Origin 100 to 400 CE
A cross without a body on it. Christians hang it in churches and around their necks as the sign of the execution their god submitted to and the resurrection they believe followed. Protestant churches generally prefer it to the crucifix on the reasoning that Christ is no longer on it, and the empty cross says so; the argument is doctrinal rather than aesthetic, and it is old.
Its forms are not interchangeable. The Latin cross has a long lower arm. The Greek cross has four equal ones. The Russian Orthodox cross carries a slanted footrest whose angle is itself the subject of commentary. A cross is blessed before liturgical use, and a blessed one is not casually discarded; it is buried or burned rather than thrown out.
Facts
Use
Who May Handle ItAdherents of the tradition 1 ConsecrationBlessed before use, without a rite of consecration 1 Meaning
Symbolic MeaningThe cross without a corpus recalls the crucifixion by its absent body, and for many Protestant traditions it emphasizes the resurrection over the death by leaving Christ off it. 1 Origins
Origin Period Status
Status TodayIn active religious use 3 Learn More
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.
Material, Maker and What Happens When One Wears Out
A cross intended for the altar or a procession is worked by a metalsmith, not whittled by hand, and its material is chosen deliberately.
What it is made from
Most altar and processional crosses are cast or wrought in brass, bronze or silver, often gilt, and mounted so they can stand upright or be carried on a pole at the head of a procession. Personal crosses run from a plain wooden pendant on a cord, cut from olive wood or pine and sometimes inlaid with mother of pearl in the workshops that have supplied Bethlehem pilgrims for generations, to a bishop's pectoral cross in gold set with stone. Stone crosses are a separate craft entirely: the standing crosses of early medieval Ireland and Britain were carved from single blocks of granite, covered edge to edge in relief panels, a monumental form with no small counterpart.
Who blesses it, and what happens when it breaks
A priest blesses a cross intended for devotional use, after which Catholic and Orthodox custom treats it as a sacramental rather than an ornament. A blessed cross that is broken or worn through is not thrown out with ordinary refuse, it is burned or buried, or handed to a priest or sacristan for that disposal, the same treatment given to worn vestments and last year's palm branches. The form itself has travelled: the plain Latin cross of the West, the eight pointed Coptic cross, the ringed Celtic cross, and the ornate silver processional crosses of Ethiopia, worked by hereditary smiths in patterns particular to each region, are one object continually reshaped by whoever is carrying it.
Connections
Addressed By
Its own text personifies and directly addresses the cross in its most famous line, "hail, O cross, our only hope."
Source Venantius Fortunatus: PoemsMichael Roberts (ed. and trans.)
Belongs to Tradition
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Element Of
Source African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth CenturyAllan H. Anderson
A plain cross is tolerated as an ornament where a figure on it is not, though the older Reformed churches carried neither.
Source African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth CenturyAllan H. Anderson
The cross is blessed, carried and venerated, and the faithful sign themselves with three fingers joined to confess the Trinity.
Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
The cross stands on the altar and the sign of it was retained in the Lutheran orders of service.
The sign of the cross opens and closes every act of Latin worship, and a cross stands on or beside the altar at every Mass.
Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account
Rejected Here
The Witnesses hold that Jesus died on an upright stake rather than on a cross, and they use no cross in worship, on their literature or on their halls.
Source Jehovah's Witnesses: Continuity and ChangeGeorge D. Chryssides
Latter-day Saints do not use the cross as an emblem, holding that a church should display the living Christ rather than the instrument of his death.
Source An Introduction to MormonismDouglas J. Davies
Friends use no outward symbol in worship. A meeting house carries no cross, no image and no ornament, on the ground that the light is inward and needs no sign.
Source Quaker Faith and Practice: The Book of Christian Discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in BritainBritain Yearly Meetingthe holders' own account
Instances
Relics of the physical cross of the Crucifixion.
Source The Relics of the Passion - Basilica di Santa Croce in GerusalemmeBasilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemmethe holders' own account
Related To
A crucifix is a cross bearing the figure of Christ, the corpus, distinguished from a plain cross by that figure.
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005on the cross, its forms and its late adoption as an emblemView the Source 2. The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions
Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti and Danilo Mazzoleni, Schnell und Steiner, 2002on early Christian imagery before the crossView the Source 3. Cross (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia 'Cross': 'has been widely taken as an official symbol of the Christian faith exclusively from an early period...to present'; checked 2026-09-27.View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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