Michael Symmons Roberts investigates the meaning of the Christian cross and hears from those who have discovered its power in their own lives.
The cross
By Michael Symmons RobertsLast updated 2011-09-12
On this page
- Introduction
- The ubiquitous cross
- Multifarious
- The cross in modern art
- Reinventing the cross
- Find out more
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Introduction
Cross at Cape Kamenjack, Istria, Croatia. Photo: Florian Frühstück ©
Paradoxically a symbol of suffering and defeat but also of triumph and salvation, the cross is the universal Christian symbol, acknowledged by all denominations as the single visual identifier of their faith.
While marks the Passion of Christ and his , Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians also reflect on the cross as a symbol of salvation with the feast of The Triumph of the Cross on 14th September.
Here Michael Symmons Roberts discusses the cross as ubiquitous symbol.
The ubiquitous cross
Take a pen and place the nib at the top of a piece of paper, in the middle, where the title might go. Draw a vertical line down to the foot of the page. Then draw a horizontal line about two-thirds of the way up the vertical, from edge to edge of the paper. This simple geometric shape is one of the most powerful symbols in the world.
You can't get away from it. It's everywhere. Not just in churches and cathedrals, but in homes, in movies, paintings and music videos. And of course, we wear it too, as earrings, as a necklace, stitched or studded onto leather and denim. What would Coca Cola or McDonalds give to own a symbol that countless millions of people wear round their necks every day?
A symbol of gallantry. The George Cross medal
The cross on which Jesus was executed 2000 years ago has been a symbol for his followers from very early on. At first, they were scared to display it publicly in case they were persecuted or mocked. But after the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the 4th Century, crucifixion was abolished as a punishment, and the cross was promoted as a symbol of the Son of God.
It's been with us ever since, but what does it mean in a culture like ours? Why do we still want to wear it? Is it superstition, fashion, or faith?
Multifarious
Can the cross be non-religious?
So while other ancient symbols gently fade on clay, stone and vellum in museum cases, this most gruesome Roman instrument of torture continues to be part of the backcloth of our daily lives, even in countries like ours, where Christian churches echo more year by year with a growing emptiness. As an international symbol, it's been staggeringly successful. But are we so familiar with the cross that we don't really see it any more for what it is?
I don't believe it shouldn't be a piece of jewellery. But if you have either no idea why it's important, or if you simply want to wear it because it looks nice with that particular dress, that's appalling to me, because there's a huge cosmic significance in the subject.
Otherwise, you may as well just wear a gibbet round your neck, or an electric chair. And in fact if you look back at the history of the cross - that is what you're doing. So it has to mean something a good deal more than that to be something tolerable at all.
Ann Wroe, writer and historian
Not long ago, you might wear a small cross under a shirt if you were a churchgoer, or a big one outside your shirt if you were a Cardinal. In recent years, though, it's become the height of fashion, and many celebrities won't step out in public without sporting a big chunk of jewel-encrusted silver.
Talisman
But according to fashion journalist James Sherwood, they have more than glamour in mind as they fasten the clasp on their designer crucifix. They hope it's going to do a job for them.
I think we're in an era of "pick and mix" religion now, particularly with celebrities. So when you see girls like Catherine Zeta Jones, Liza Minnelli and Renee Zellweger wearing the crucifix, I don't think it's purely secular. They've probably just borrowed that little bit from Catholicism and I do think that they look on it as a talisman, as a protective force.
Liz Hurley, for example, wears a Theo Fenell cross and she calls the public "Civilians" - it's "Us and them" basically. And I do think it is a superstition, obviously, because they're not gonna hold the cross up to the public and make them wither away like vampires - that's ridiculous. But there is still enough respect in this world for the cross, that when these girls are wearing it it gives them a kind of added piety. It lends them that sort of veneer of piety, which is obviously misplaced in a celebrity.
James Sherwood, fashion journalist
Campbell Gillespie - a sales executive from Merseyside - believes that the gold cross his grandmother gave him both saved and almost cost him his life in August 2003.
We were coming to the last part of the run on a Sunday morning, about 8.15 - a lovely, sunny summer's day, when I'm told it got dark all of a sudden and I was struck by lightning. Lightning attacked the gold cross round my neck that was given to me by my grandmother and put me six feet in the air. I landed head first into the concrete into a deep puddle, landed face first. I stopped breathing. Ray resuscitated me and Norman held me in the recovery position while Ray ran for help. They put me in the ambulance.
Unbeknown to me some of my friends had gone back to where it happened, and had found the gold cross which was lying on the concrete, not a mark on it. So they brought that up to the hospital, and I came out of the coma on the Friday. On the Monday I had a 6 hour operation where they rebuilt my face, basically. They put 12 plates in my face. So I don't remember anything of August. I don't remember much of September. But things become much more clear in October.
In a way, the lightning was attracted to the cross. If it saved my life, why did the lightning strike it? So I'm in "catch 22" over the situation. But I'm alive - and I don't know who I have to thank for that, but I thank them, because I was an inch off checking out, y'know? I will start wearing it again one day. My mother's offered to get me a chain for it, but I'm just not awfully confident at the moment, for obvious reasons. I have it in my drawer but I don't wear it at the moment.
