The Cross in Ritual.

Allusion has already been made to the frequency with which the primitive Christians used the sign of the Cross; and there can be no question that it early became a symbol of that confidence which they had, that through the Cross of Christ all blessing, all protection, in a word all Divine help, was afforded them. They delighted, therefore, in finding in the Old Testament prophetic foreshadowings of its efficacy. Israel blessing the sons of Joseph with hands laid crosswise; Moses controlling the fortunes of the chosen people at the battle of Rephidim, by spreading wide his arms; the two sticks with which Elisha caused the axe-head of his disciple to float; and those other two which the widow of Sarepta had just gathered when help came to her in the arrival of Elijah; the saving sign marked on the foreheads of the faithful in the vision of Ezekiel (Ezek. ix., 4), which all antiquity understood as being a tau (T); these, and other more or less fancifully selected passages, all spoke to them of the mystery of the cross.

A full catena of authorities for the primitive use of this sign would embrace most of the fathers of the Church; one or two quotations must be sufficient to show how universal it was, as a symbol carved or painted, or as simply traced with the hand. S. Ephrem (died about 378), in a sermon on the Saviour’s passion, exclaims, “Let us imprint on our doors, our foreheads, our eyes, our mouths, our breast, on all our members, this life-giving cross; without this let us undertake nothing, but in going to bed and in rising, in working, in eating and drinking, in travelling by sea or land, let us adorn all our members with this life-giving sign.” S. Cyril of Jerusalem, in a like spirit, instructs his catechumens “not to be ashamed of the Cross of Christ, but openly to mark it on the forehead, and to use that sign in eating and drinking, sitting and lying, rising from bed, conversing and walking, in a word, on all occasions.”

S. John Chrysostom in his fifty-fifth homily thus gives us a reason for these exhortations; “the passion of our Lord,” says he, “is the fountain of that happiness by which we live and are; with a joyous heart, then, as if crowned, let us carry about with us the Cross of Christ. Let us earnestly impress this cross upon our houses, our walls, our windows; on our foreheads also, and on our breasts. It is the sign of our salvation, of our common liberty, of the meekness and humility of the Lord. As often, therefore, as you sign yourself, go over in your mind the general concern of the Cross, subdue all the motions of anger and other passions, and fortify your hearts with courage.”

Not to multiply instances unnecessarily, let a saying reiterated frequently by S. Jerome sum up the practice, as inherited by his own from earlier lines—“Before every action, at every step, let your hand make the sign of the cross.”

Over and above the idea that this holy sign recalled to Christians their obligation to glorify their Master in all their doings, the thought early sprang up that in the sign itself was provided a defence against the assaults of evil. S. Athanasius asserts most emphatically that “if only the sign of the cross, which the Gentiles ridicule, be used, if Christ be but named, devils will instantly be put to flight, and all the arts of magic be reduced to nothing.” S. Ephrem calls the sign “the invincible armour of Christians, the vanquisher of death, the hope of the faithful, the downfall of heresies, the bulwark of the true faith.” While Tertullian, who was quoted in this connection in a former chapter, tells us in his “Antidote for a Scorpion’s Sting,” that “we have faith for a defence, if we are not smitten also with distrust itself, in immediately making the sign of the cross over the wounded part, and adjuring that part in the name of Jesus.” One wonders whether from some similar hope the custom arose of marking plague-stricken houses with a red cross and the words “Lord have mercy.” Tertullian’s Apologies give us strong proof of the prevalence of the sign, and the reverence felt for it, in his day, in that he more than once finds it needful to repel the heathen charge that the Christians worshipped the cross, and were indeed merely a “priesthood of the cross, crucis antistites.”

The “Myrroure of our Lady” (published in 1530) thus quaintly describes and explains the manner of making the sign:—“Ye begin with the hand at the head downward, and then to the left side and after to the right side, in token and belief our Lord Jesus Christ came down from the Head, that is from the Father, unto earth by His holy Incarnation, and from the earth unto the left side, that is Hell, by His bitter Passion, and from thence unto His Father’s right side by His glorious Ascension; and after this ye bring your hand to your breast, in token that ye are come to thank Him and praise Him in the utmost of your heart for His benefits.” The sign was not, however, invariably made in the same way. The whole hand was sometimes employed (the usual method in the present day) signifying the five wounds of Christ; but sometimes three fingers only, as an invocation of the Holy Trinity; or two fingers emblematic of the two natures of the Saviour. In the east it is made from left to right.

