
A new chapter in the development of this use is begun at the Crusades, and
to these the subsequent history of this world-famed wood naturally leads
us.
The greater portion of "the true Cross" was kept at Jerusalem, in the
church reared by Constantine, and dedicated with great solemnity in 335.
It was in time richly adorned with gold and jewels, and was exposed for
the veneration of the faithful every Easter Sunday. Nearly three centuries
later, in 614, Chosroes, King of Persia, after victorious campaigns in
Asia Minor and in Egypt, descended on the Holy Land with a tumultuous host
of barbarians. The City of Jerusalem was taken and sacked, after ninety
thousand Christians had fallen fighting in its defence; and the Cross was
carried off in triumph by the heathen conqueror.
So bold an assault both on the Faith and on the Empire could not be
brooked, and in 629, at a great battle on the plains of Nineveh, the
Persian power was destroyed by the Emperor Heraclius, and the Cross
recovered. With all solemnity the sacred relic was borne back to its
former resting place, the Emperor himself, bare of head and foot,
carrying it on his shoulders into the city.
Again was Jerusalem captured in 637, now by the newborn Mohammedan power,
but the Cross was not molested, and for four hundred years it was the
object of Christendom's special devotion, pilgrims from every country in
Europe, and of all grades of society, coming in countless numbers to kneel
before it, and in many cases to die within reach of it. But in the year
1009, a Caliph of Egypt arose, in the person of El Hakim, to whose fierce
and fanatical spirit the toleration hitherto granted to the Christians was
hateful, and in the name of the prophet he invaded Palestine and took
Jerusalem. The churches built by Constantine and Helena over the sacred
sites were utterly destroyed, and the Cross barely escaped the same fate;
faithful bands, however, succeeded in carrying it off and concealing it,
and for almost a century it was but rarely and cautiously exhibited.
At last the trumpet call of Peter the Hermit rang out across Europe, and
an army, full of enthusiasm, and led by a band of almost ideal heroes,
started up in answer. Whatever faults marred the actions of the Crusaders,
and however soiled by human ambitions and personal jealousies later
expeditions might be, the first Crusade was inspired by a genuine zeal for
a cause that all held to be holy--the rescuing of the places sanctified by
the Saviour's life and death from the pollution of unbelievers, and
especially the bringing back of the Cross to its place of honour. On
Friday, July 13th, 1099, the Christian armies entered the city, and the
Cross, uplifted on Calvary, became the centre, almost the _raison d'etre_,
of the new kingdom of Jerusalem.
But the time of its disappearance from the earth was not far distant.
Godfrey, the first king of that almost mystic kingdom, was buried beside
it on the right, and Baldwin, his successor, on the left, and the
guardianship of the holy places had fallen into hands less conscious of
the sacredness of their office, when Saladin invaded the land in 1187. The
last stand of the Christians, under Guy, the unworthy successor of the
early kings, was made at Hattin, and the sacred wood of the Cross itself
was borne into the camp to inspire them with courage and devotion; but the
spirit of the old Crusaders was dead, and the infidel was completely
triumphant.
A few years later, in 1192, we hear of the Cross as still in Saladin's
possession, and as shewn by his permission to some favoured pilgrims,
among whom was the Bishop of Salisbury, and then it disappears from
history; the sacred wood that thousands had braved the perils of seas and
Alpine passes to gaze upon, that myriads had gladly died to protect,
vanished from the eyes of men, whither none can say.
Nothing now remains of the most highly-prized relic which the world has
ever held, except numerous fragments of the wood preserved in cathedrals
and elsewhere throughout Europe, some score or more of nails purporting to
be those which fixed the hands and feet of the Lord, and the board with
its trilingual inscription. The sneer that there is enough wood of the
true Cross to build a man-of-war has become a common-place, but it proves
only the ignorance of those who repeat it; the fragments being all of the
smallest dimensions, few as large as a pin, many no larger than a pin's
head. The nails were probably most of them made as copies of the
originals, and in course of time have come to be regarded as genuine. The
famous iron crown of Lombardy has been said to enshrine a holy nail, but
the claim is no older than the sixteenth century. The inscription is in
the church of Santa Croce at Rome, and the question of its genuineness
stands exactly on a level with that of the Cross itself: whether or no it
be the veritable board which hung above the head of the Crucified, there
can be little doubt that it is the one unearthed by S. Helena more than
fifteen hundred years ago.
