Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/589

 CROSS

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CROSS

1' r dead body. Among the belongings of Maria, the .1 niyliter of Stihcho and wife of Honorius, laid away I either with hor Ixxly in the Vatican basilica, and it Mind there in li)4A, there were counted no fewer than 1. 11 small crosses in gold adorned with emeralds and i;' lus, as may be seen in the illustrations preserved by l.'uio Fauno (.\ntich. Rom., V, x). In the Kircher- i:iii Museum there is a small gold cross, hollowed for ivlirs, and dating from the fifth century. It has a ring
 * i 11 ached to it for securing it around the neck, and

>. rrns to have had grapevine ornamentation at the iMremities. A verj' beautiful cross, described by De lli'ssi and by him attributed to the sixth century, was f'limd in a tomb in the Agro Verano at Rome (Bull. li'irch. Crist., 1863, 3.3-88). The general charac-
 * i ristic of these more ancient crosses is their simplicity
 * iim1 lack of inscription, in contrast to those of the By-

zantine era and times later than the sLxth century. Among the most noteworthy is the staurutheca of St. Gregory the Great (.590-004), preserved at Monza, which is really a pectoral cross (cf. Bugatti, "Memorie di S. Celso", 174 sq.; Borgia, "De Cruce Veliterna", pp. cxxxiii sqq.). Scandella (op. cit.) points out that St. Gregorj' is the first to mention the cruciform shape given to these golden reliquaries. But, as we have seen, they date from much earlier times, as is proved by the one found in the Agro Verano, among others. Some writers go too far in wishing to push their an- tiquity back to the beginning of the fourth century. They base their opinion on documents in the acts of the martyrs under Diocletian. In those of the martyr- dom of St. Procopius we re.ad that he caused a gold pectoral cross to be made, and that there appeared on it miraculously in Hebrew letters the names Em- manuel, Michael, Gabriel. The BoUandists, however, reject these acts, which they demonstrate to be of lit- tle authority (Xcta. SS., July, II, p. .554). In the his- tory of St. Eustratius and other martyrs of Lesser Ar- menia, it is related that a soldier named Orestes was recognized to be a Christian because, during some military- manoeuvres, a certain movement of his body displayed the fact that he wore a golden cross on his breast. (cf. Aringhi, Rom. Subt., II, 545); but even this history is far from being entirely accurate.

The recent opening of the famous treasury of the Sancta Sanctorum near the Lateran has restored to our possession some objects of the highest value in con- nexion with the wood of the Holy Cross, and bearing on our knowledge of crosses containing particles of the Holy Wood, and of churches built in the fifth and sixth centuries in its honour. Among the objects found in this treasury was a votive cross of about the fifth cen- tury, inlaid with large gems, a cruciform wooden box with a sliding lid bearing the words iWS, ZOH (light, life), and lastly, a gold cross ornamented with cloisonnes enamels. The first of these is most impor- tant because it belongs to the same period (if not to an even earlier one) as the famous cross of Justin II, of the sixth century, presened in the treasury at St. Peter's, and which contains a relic of the True Cross set in jewels. It was held, up to the present, to be the oldest cross extant in a precious metal (De Waal in "R6mLscheQu.artalsehrift", VII, 1893,245sq.; Moli- nier, "Hist, genf'rale des arts; L'orfdvrerie religieuse et civile", Paris, 1901, vol. IV, pt. I, p. 37). This cross, containing relics of the Holy Cro.ss, was dis- covered by Pope Sergius I (687-701) in the sacristy of St. P<'tcr's basilica (cf. Duchesne, Lib. Pont., I, .347, s. v. Sergius) in a sealed silver case. It contained a jewelled cross enclosing a piece of the Tnie Cross, and dates, perhaps, from the fifth century.