Campbell Gillespie, lightning strike survivor
The belief that the cross can ward off evil and protect the wearer goes back a long way. From the early centuries of Christianity, it's been a custom among Christians to make the sign of a cross on themselves with a hand. At first, it was done with the thumb on the brow, on rising in the morning, settling to eat, starting a journey, going to bed.
Pope Benedict XVI delivers a blessing, Westminster Cathedral, 2010
Then it grew into the fuller gesture we have today - from head to heart, and shoulder to shoulder. But this symbol means so much to people, they still can't agree on how it should be done. Should the sign be made with the index AND middle fingers, because Jesus had two natures - God and Man? Should it be made with three fingers to signify the trinity? Or five, to number the wounds of Jesus on the cross? Even today, the Catholic west crosses itself from left shoulder to right, and the Orthodox east does it from right to left. Clearly, this symbol still has the power to divide opinion, and some of the hottest debates about the meaning of the cross in recent years have been conducted not in churches, but in art galleries.
The cross in modern art
Art
George Heslop is an artist who's been making and exhibiting chocolate crosses for over ten years. Not just crosses, but crucifixes, with the figure of Jesus also rendered in chocolate. For Heslop, chocolate offers the ideal medium for an exploration of his childhood faith.
I make two types of chocolate crucifixion. I make a series in dark chocolate and a series in white chocolate. At first, I was using the two different types of chocolate, one to represent bronze and one to represent marble.
Chocolate is a very seductive material, and I found that I was seduced by the Biblical stories, the commandments and Jesus's miracles. I was looking for a material, and chocolate seemed to be the perfect balance. It was the perfect connection with childhood; chocolate can as a gift, it's a reward - but it's also a punishment if it's taken away or not given.
George Heslop, maker of chocolate crosses
George Heslop insists that his work is not meant to debase Christianity, though he admits that when a visitor took a bite out of a chocolate crucifix - at a gallery in Liverpool - that did smack of blasphemy. But Heslop is not the only contemporary artist to appropriate the power of the cross into his work.
A symbol of democracy. A cross on a ballot paper
The American artist Andre Serrano achieved international notoriety when he suspended a crucifix in a glass of his own urine, and a recent exhibition in London features a full sized crucified Christ made of cigarettes, by artist Sarah Lucas.
Offensive they may be, and at least some of them are clearly meant to be. Artists have always used the cross as a way of getting a reaction. And it isn't just painters either. Movie directors are well aware of its potency too.
A wall covered with crosses in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico ©
No matter how much the cross gets into popular culture - no matter how much Madonna wears a cross in her videos or whichever rap star wears it - no matter how much that happens, we still have a certain reverence for the cross which never goes away and causes the invocation of the cross on screen to be a slightly anxious pursuit. Whenever you put the cross on screen, you have to start thinking about what you're doing with it because the possibility is that you'll get into trouble.
Now, you take a movie like, for example, Ken Russell's film The Devils. The Devils of Loudan - it's a true historical case about 17th century France. The background to the story is that it's a political story in which Cardinal Richelieu was trying to knock down the walls of Loudan. What Russell attempted to do was show that how the organisation of the church and the organisation of politics was becoming corrupted whilst this man, the priest was quietly finding his own faith and the central scene in the film was a scene which unfortunately has now been tagged "the rape of Christ". What happens in this film is that Grandier is seen having a roadside communion, very quietly breaking bread, taking wine, blessing... realising that he has a purpose in life which is to save the town. This is intercut with a terrible spectacle going on in the cathedral at Loudan in which these nuns believe they are possessed.
They've been whipped up to believe it by these evil politicians; they perform all manner of sacrilegious blasphemies in the church and the climax of this sequence is that the group of nuns charge the altar, tear down this enormous crucifix, lie it on the floor of the cathedral and proceed to assault it. Now the reason that scene is interesting to me is that when that film was made, although it contained many things to many people that would find unacceptable even today, the one scene that came out of the film in total was the sequence with the cross. The whole thing came out because when Russell made the film he showed it to his distributors and his distributors looked at it and said no. There is no way you are putting that kind of defilement of the cross on any screen with our money, thank you very much.
Mark Kermode, film director
So, if film makers understand the power of the cross to stir up an audience, what about musicians? The artist formerly known as Prince surprised his fans in 1987 by dropping a song called The Cross into the middle of his dance double album "Sign o' the Times". And Prince isn't the only one. In Madonna's videos she didn't just wear a cross, she wore lots of huge crosses and danced around lots of others. She even set light to them.
Ah well. As a lapsed Catholic, Madonna is more than aware of the power of the cross. And that means when she subverts it or plays with it, it's a more powerful message I suppose than somebody like Catherine Zeta Jones, who may just like to wear a nice Tiffany cross, or Judy Finnegan, who wears the Tiffany diamond cross every day on the television. I can't imagine Judy Finnegan is trying to challenge the Church or challenge conventions by wearing a diamond Tiffany cross. It's just a present that Richard gave her and she likes it. Whereas Madonna, writhing around on the floor in a very low-cut gown grasping a crucifix - that's a different story.