It is from the period of the Crusades especially that we must date the
wide-spread erection of crosses and use of cross-forms throughout Europe.
Worn as a badge or charm, worked in silk or chaced in metal, towering in
stone by the wayside or overshadowing the busy market, gleaming on
banners, or resplendent in jewels in the solemnity of the
Church,--everywhere the holy sign met the eye.
One use of the Christian emblem was directly due to Crusading influence.
The union in the expeditions against the infidels of knights of many lands
and different languages gave its origin, or at any rate its organized
form, to the science of heraldry; and the spirit which presided at its
birth is shown in the immense variety of crosses recognised in its
vocabulary. We have the Latin Cross, the ordinary cross of suffering; the
Greek Cross with its equal arms; the Cross of S. Andrew, or the saltire
(=X=); the Maltese, or eight-pointed cross; the Tau, or Egyptian Cross
(=T=); and others which a persistent ingenuity of invention has almost
endlessly varied.
It is well known that every Crusader of whatever rank had a cross of some
material stitched to his tunic; but three great orders of knighthood arose
during the "Holy War," who made it their peculiar badge, as they were
pre-eminently the champions of the Cross. The Knights of the Hospital of
S. John at Jerusalem, or Knights of Malta, or of Rhodes, commonly called
simply the Hospitallers, were founded in 1048, and were habited in black
mantles with a white cross on the left breast, scarlet surcoats with
similar crosses on back and front, and each wore the same emblem in gold
suspended by a black ribbon from his neck. The Brethren of the Temple at
Jerusalem, or Templars, founded in 1128, wore white mantles with red
crosses, and carried banners of black and white charged with a cross in
red. The Teutonic Knights, more properly the Knights of the Hospital of
our Ladye of Mount Zion at Jerusalem, assumed a black cross as their
badge.
In this connection it is interesting to note how prominent a place the
emblem of the Christian Faith still holds in the ensigns and honourable
distinctions of the world. The decorations of the British orders of the
Garter, the Bath, the Thistle, and of S. Patrick, all consist of, or
comprise, a cross, as of course does the coveted Victoria Cross. The same
is true of the French Legion of Honour, the Prussian Black Eagle, Red
Eagle, and Iron Cross, the Russian orders of S. Andrew, S. Alexander
Newski, and the White Eagle, the Austrian orders of Maria Theresa, and of
S. Stephen, the orders of Fidelite of Baden, of S. Hubert of Bavaria, of
S. James and of the Calatrava of Spain, and of the Annonciade of Italy.
Similarly the arms, or ensigns, or both, of Great Britain, Germany,
Russia, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, and Switzerland, all
display the sign of our Redemption, the most conspicious of them all being
the Union Jack, with its combined crosses of S. George of England, S.
Andrew of Scotland, and S. Patrick of Ireland. It is not a little
remarkable that during the brief period of the Puritan ascendancy, when
the royal arms were discarded, although the Church was overthrown, the
crosses of the patron saints were kept, and from them were formed the
shield of the Commonwealth.
Evidence of the triumph of the Cross is given by the regalia of almost
every Christian kingdom, where the jewelled cross surmounts the monarch's
crown and sceptre, stands on the orb, and is engraved upon his signet; but
no more universal recognition of the sign is to be found than in the
coinage of Christendom. We have seen that shortly after the conversion of
Constantine, the Christian symbol began to appear on the coins of the
Empire, and the practice afterwards became general throughout Europe. This
arose, probably, partly from a wish to testify to the faith of the
sovereign and of his people, but partly also in the hope that those who
were tempted to deface or to clip the coin might be deterred by the sight
of the holy sign. The English silver pennies and nobles were almost all
stamped with a cross on the reverse, reaching from edge to edge: the
deiners of France, the pistoles of Spain, were similarly marked; but fully
to illustrate the fact would be to catalogue a great portion of the
mintage of mediaeval, and some of modern Europe.
Thus wide and varied in interest is the field over which the Cross of
Christ has flung its illuminating influence.