The usages referred to in the passages quoted above are all of the private kind, and their employment, although common to all, must always have depended as to their frequency upon the taste or the habits of individuals. The very earliest liturgical forms, however, give ample proof of their use also in the stated ritual of the Church.

Those ancient offices for the celebration of the Eucharist, known as the Divine Liturgies of S. James, S. Mark, of the Holy Apostles, and others, are of uncertain date, yet is generally agreed that their substance belongs to a period before the great council at Nicaea (325 A.D.); and they one and all contemplate the use of the sacred sign in the course of their ritual. These signations are of several kinds; the priest signs the elements before offering them at the altar; he blesses the people with the sign, and is bidden also to sign both himself and all the deacons who are assisting, on the forehead. Moreover at certain prayers he stands with arms folded crosswise on his breast, and a curious rubric in the Liturgy of the Holy Apostles runs, “The priest kisses the Host in the form of a cross, in such a way, however, that his lips do not touch it, but appear to kiss it.” In the different liturgies these several consignations are found with varying frequency, but none are without the sign of the cross in some part of the office. It was not in the Eucharist alone, however, that it was used.

In ordination, according to an early account, the bishop first laid his hand on the head of him who was to be made priest, “with a holy prayer,” and then signed him with a cross, after which all the clergy present gave him the kiss of peace. At the reception of catechumens, or candidates for baptism, this sign formed an important part of the ceremony. “Even as a boy,” S. Augustine tells us in his Confessions, “had I heard of eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God condescending to our pride, and I was signed with the sign of the cross, and was seasoned with His salt.” Marcus of Gaza also, writing, about the year 400 A.D., the life of his master and Bishop, Porphyrius, describes how some converts, falling at the bishop’s feet, “desired the Sign of Christ, upon which he signed them and made them catechumens.” The well-known primitive posture of prayer, namely, with outspread arms, is distinctly alleged by many early writers to be an intentional allusion to the cross, perhaps especially to the Saviour’s attitude when hanging thereon. So S. Ambrose prayed upon his death-bed; and so every Christian when at prayer represented, according to Asterius Amasenus (a writer of the close of the fourth century), “the Passion of the Cross by his gesture.” Alluding to this constant use of the holy sign in the public offices of the Church, S. Augustine says, “If we are to be regenerated, the Cross is used; or if we are to be partakers of the mystical food of the Eucharist, or to receive ordination, we are signed with the sign of the cross.”In the English Prayer-Book, as is well known, this sign is specifically retained in the office of Holy Baptism, and the thirtieth Canon was issued in defence of that retention. Of its use in this connection in the primitive Church there can be no question, nor was it denied by those Puritans, who, at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, objected to it. S. Augustine informs us that the water for baptism was signed with a cross; and from several sources we learn that both in the exorcism and the unction, which anciently preceded the actual administration of the sacrament, the catechumen was signed. And further, as the candidate was signed when first received as such, and again when he was baptised, so, too, when the work was completed in confirmation he was signed again. This last signation was preserved, with others, in the first Prayer-Book of King Edward VI., where the bishop is enjoined, immediately before the laying on of hands, to sign the confirmee on the forehead, saying, “N., I sign thee with the sign of the cross, and lay mine hand upon thee, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Amen.”

In passing from this subject some words of Wheatly’s concerning the use of the sign of the cross in the English Church are worth quoting. After observing that in every ancient liturgy one or two signations at least are always found, he proceeds,—“So much has been thought proper on this solemn occasion, to testify that we are not ashamed of the Cross of Christ, and that the solemn service we are then about is performed in honour of a crucified Saviour. And therefore as the Church of England has thought fit to retain this ceremony in the ministration of one of her sacraments, I see not why she should lay it aside in the ministration of the other.”

The material cross was also early adopted in the ritual of the church. As early as the year 400 A.D., mention is made of processional crosses, their chief use being in the Rogations, or processions in which the Litany was sung. Originally they were without the figure of the Crucified, but frequently bore at their extremities the emblems of the four evangelists, while sometimes there were sconces for holding candles on the arms. Such a cross was given to some of the churches at Rome by Charlemagne, and several splendid mediÆval examples are still preserved on the Continent. A processional, or station, cross in the Lateran, dates from the fifteenth century; S. Denis has one of the time of S. Louis, and Mayence possesses a very fine one of gilded bronze of the twelfth or thirteenth century, which embodies in its sculptures a whole system of teaching. In this instance the Agnus Dei occupies the centre of the face of the cross, having in the corresponding place on the reverse the Sacrifice of Abraham; the following pairs of subjects fill the ends of the shaft and of the arms, the New Testament subject being in each case on the front, and that taken from the Old Testament behind it at the back; the descent into Hades and Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza, the Resurrection and Jonah cast up by the whale, the Ascension of Christ and that of Elijah, Pentecost and the giving of the Law on Sinai.

