Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/605

 CROSS

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CROSS

A 111 an I, in ^^ndicating the veneration of images to ' ! Iiiiiagne, mentions this use of balm and defends M iiisi, ('i)Mcilia, XIII, 778). The ceremony of loiationnf tho Cross on Good Friday must have 1.1 through the West in the seventh and eighth ct'iil uries, for it appears in the Gelasian Sacramentary and is presupposed in the Gregorian Antiphonarium. Botli in Anglo-Saxon England and in the England of the later Middle Ages the "Creeping to the Cross" was a ceremony which made a deep impression on the popular mind. St. Louis of France and other pious princes dressed themselves in haircloth and crept to the cross barefoot. At present, instead of creeping to the cross on hands and knees, three profound double genuflexions are made before kissing the feet of the crucifi.x, and the sacred ministers remove their shoes when performing the ceremony. The collection now commonly made on this occasion for the support of the Holy Places seems also to date from medieval times.

(5) For the Figure oj the Cross as a Manual Sign of Blessing the reader must be referred to the article Sign of the Cross, also subtitles (4) of Section I and (1) of Section II in this article.

(0) Dedications of Churches, etc. to the Holy Cross. — Possibly one of the earliest dedications to the Cross, if we put aside Constantine's church upon Calvary known in Etheria's time as Ad Crucem and also the Sessorian basilica which was its Roman counterpart, was the monastery erected at Poitiers by St. Rhade- guiid in the sixth ceiiturj'. In behalf of this founda- tion the saint begged and obtained a relic of the True Cross from the Emperor Justin II at Constantinople. The bringing of the relic to Poitiers was the occasion of the composition of the two famous hymns by Venantius Fortunatus, ," Vexilla regis" and "Range, lingua, gloriosi pr:elium certaminis". In England perhaps the most famous monastery bearing this dedi- cation was the Holy Cross Abbey at Waltham, founded by Iving Harold. At present about sixty ancient Eng- lish churches are dedicated to the Holy Cross, while twenty more bear the same dedication in the distinc- tively English form of "Holy Rood". The famous Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, once occupied by Mary Queen of Scots, derives its name from a monas- tery of the Holy Rood upon the site of which it was erected, and its church, now in ruins, was originally the church of the monks.

(7) The Cross in Religious Orders and in the Crusades. — Although the older orders were earnest in conforming to the general usage of the Church as regards the ven- eration of the Cross, no distinctive cultus seems to be attributable to the monasteries. The practice of carrj'ing a crucifix as part of the ordinary religious habit seems to be of comparatively modern date. It is significant that, although in most modern congrega- tions of nuns the bestowal of the crucifix is a promi- nent feature of the ceremony of profession, the service in the Roman Pontifical, "De Benedictione et Consecratione Virginum ", knows nothing of it. It provides for the giving of rings and cro.sses but not of crucifixes. Probably much of the stimulus given to devotion to the crucifix may be traced ultimately to Franciscan in- fluences, and it is not mere coincidence that the devel- opment in art of the agonized and thorn-crowned type of figure upon the Cross coincides more or less exactly with the great Franciscan revival of the thirteenth cen- turj'. Somewhat earlier than the time of Francis an Italian Order of crociferi (cross-bearers), distinguished by carrj'ing as part of their costume a plain cross of wood or metal, was founded in the neighbourhood of Bologna to tend the sick, and several other orders, par- ticularly one established shortly afterwards in the Neth- erlands and still surviving, have since borne the same or a similar name. In the case of the Military Orders, for example, that of St. John of Jerusalem or Knights Hospitallers, the cross impre.ssed upon their habit has gradually become distinctive of the order. It seems

to have been originally only the badge of the crusa- ders, who wore a red cross upon their right shoulders as a token of the obligation they had taken u|)on themselves. The Roman Pontifical still contains the ceremonial for the blessing and imposition of the cross upon tho.se who set out for the aid and defence of the Christian Faith or for the recovery of the Holy Land. After the cross has been blessed the bishop imposes it upon the candidate with the words: "Receive the sign of the cross, in the Name of the Father -t- and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost + in token of the Cross, Passion, and Death of Christ, for the de- fence of thy body and thy soul, that by the favour of the Divine Goodness when thy journey is accomplished thou mayest return to thy family safe and amended [sah'us et emendatus]. Through Christ Our Lord, Amen." The crosses conferred by sovereigns in con- nexion with various orders of knighthood may prob- ably be traced to the same idea.

The various types of cross have rather to do with heraldry or art than with the historj- of Christianity. The names and shapes of the more common varieties can best be gathered from the annexed table. For the vast majority the form is purely conventional and arti- ficial. Their divergence from the normal type is a mere freak of fancy and corresponds to no attempt to reproduce the shape of the gibbet on which Our Sav- iour died, or to convey any symbolical meaning. The crux ansata, or cross with a handle, and the cru.T gam- mata, or "fylfot", are much more ancient than Chris- tianity. (See in Section I of this article, (1) Primitive Cruciform Signs.) Thechrismon, orchi-rho, has already been mentioned as the earliest forms in which the cross appears in Christian art [Section I (4)]. The forms which it took varied considerably and it is difficult to classify them chronologically. 'With regard to the great Celtic stone crosses, particularly in Ireland, we may note the tendency conspicuous in so many specimens to surround the cross with a circle. It is just conceivable that there is foundation for regarding this circle as derived from the loop of the Egj-p- tian crux ansata.

(8) The Cross outside of the Catholic Church. — In the Russian Church the conventional form in which the cross is usually shown is in fact a three-barred cross, like this .^ of which the upper bar represents the title of the r cross, the second the arms, and the lowest, which is always inclined at an angle, the ■•'uppetlaneum or foot-rest. In England it may be .said that in the early years of Elizabeth's reign a clean sweep was made of the crosses so long venerated by the people. All the roods were ordered to be pulled down, and the crosses were removed from the altars, or rather the comnumion-tables which replaced the altars. The only check in this movement was the fact that the queen herself, for some rather obscure reason, insisted at first on retaining the crucifix in her 0'v\'n private chapel. The presence of a crucifix or even a plain cross upon the altar was long held to be illegal in virtue of the " Ornaments Rubric ". In recent years, how- ever, there has been a notable reaction, and cro.sses, or even crucifixes, are quite commonly seen upon the altar of Anglican churches. Again, in the reredos recently erected in St. Paul's Cathedral in London a large crucifix, with the figures of St. Mary and St. John, forms the most conspicuous feature. In Luth- eran churches there has always been much tolerance for the crucifix either upon or behind the altar.

It would not be ea.sy to pro\-i(ic an adequate bibliography for the very wide field covered by tfiis article. A few worlis may be mentioned of a more general kind. — BXrMF.R in A'lr- chr'nlex., VII. 10.54-1088; QuiLI.lET in Diet, de thiol, calh., III. 2339-2363; Hoppenot. Le crucifii danx l'hi.-:loin: (I.ille. 1900); Seymour, The Cros.« in Tradition. History and Art (New York. 1898). — Both these last works are very comprehensive in scope, but unfortunately quite uncritical. — Stevens, The Cross in the Life and Literature of the Anglo-i^axons (New York, 1904); RoHAULT DE Flelrv, La Mease (Paris. 1885). .speci.illy valuable for its illustrations of liturgical crosses; Kraus, G'c- achichle der christlichen Kunsl (Freiburg, 1895-1908); Cox and