Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/228

188 In regard of arms, if they were not plain and of equal thickness, in most cases they became broader towards the outer end, as there was more room there (the further from the centre the more), and just this, I think, gave the idea of filling up the corners with something. Examples of such one can best collect by going to the Armenian Convent in Jerusalem, where there are a great many variously shaped crosses engraved in the walls of the building, where apparently such stones were used the second, and perhaps even the third time, and as they had a cross on them they were in the new building put with their faces outwards. This I think accounts for the great number one can find on examining the walls. As I did so one day a priest of a higher rank called me into his room and showed me a book, and in it the drawings (plan, view, &c.) of a rock-cut church, or rather chapel, in the Convent "Anee," near Kars, in the Caucasus, built in the ninth century, in which is engraved more than once the Jerusalem Cross. Hence, therefore, the Armenians appear to be the designers and first users of the Jerusalem Cross, and as the Crusaders were on friendly terms with them and found their cross so convenient for their own purposes and so nicely expressing their ideas, they adopted it from them. I may mention that William of Tyre says in his history of the Crusaders, cap. 21, 28—" At this died the noble Armenian King, of whom I have in my tale hitherto repeatedly spoken," by which we see that the Crusaders were on good terms with them. In W. Besant and E. Palmer's "Jerusalem," London, 1888, p. 289, it is said: When "Jocelyn" had died, "there was no one left of the old Crusading chiefs, and their spirit was dead. Most of them had married Armenians." Even the name Jocelyn seems to be Armenian, as well as Lusignan (the last reigning king), which means in the Armenian

language, "moon." The Armenian priest told me that the cross with the four crosslets was originally theirs, and that the Crusaders simply adopted it. From the many crosses with four crosslets which I observed