Fig. 1238.—Cross. Golasecca.
There can no longer be any doubt as to the use of the cross as a religious symbol long before the advent of Christianity. The worship of the cross, extensive throughout Gaul before the conquest, already existed during the bronze age, more than a thousand years before Christ.
It is especially in the sepulchres of Golasecca that this worship is revealed in the most complete manner, and there, strange to say, has been found a vessel bearing the ancient monogram of Christ, designed perhaps 1,000 years before the coming of Jesus Christ. Is the isolated presence of this monogram of Christ in the midst of numerous crosses, an entirely accidental coincidence?
Another curious fact, very interesting to prove, is that this great development of the worship of the cross before the coming of Christ seems to coincide with the absence of idols and indeed of any representation of living objects. Whenever such objects appear, it may be said that the crosses become more rare and finally disappear altogether. The cross has then been, in remote antiquity, long before Christ, the sacred emblem of a religious sect which repudiated idolatry.
The author, with considerable naiveté, has evidently determined that the form of the cross was significant of a high state of religious culture, and that its being succeeded by effigies, which he calls idols, showed a lapse into idolatry. The fact is simply that, next after one straight line, the combination of two straight lines forming a cross is the easiest figure to draw, and its use before art could attain to the drawing of animal forms, or their representation in plastic material, is merely an evidence of crudeness or imperfection in designing. It is worthy of remark that Dr. Schliemann, in his “Troja,” page 107, presents as his Fig. 38 a much more distinct cross than that given by M. de Mortillet, with the simple remark that it is “a geometrical ornamentation.”
Probably no cause has more frequently produced archeologic and ethnologic blunders than the determination of Christian explorers and missionaries to find monograms of Christ in every monument or inscription where the cross figure appears. The early missionaries to America were obliged to explain the presence of this figure there by a miraculous visit of an apostle, St. Thomas being their favorite. Other generations of the same good people were worried in the same manner by the cross pattée or Thor hammer of the Scandinavians, and by the conventionalized clover leaf of the Druids. This figure often has been a symbol and as often an emblem or a mere sign, but it is so common in every variety of application that actual evidence is necessary to show in any special case what is its real significance.
Gen. G. P. Thruston (a) gives the following account of Pl. LI, which suggests several points of comparison with figures under other headings in this paper:
BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY TENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. LI
THRUSTON TABLET, TENNESSEE.