The Cross: History, Art and Controversy
November 2018 | Vol. 6.11
By Robin M. Jensen
Despite its almost ubiquitous appearance on everything from towering highway billboards to small key fobs, the figure of the Christian cross elicits a wide variety of feelings. Many viewers regard it merely as a commonplace, but essentially harmless symbol that identifies a building or individual with some sect of the Christian faith. Others have stronger reactions, often of disapproval, fear, or hostility. This was the case with the cross found at New York’s Ground Zero, particularly after it put on permanent display in the September 11 National Memorial and Museum. While many visitors consider it to be an almost sacred symbol of consolation, hope, and healing, others judge it an inappropriate advertisement of a particular religious outlook and a violation of the separation of church and state.
The Ground Zero Cross. Photo: Dieter, CC By-SA.
This is not a modern problem, however. The image of the Christian cross has been at the center of controversy from the very first years of the church’s existence. From the Apostle Paul onward, Christian theologians and church leaders had to explain – even justify – the fact that their proclaimed Messiah was executed in a humiliating and brutal fashion, a form of capital punishment allotted to thieves, insurrectionists, runaway slaves, and army deserters. The condemned suffered an especially gruesome, degrading, and public death.
Fyodor Bronnikov, The Damned Box. Place of Execution in ancient Rome. The Crucified Slaves. The Year 1878. Now in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Public Domain.
Many who witnessed or heard about Jesus’s crucifixion found it unintelligible that his followers could find anything positive or validating in it. Citing the law as recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy (21.22-23), many considered it a disqualifying curse. Others believed Christ either escaped death in the final moments or that another victim, possibly Simon of Cyrene, took his place.
Confronting these attitudes, early followers of Christ nevertheless perceived something in this event that they judged to be salvific and triumphant and ultimately reconceived the image of the cross, transforming it into a victory sign. In the early centuries, they argued that its vertical and horizontal dimensions were perceptible everywhere in the world: in ships’ masts, farmers’ ploughs, pick axes, anchors, or even the human body itself. It was a sign of its cosmic significance stretching in all four cardinal directions and symbolically encompassing the height, depth, and breadth of the cosmos. Some even saw the image of a crucified figure in the trophies of defeated enemies erected on the battlefield.
Severan era capital with Roman trophy. Now in the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le mura, Rome. Photo by Robin M. Jenson.
What many do not know, however, is that surviving evidence demonstrates the image of an actual image of the cross did not appear with any regularity in Christian iconography before the mid-fourth century. Depictions of Jesus’s crucifixion took even longer to emerge and cannot be clearly identified before the early fifth century and not in any numbers before the sixth. The lack of earlier examples is difficult to explain, particularly given the fact that early Christian documents do not shy away from discussing, defending, and describing the mode of Jesus’s death. While reasons for the apparent absence of cross and crucifix are unclear (it may be that the image was either too graphically gruesome or too sacred), many scholars connect its first appearance with a vision of the cross ascribed to the Emperor Constantine just prior to his battle with his rival Maxentius in 312. However, the figure most associated with Constantine was, in fact, the christogram (or chi rho) rather than the cross.
Detail from mid-fourth century Passion Sarcophagus, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Photo by Jastrow. Public Domain.
Additionally, many of the earliest images of Jesus’s cross render it more as a slender, gemmed scepter than a rough-hewn and rugged instrument of execution.
Christ with cross, giving the New Law to Peter and Paul, ca. 340. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Photo by Robin M. Jensen.
Constantine may have had something to do with the appearance of the cross, however. Chronologically, these eventual appearances of images of the cross and crucifix in the material record correspond closely with the rise of pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the swift dissemination of slivers of the True Cross – an object that was reportedly discovered by the Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, around the third decade of the fourth century. These relics, perhaps the holiest of all Christendom, found their way into churches across the world, and many of the faithful still venerate them on Good Friday. Their initial discovery, then Emperor Heraclius’s restoration and return of the relics after the Persians captured them in the early seventh century, are also the basis of the Feast of the Cross, celebrated every September 14th.
Although most readers will have seen with portrayals of a suffering and dying Christ, nailed and bleeding, they may not realize that the earliest depictions more typically showed Jesus as alert and alive—even wearing a purple robe—on the cross.
Crucifixion panel from Maskell ivory casket. Now in the British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Crucifixion from Rabbula Gospels, f ol. 13a, ca. 586. Manuscript now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. Public Domain via Wikimedia.
These depictions reflect the early emphasis on Jesus’s victorious defeat of sin and Satan rather than on his vicarious suffering for human iniquity. Many early images of the cross even show it as gilded and studded with gems.
The Reliquary Cross of Justin II (the Crux Vaticana), Constantinople, 568-74. A gift to the people of Rome and Pope John III. Now in the treasury of St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. Photo by Gfawkes05, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Hymns and legends also linked it with the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. As a verdant symbol of reconciliation and restoration, the cross was augmented with leafy branches and flowering plants.
Tree of life with crucified Christ, apse mosaic, Basilica of San Clemente, Rome, ca. 1130. Photo by Robin M. Jensen.
Sometimes the cross even spoke in the first person, relating its part in the work of human redemption. It was only later that crucifixes stressed the physical agony of Jesus’s death, with bleeding wounds and painfully sagging torso.
Reliquary Crucifix, found in Winchester, but probably made in Germany, ca. 900-1000. Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC By-2.5.
This development can be related to contemporary theories of atonement and to meditations on and visions of the cross associated with religious orders of the 11th through the 15th centuries.
During the 16th century, depictions of the cross and crucifix were again controversial. Although certain Protestant reformers determinedly destroyed what they regarded as idols, some spared the cross, as a single, acceptable holy image. Others, however, found crosses and particularly crucifixes offensive and carried them out of churches out to be smashed, burned, melted down, and variously abused or defiled.
Klaus Hottinger and Party Take Down the Stadelhofen Crucifix. Attributed to Henrich Tomann (1748-94). From a copy of Heinrich Bullinger’s Reformationgeschichte. Photo by Roland zh, CC By-SA 3.0.
Civic monuments with crosses were attacked and demolished. Despite this, the cross survived in Protestant hymns, sermons, and prayers. Evidently verbal depictions and praise of the cross were acceptable while the physical images were deemed idolatrous. The story of the crucifixion was not challenged, but the images, which had come to be the center of medieval devotional practices were denounced. Countering Protestant iconophobes, Roman Catholic artists set about producing crosses and crucifixion scenes that were especially vivid and deliberately designed to provoke strong emotional responses from viewers.
Diego Velázquez, Christ Crucified, oil on canvas, 1632. Now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Public Domain. Photo courtesy of Museo del Prado.
Through all the centuries, the cross has been—and remains—a complicated image that arouses terror and revulsion, piety or devotion in Christians as well as non-Christians. It is especially troubling to Jews who associate it with crusades that targeted them as Christ killers. Many contemporary theologians object to the cross and crucifix as they regard it as validating or even valorizing suffering, particularly among women and racially oppressed communities. Others, however, find it a symbol of divine solidarity with their plight. The story of the cross is, in its way, the story of religious rejection, self-assertion, and compromise.
Robin M. Jensen is The Patrick O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
How to cite this article:
Jensen, R. M. 2018. “The Cross: History, Art and Controversy.” The Ancient Near East Today 6.11. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/cross-history-art-controversy/.
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