Anciently England possessed some very noble examples of processional crosses. At Durham, for instance, was one for use on high festivals, of gold on a silver staff, and another, for ordinary occasions, of crystal. Canterbury, according to an inventory of 1295, had four, all “gilded and gemmed,” and Salisbury, in 1222, had one for Sundays of silver, and another, presumably for festivals, “well gilt and with stones.”

The Exeter Synod, held in 1287, decreed that every parish church should have one fixed cross and one movable, of which the first was probably meant to be a rood, and the second a station-cross, placed when not in procession on the altar. But according to the English rite, a system of ceremonial far more ornate than any now in use in western Christendom, several processional crosses were required, at any rate in large and fully furnished churches. During Lent a plain wooden one was employed, without the figure of our Lord, and painted blood-red; from Easter to Ascensiontide the cross was to be of beryl or of crystal; those of brass or the precious metals being no doubt carried on other high festivals, and on Sundays.

The processional Crucifix, symbolical of our great Exemplar going before His people in their pilgrimage through the world, is borne with the figure facing outwards, in the direction in which the procession is moving; and during Lent it is shrouded, as a mark of sorrow, in a violet veil. It seems to have come also to signify, to a certain extent, the parish in its corporate existence and authority; thus no parochial processional cross might be carried into a monastic church, and in collegiate churches at funerals the cross of the church only might be used. It would seem, in short, that no parish might carry its cross beyond its own limits.

To us English, the spectacle of the cross borne in solemn procession is calculated to recall with special vividness the memory of the establishment of the faith among our forefathers. How the British Church had been driven into Cornwall and Wales, and how S. Augustine, after landing in Thanet to bring the Gospel to the English, advanced with his forty companion monks to meet King Ethelbert, chanting a litany, and proceeded by a silver cross and a crucifix painted on a panel,—these things all men know.

A processional cross, in a more restricted sense, is that borne before an Archbishop, as a mark of dignity and jurisdiction.

At what date these crosses first came into use is unknown; originally, the bishops of a few only of the most important sees employed them, and they had not yet come to denote specially the archiepiscopal rank. Leo IV., Pope from 847 to 855, had a cross borne before him by a sub-deacon, as he rode through the streets of Rome, an action said to have been “according to the custom of his predecessors.” The Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, granted to all patriarchs the privilege of having a cross carried before them, if neither papal legate nor cardinal were present. The same honour was conferred on Archbishops by Gregory IX. in the thirteenth century, and as a mark of special favour some few western bishops even have been allowed to assume it, as in the case of the Bishops of Lucca and of Pavia, who are authorized by a grant issued by Alexander II. in 1070.

In England this emblem of jurisdiction has on more than one occasion proved a ground of dispute between the archbishops. S. Anselm who ruled at Canterbury from 1093 to 1114, refused to allow the Archbishop of Dublin to use his cross in England. Canterbury and York long maintained a struggle for precedence in the English Church and the point on which it turned was often the right of the one to carry his cross in the province of the other. The quarrel became very bitter towards the end of the thirteenth century, so that we find William de Wickwaine in 1280, the year after his accession to the See of York, complaining to the Pope of violence shewn him while travelling in the southern province. “Adam de Hales,” he writes, “an officer of my Lord of Canterbury, rushed like a madman upon my attendants, and scandalously broke my cross in pieces: but thanks be to God, I soon caused another to be raised and carried. Moreover, most holy father, when I am journeying through the province of Canterbury on business relating to my own see, my Lord of Canterbury forbids food or lodging to be supplied to myself or my attendants on pain of excommunication, exactly as if we were heretics, and places the whole district where I make any sojourn under an ecclesiastical interdict.” The contemporary “my lord of Canterbury,” was John Peckham. Twenty years later the feud was still rife, and we have Robert Winchelsey, the immediate successor of Peckham, writing to the Bishop of Lincoln, bidding him see that the northern primate did not have his cross carried before him in passing through that diocese: he also forbids the laity to kneel to him or to ask his blessing on pain of the Church’s censure, and orders that no bell be rung and no service said in any place where he may be. In 1325, William de Melton, Archbishop of York, was appointed treasurer by the King, upon which Walter Raynold, who twelve years before had succeeded Winchelsey, again took up the cause of the dignity of his province, and excommunicated Melton for having had his cross carried in the city of London, in spite of which Melton publicly said Mass in Westminster Abbey. In 1354, a compromise was at last arrived at, by which the Archbishop of York might have his cross borne before him throughout the entire province of Canterbury on condition that within two months from so doing he sent to the shrine of S. Thomas À Becket, a gold figure of the value of forty pounds, of an archbishop with his cross, to be brought by the hands of his chancellor, a doctor of laws, or a knight. On the other hand the Archbishop of Canterbury was to enjoy the same privilege in the province of York unconditionally. The two prelates by whom this arrangement was made, were Simon Islip of the southern province, and John de Thoresby of the northern. The above acknowledgement, or fine, was paid about a century later (in 1452), by Archbishop Booth of York.

