Why the Earliest Christians Did Not Use It

The cross is now the universal emblem of Christianity, and for its first three centuries the church largely avoided depicting it.

An instrument of shame

Crucifixion was a Roman punishment for slaves, rebels and the provincial poor, and the early church did not advertise the instrument on which its founder had been executed. Christian art of the first two centuries preferred the fish, the anchor and the good shepherd. The cross becomes a public emblem only in the fourth century, after Constantine and after crucifixion was abolished as a penalty around 337, once it had stopped meaning what a gallows means and could begin to mean what it means now.

Forms that are not interchangeable

The empty cross carries doctrine of its own. Protestant churches generally prefer it to the crucifix on the reasoning that Christ is no longer on it and the bare cross says so, an argument that is theological rather than aesthetic and is old. The forms differ deliberately: the Latin cross has a long lower arm, the Greek four equal ones, and the Russian Orthodox cross carries a slanted footrest whose very angle is the subject of commentary. A cross blessed for liturgical use is not casually discarded but buried or burned, which marks it as a consecrated object rather than an ornament.