Near Miztla, “the city of the moon,” is a cavern temple excavated from the solid rock in the form of a cross, 123 feet in length and breadth, the limbs being about 25 feet in width.
Other relics have been found in abundance in the same part of the world, proving how well known this emblem was before the advent of Christianity. In the Mexican Tribute Tables, we were told a few years ago by a writer in the Historical Magazine, small pouches or bags frequently occur. Appendages to dress, they are tastefully formed and ornamented with fringe and tassels. A cross of the Maltese or more ordinary form (Greek or Latin) is conspicuously woven or painted on each. They appear to have been in great demand, a thousand bundles being the usual Pueblo tax.
The practice of marking the cross on their persons and wearing it in their garments was once common with some if not with all the occupants of the Southern Continent. The Abipones of Paraguay tatooed themselves by pricking the skin with a thorn. They all wore the form of a cross impressed on their foreheads, and two small lines at the corner of each eye, extending towards the ears, besides four transverse lines at the root of the nose, between the eyebrows, as national marks. What these figures signified no one was able to tell. The people only knew this, that the custom had been handed down to them by their ancestors. Not only were crosses marked on their foreheads, but woven in the red woollen garments of many of them. This was long before they knew anything of the Christian religion.
The “hot cross bun,” eaten in this country on Good Friday, is supposed by many to be exclusively Christian in its origin; whereas it is no more than a reproduction of a cake marked with a cross which was duly offered in the heathen temples to such living idols as the serpent and the bull. It was made of flour, honey and milk, or oil, and at certain times was eaten with much ceremony by both priests and people.
There was also used in the Pagan times the monogram of a cross upon a heart, the meaning of which was according to Egyptologists, “goodness.” “This figure,” says Sir G. Wilkinson, “enclosed in a parallelogram, in which form it would signify ‘the abode of good,’ was depicted or sculptured upon the front of several houses in Memphis and Thebes.”
A very ancient Phœnician medal was found many years ago in the ruins of Citium, on which were inscribed the cross, the rosary, and the lamb. An engraving of this may be seen in Higgins’ Celtic Druids and in Dr. Clark’s Travels.
The connection of the cross with Paganism originally, and its ultimate assumption by the Christian church, is curiously and strikingly brought out by Tertullian in his Apologeticus and Ad Nationes. These treatises, we may observe, are so much alike that the former has sometimes been regarded as a first draft of the latter, which is nearly double the length. Probably, however, they are entirely different productions, one being addressed to the general public and the other to the rulers and magistrates.
Charged with worshipping a cross, he says:—“As for him who affirms that we are the priesthood of a cross, we shall claim him as our co-religionist. A cross is in its material a sign of wood; amongst yourselves also the object of worship is a wooden figure. Only, whilst with you the figure is a human one, with us the wood is its own figure. Never mind for the present what is the shape, provided the material is the same; the form, too, is of no importance, if so be it be the actual body of a god. If, however, there arises a question of difference on this point, what, let me ask, is the difference between the Athenian Pallas or the Pharia Ceres, and wood formed into a cross, when each is represented by a rough stock without form, and by the merest rudiment of a statue of unformed wood? Every piece of timber which is fixed in the ground in an erect position is a part of a cross, and indeed the greater portion of its mass. But an entire cross is attributed to us, with its transverse beam, of course, and its projecting seat. Now you have the less to excuse you, for you dedicate to religion only a mutilated imperfect piece of wood, while others consecrate to the sacred purpose a complete structure. The truth however, after all, is that your religion is all cross, as I shall show. You are indeed unaware that your gods in their origin have proceeded from this hated cross. Now every image, whether carved out of wood or stone, or molten in metal, or produced out of any other richer material, must needs have had plastic hands engaged in its formation. Well then, this modeller, before he did anything else, hit upon the form of a wooden cross, because even our own body assumes as its natural position the latent and concealed outline of a cross. Since the head rises upwards and the back takes a straight direction and the shoulders project laterally, if you simply place a man with his arms and hands out-stretched, you will make the general outline of a cross. Starting then from this rudimental form and prop, as it were, he applies a covering of clay, and so gradually completes the limbs and forms the body, and covers the cross within with the shape which he meant to impress upon the clay; then from this design, with the help of compasses and leaden moulds, he has got all ready for his image which is to be brought out into marble, or clay, or metal, or whatever the material be of which he has determined to make his god. This then is the process: after the cross-shaped frame the clay; after the clay the god. In a well-understood routine the cross passes into a god through the clayey medium. The cross then you consecrate, and from it the consecrated deity begins to derive its origin. By way of example let us take the case of a tree which grows up into a system of branches and foliage, and is a reproduction of its own kind, whether it springs from the kernel of an olive, or the stone of a peach, or a grain of pepper which has been duly tempered under ground. Now if you transplant it or take a cutting off its branches for another plant, to what will you attribute what is produced by the propagation? Will it not be to the grain, or the stone, or the kernel? Because as the third stage is attributable to the second, and the second in like manner to the first, so the third will have to be referred to the first, through the second as the mean. We need not stay any longer in the discussion of this point, since by a natural law every kind of produce throughout nature refers back its growth to its original source; and just as the product is comprised in its primal cause, so does that cause agree in character with the thing produced. Since then, in the production of your gods, you worship the cross which originates them, here will be the original kernel and grain from which are propagated the wooden materials of your idolatrous images. Examples are not far to seek. Your victories you celebrate with religious ceremony as deities, and they are more august in proportion to the joy they bring you. The frames on which you hang up your crosses—these are as it were the very core of your pageants. Thus in your victories the religion of your camp makes even crosses objects of worship; your standards it adores, your standards are the sanction of its oaths, your standards it prefers before Jupiter himself. But all that parade of images and that display of pure gold, are as so many necklaces of the crosses. In like manner also in the banners and ensigns, which your soldiers guard with no less sacred care, you have the streamers and vestments of your crosses. You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship unadorned and simple crosses.”
We give this passage at length because it emphasises what we are urging in connection with this subject, viz., that the cross is common to both Christianity and Paganism, that the latter possessed it ages before the former, and is therefore more likely to have originated it. We speak with some reserve on this latter point for want of proper and full evidence. It may of course be possible that in a purer and more enlightened age the cross was known and used; we shall probably, however, find our researches stop short in Pagan times, in which we shall have to look for the generally recognised meaning of the symbol.
It is remarkable in the quotation just made, that Tertullian never attempts to refute the charge brought by the Pagans against the Christians of his time of worshipping the cross; he merely retaliates by asserting that they did the very same thing in a somewhat different manner. “As for him,” he says, “who affirms that we are the priesthood of a cross, we shall claim him as our co-religionist.... What, let me ask, is the difference between the Athenian Pallas or the Pharian Ceres, and wood formed into a cross?”