The first metropolitan in the English colonies to assume the cross was the Bishop of Cape Town. A magnificent cross of silver gilt studded with jewels was presented to the See of Canterbury on the enthronement of the present occupant of the Chair of S. Augustine, Dr. Benson. It is modelled on the type of those used by the English Archbishops as early as the time of Chichely (1414), and is adorned with statuettes of a dozen saints.

An archiepiscopal cross, if terminating in a crucifix, is carried with the figure facing the prelate, not as in the case of a processional cross; but one of those anciently used at Canterbury had two crucifixes, one in front and one behind.

The double-crossed staff, suggesting the cross with its superscription, which is heraldically assigned to patriarchs, never came actually into use in the west, although it has been employed in Greece. The triple cross of the Pope is a modern invention, without ritual authority.

From the distinctive sign of an Archbishop’s authority to the Pectoral Cross worn by him in common with other bishops, is a natural transition. It early became customary for a prelate to wear about his neck a reliquary which often contained a fragment of the true Cross, and, as being intended for a religious purpose, was frequently cruciform. From this usage it has been supposed sprang the practice of bishops wearing a cross suspended on the breast, hence called a pectoral cross.

We have instances of its common use long before it began to be reckoned as one of the regular ornaments of a bishop or a mitred abbot. S. Gregory of Tours is said to have worn such a cross, as also did Pope Leo III. in 811, and S. Alphege of Canterbury in 1012; the pectoral cross worn by S. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne in 685, is still preserved at Durham, and its design, a curious type of Greek cross, forms the principal charge in the arms of that University. Innocent III. (1198-1216) is the first to mention this as one of the recognised episcopal insignia, and by the fourteenth century special prayers were prescribed to be said on putting it on, with the rest of the episcopal habit. It was about this time also that it became usual for priests, when in their full vestments, to wear the stole crosswise on the breast. In each case the cross-bearing required of a disciple of Christ is symbolized, but in the case of the bishop the breast-plate of the high priest is also alluded to.

In this connection it may be worth while to make passing mention of a strange society of early monks referred to by Cassian, who, with more zeal than knowledge, interpreted the exhortation of our Lord literally, and wore constantly about their necks heavy wooden crosses.

The full and solemn ritual for the consecration of a church, as still used throughout the major part of Christendom, involves a frequent use of the sacred sign. By a law of Justinian, the building of a church might not be undertaken until the bishop of the diocese had visited the proposed site, and fixed thereon with solemn prayer “the precious cross.” On the completion of the building, there is made in ashes on the floor a cross of the shape known as S. Andrew’s, and twelve crosses are marked on the inside of its walls, and often twelve more on the outside, five more being cut on the slab, or mensa, of the altar. These mural crosses, having during the ceremony of consecration been anointed by the bishop, are afterwards either cut in the stone or traced in colour. One such in colour still exists in the Palace Chapel at Chichester, and in the cathedral are others cut in the walls of two of the chapels: at Salisbury, Ottery, and elsewhere examples of an ornamental character are found, and two of the external crosses may still be seen at Exeter. High upon a buttress of the Parish Church of Costock, near Loughborough, in Nottinghamshire, is a stone showing on each of its two exposed faces a cross of an elegant interlaced design, somewhat of the kind usually found in old Irish sculptures. These, however, can scarcely be consecration crosses; the stone is possibly the head of some ancient shaft, as it is almost certainly not now in its original position. These crosses do not occur before the eleventh century.

