Chapter 2

Concerning the Veneration of the Faithful for the Life-giving Cross of the Lord, and That it is an Apostolic Tradition to Mark Oneself With the Sign of the Cross and to Depict and Inscribe it Everywhere

The veneration of the faithful for the life-giving Cross of the Lord was great from the very beginning. The Apostle Paul in First Corinthians (1:18) commends the sign of the Precious Cross to the faithful as the power of God, saying: “the word of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Christians, keeping with reverence the teaching of the Apostles concerning the Cross, honored the sign and the figure of the Precious Cross and believed in its redemptive and life-giving power. The depiction and seal of the Precious Cross was believed in and was for them an invincible weapon against the plots of visible and invisible enemies. Hence the distinctive veneration and exceptional honor given to it from the first ages of the Church.

The most ancient Fathers of the Church trace the reverence and veneration of the precious Cross back to apostolic tradition. Tertullian (de corona militis III), who lived in the middle of the second and third centuries [160–240], says that the figure of the Cross was in use in all the circumstances of life: that they marked the entrances of their houses with the figure of the Cross, when they rose from bed, when they put on their garments, when they bathed, when they left the house, when they lit the lamp, likewise at meals and drink, they sealed both themselves and their food with the figure of the precious Cross, and in short, the sign and figure of the precious Cross was the starting point and forerunner in every undertaking. Ignatius the God-bearer, in his Epistle to the Philippians, page 86, says: “For the ruler of this world rejoices when anyone denies the Cross; for he knows that the confession of the Cross is his own destruction. For this is the trophy against his power, which he shudders to see and fears to hear of.” Saint John Chrysostom describes for us the daily use of this sacred sign as follows: “This cursed and execrable thing, the symbol of the ultimate punishment, has now become desirable and beloved. For no royal crown adorns a head as the Cross does, being more precious than the whole world. And what everyone once shuddered at, this sign is now so eagerly sought after by all that it is found everywhere: among rulers, among the ruled, among women, among men, among virgins, among the married, among slaves, among the free. For everyone continually inscribes it on the most prominent part of our members, and they carry it displayed on their foreheads like an inscription on a pillar, traced out each day. It shines forth at the holy altar, at the ordinations of priests, and again with the body of Christ at the mystical supper. One would see it celebrated everywhere: in homes, in marketplaces, in deserts, on roads, on mountains, in valleys, on hills, at sea and on ships and islands, on beds, on garments, on weapons, on bridal chambers, at banquets, on silver vessels, on golden ones, on pearls, in wall paintings, on the bodies of irrational animals that have suffered much, on bodies besieged by demons, in war and in peace, by day and by night, in the dances of the luxurious and in the assemblies of the ascetics.” And elsewhere likewise: “We all bear the Cross on our foreheads, not only without shame, but even taking pride in it. For not only laypeople, but even those who wear diadems inscribe it on their foreheads above the diadems.” Chrysostom, On Despair.[1] You, for whom the symbol of the Cross was present everywhere, for this reason “inscribe it with great zeal both on houses and on walls and on windows, and on foreheads and on the mind.”[2] (Chrysostom, On the Betrayal of the Precious Cross, vol. 5, Eton edition 1612, p. 879).

“This Cross we offer both on the bed and at the table, and everywhere we may be” (ibid., p. 881). Sozomen the historian, in his Ecclesiastical History (books 4 and 8), says of Constantine the Great that “he marked the soldiers’ weapons with the sign of the Cross.”

The theory of certain modern writers that Constantine the Great was the first to devise the honor given to the Precious Cross of the Lord or to the figure of the Precious Cross is, as has already been shown and as will be shown below, very much mistaken.

Constantine the Great found the use of the Precious Cross common in the Church from the most ancient times, and following this practice he honored the sign of the Precious Cross, which, because of the revelation given to him, he exalted also as the symbol of his new Christian kingdom.