Enamelled crosses of this nature, an inheritance of Byzantine art, do not date earlier than the sixth cen- tury. The oldest example which we have of this t\'pe is a fr.agment of the reliquary adorned with cloisonnes enamels in which a fragment of Xhv. Cross w:i8 car- ried to Poitiers between 565 and 575 (cf. Molinier, op.

cit.; Barbier de Montault, "Le tr^sor de la Sainte Croix de Poitiers", 1883). Of later date are theCross of Victory at Limburg near Aachen, Charlemagne's cross, and that of St. Stephen at Vienna. Besides these we have in Italy the enamelled cross of Cosenza (eleventh century), the Gaeta cross, also in enamel, crosses in the Christian section of the Vatican Museum, and the celebrated cross of Velletri (eighth or tenth cen- tury), adorned with precious gems and enamel, and discussed by Cartlinal Stefano Borgia in his work, " De Cruce Veliterna".

The world-wide devotion to the Cross and its relics during the fifth and succeeding centuries was so great that even the iconoclast Emperors of the East in their suppression of the cult of images had to respect that of theCross (cf. Banduri, "Numism. imp.", II, p. 702 sq.; Niceph., "Hist. Eccl.", XVIII, liv). This cult of the Cross called forth the building of many churches and oratories wherein to treasure its precious relics. The church of S. Croce at Ravenna was built by Galla Placidia before the year 450 " in honorem sanctae crucis Domini, a qua habet et nomen et fomiam" (Muratori, Script, rer. ital., I, PI. II, p. 544a). Pope Symmachus (498-514; cf. Duchesne, "Lib. Pont.", 261, s. v. Sym- machus, no. 79) built an oratory of the Holy Cross behind the baptistery at St. Peter's, and placed in it a jewelled gold cross containing a relic of the True Cross. Pope Hilarius (461-468) did the like at the Lateran, building an oratory communicating with the baptistery, and placing in it a similar cross (Duchesne, op. cit., 1,242: "ubi fignum posuit dominicum, eru- cem auream cum gemniis qua; pens. lib. XX").

The unvarying characteristic style of cross in the fifth and sixth centuries is for the most part decked with flowers, palms, and foliage, sometimes sprouting from the root of the cross itself, or adorned with gema and precious stones. Sometimes on two small chains hanging from the arms of the cross one sees the apocaljTitic letters A, fi, and over them were hung small lamps or candles. On the mosaics in the church of St. Felix at Nola, St. Paulinus caused to be written: "Cerne corona tam domini super atria Christi stare crucem" (Ep. xxxii, 12, ad Sever.). A flowered and jewelled cross is that painted on the baptistery of the Catacomb of Ponzianus on the Via Portuensis (cf. Bottari, Rom. Sott., PI. XLIV). The cross is also displayed on the mosaic in the baptisterj' built by Galla Placidia, in the church of San Vitale, and in Sant' ApoUinare in Classe, at Ravenna, and over a ci- borium from St. Sophia at Constantinople. In 1867, at Berezov Islands, on the River Sosswa, in Siberia, there was found a silver plate, or liturgical paten, of Syrian workman.ship, which now belongs to Count Gregorj' Stroganov. In the centre of it is a cross standing on a terrestrial globe studded with stars; on either side stands an angel with a stafT in his left hand, the right being raised in adoration; four rivers flow from its base and indicate that the scene is in Paradise. Some learned Russians attribute the plate to the ninth centun,-, but De Rossi, more correctly, places it in the seventh century. In these same centuries the cross was of frequent use in liturgical rites and processions of great solemnity. It was carried in the churches where the stations were; the bearer of it was called draconariuis, and the cro.ss itself sliilionalis. These ero.sses were often very costly (cf. Bottari, Rom. Sott., PI. XLIV), the most famous being the cross of Ravenna and that of Velletri.

The sign of the cro.ss was made at liturgical func- tions over persons and things, sometimes with five fin- gers extended, to represent the Five Wounds of Christ sometimes with three, in sign of the Persons of the Trinity, and sometimes witti only one, symbolical of the unity of Oofl. For the blessing of the chalice and the oblations Leo IV prescribed that two fingers be ex- tended, and the thumb placed beneath them. This is the only true sign of the Trinitarian cross. The same