The Cross in Ritual, Architecture and Art

by Geo. S. Tyack

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’étre, 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 Fidelité 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 mediæval, 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.