Two further instances only of the ritual use of the material cross need be noticed. The first is the custom, somewhat obscure and perhaps never common, of burying in graves a metal cross inscribed with a papal absolution. Specimens of these have been found at several places on the Continent, and in England at Bury S. Edmund’s and at Chichester. It may have been a custom cognate to this use of “Crosses of Absolution” to which Cartwright, the Puritan antagonist of Archbishop Whitgift, refers when, in complaining of the contemporary funeral rites, he speaks of “a cross, white or black, set upon the dead corpse.”

The other ceremony, which must not be omitted, is that pathetic part of the solemnities of Good Friday, which used to be known in England as “Creeping to the Cross.” This rite, which consists in kneeling before a crucifix laid before the altar and kissing it, boasts a very early origin. An epistle of Paulinus shows that it was practised in Jerusalem in the fourth century. Alcuin, the friend and adviser of Charlemagne, who was born at York about 740, mentions it; and the Canons of Ælfric in 957 bid the faithful to “greet God’s rood with a kiss.” In 1256, the Bishop of Sarum, Giles de Bridport, enjoined all parishioners throughout his diocese thus to venerate the cross, making an offering according to their ability at the same time, and he even forbade them to communicate on Easter Day unless they had done so. At the Reformation “Creeping to the Cross” proved the ground of much discussion between the more moderate and the extreme men. Those reformers who had become most strongly tinged with foreign Protestantism from frequent intercourse with Geneva clamoured for its abolition, along with other ceremonies which they disliked. There is still extant the order of precedence, which was drawn up to regulate the approach of Henry VIII. and his court to the Crucifix, and a proclamation by that monarch specifies this rite as one that was to be maintained. In 1546 its abolition was suggested, upon which Thomas Cranmer wrote to the King, “That if the honouring of the cross, as creeping and kneeling thereunto be taken away it shall seem to many that be ignorant, that the honour of Christ is taken away,” for, as he says elsewhere, “we humble ourselves to Christ herein, offering unto Him, and kissing the cross in memory of our redemption by Christ on the Cross.” In 1548, under Edward VI., a royal proclamation announced that no proceedings were in future to be taken against any persons who omitted sundry ceremonies hitherto customary, the “creeping” being one. In 1549, on similar authority, it was forbidden; and Ridley, Bishop of London, in his injunctions to his diocese in 1550, enforced the prohibition. Yet the custom did not at once die out, and in the sister kingdom of Scotland, it was practised, according to a letter from Latimer to Sir W. Cecil, at Dunbar, on Good Friday, in 1568. A somewhat similar ceremony is observed in the Greek Church on Holy Cross Day; a crucifix is placed in a basket of flowers before the altar, and each member of the congregation, after reverently kissing it, takes a flower, and makes an offering in money.

A reference to those Holy Days, which have been specially dedicated to a commemoration of the Cross will appropriately close this chapter, the consideration of altar crosses, roods, and others which serve rather as fitting ornaments of churches than as adjuncts to their ritual, being left to form another section.

The Feast of the Invention (or Finding) of the Cross, which occurs on May 3rd, commemorates, as its name implies, the recovery of the True Cross by S. Helena. It is said to have been instituted by Pope Sylvester I., who died in 335, but there is no positive evidence of its observance before the eighth century.

Holy Cross Day, or the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, is held in the West as of less honour than the feast just named, but in the East it is regarded with special reverence. It commemorates, according to some, the apparition of the Cross to Constantine, but according to others the consecration of the Church built by that Emperor to receive the True Cross. It was certainly observed in Constantinople in the days of the Patriarch Eutychius, who died about 582. On this day in 629, the Emperor Heraclius came in solemn pilgrimage to Jerusalem to restore to the Church there that wood of the Cross, which he had recovered from Chosroes; this event added great lustre to the festival, and a memorial of it has since been added to the earlier commemoration.

Both these holy days have been retained in the calendar of the English Church.

The Greek and Ethiopian Churches celebrate on May 7th a miraculous apparition of the Cross at Jerusalem in the year 346.

Not unconnected with the observance of stated days as festivals of the Cross is the custom of dedicating churches under the name of S. Cross, that is, of course, Holy Cross, or Holy Rood. The instance of the famous Abbey and Palace at Edinburgh will at once occur to all; other cases are found at Caermarthen and Bettws-y-GrÔg in Wales, and in England at Southampton, Thruxton, Swindon, Malling, and a few other places.