James Sherwood, fashion journalist
Mother Claudia comes face-to-face with the image of Christ crucified countless times a day. There's a crucifix on the wall of every room of Tyburn Convent in London, where she's lived for ten years, and of course - like half the population it seems - she wears a cross around her neck.
In recent years there seems to have been a tendency to use the cross as a fashion ornament. I can only say that you cannot, you can never judge an individual person's reason for doing things. Because God is God... we can't hurt Him; He's beyond that. But He's always thinking of us and in human terms, if people in any area or any religion or belief take something that's sacred to a group or a religion and mock it, and use it in a sacrilegious or blasphemous way, then that's not a good thing. And it has repercussions - not so much hurting that group or religion - it hurts that person in their soul, in a way they're probably not aware of. That's why the Christian tradition would be quite wary of people maybe using it as a fashion symbol in a profane way.
Mother Claudia, Tyburn Convent
Instrument of execution
If the cross is abused, mocked or trivialised, many people still feel outraged, but what about the original image itself? Isn't that pretty horrifying? Whether or not you think Jesus was the Son of God, the vision of a tortured human being left to die in agony, his arms nailed wide open in a lost embrace, should be one of the most shocking images in our culture. But perhaps it isn't any more. Maybe our saturation with images of violence inoculates us against it? For theatre director Deborah Warner, the horror of the crucifixion still cuts through.
Well the violence of it appals me. I can't really come to terms with that part of it. I absolutely understand the strength of the huge gesture that somebody gave their only son. But that they gave their only son to that degree of torture, followed by death, does seem very hard. Crucifixion was the way that people were killed. I mean it wasn't chosen especially on that day.
Deborah Warner, theatre director
For Deborah Warner, every time she sees a cross, she's reminded of the brutality of what happened on it. For me, it's a good thing if it still has the power to turn our heads and our stomachs. If we're too anaesthetised to respond when confronted with what took place on the first Good Friday, then we've lost something profound. I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice, but there was a blockbuster movie in 2004 that set out to challenge our numbness about the cross.
Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ is quite the most violent movie I saw that this year. It is clearly a horror movie. It is absolutely 2 hours of relentlessly physical torture and to me, The Passion of the Christ was absolutely a film about an endurance test - a physical endurance test that used the language of horror cinema. It was a film about someone being flailed and battered and flagellated and abused and tortured and then turned over and had it all done on the other side. And then, you know, incredibly graphically nailed to a cross and then hung in what I have to say was glorious, gory revelling. Now, I personally don't find that particularly spiritual beyond the experience of extreme cinema.
Reinventing the cross
Reinvented
If one indication of a living symbol is that it arouses strong emotions, then the cross clearly retains some of its ancient power. Those emotions can still surface when a filmmaker or a singer or a painter writhes around with it, or casts it in chocolate.
A crucifix among nails ©
But what happens when religious symbols become so much a part of the wallpaper that we no longer see them at all? Throughout history, the cross has been re-imagined, as a fishbone, a wishbone, an anchor, a hook on which Christ hangs as bait for the devil, a wooden bridge connecting God with humanity. We're always finding ways of making it new again.
I've noticed that the decorations that are the highest fashion at the moment after the Mel Gibson film are nails that you wear round your neck - crucifixion nails, three inches long.
That's a pretty nasty idea when you think about it. But again, I think that's an attempt to recoup the power of the cross, realising that the symbol has probably lost the power to shock. But the nails have not lost the power so now you have the nails.
Ann Wroe, writer and historian
What's happened with the Gibson film is that people, because they have to think about it again, are not just simply shocked by the astonishing level of abuse prior to death. Had Christ been shot by a firing squad I don't know that we would've chosen the symbol of the gun. It was very handy that it was that shape.
Deborah Warner, theatre director
Is the cross becoming the cruciform - just a geometric shape like a rectangle or square? Are we witnessing the death of one of the world's richest and most potent symbols? Well, I don't think so. Not yet anyway. Not while there are still people who believe it can change the world.
Enthronment of the Bishop of Coventry in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, 1943
At the height of the Second World War, the city of Coventry suffered very heavy bombing raids, and its medieval Cathedral was brought to its knees. One November morning in 1940, after a particularly damaging attack, a young clergyman - Philip Wales - was picking over the mountain of rubble where once a great cathedral stood. Philip's daughter Mary takes up the story.
It was later exploring the ruins by himself that he found lying on the ground, under the burnt out beams, the enormous medieval nails which had held these beams in place - they are extraordinary - they are so large. I would say the ones I'm looking at the moment are about 18" long and some are bigger than that. They are beautiful in their own right, as if a craftsman had made them.
My father brought a handful of them home. Moving these nails around on the kitchen table, they seemed to move easily into place as a cross. My father found a firm in Coventry who were able to weld these nails together and another firm who put a coat of silver to cover them.
When the designs were made for the new cathedral, it was decided right from the very beginning that these nails must have a special place in the new cathedral.
Mary, daughter of Coventry Cathedral clergyman Philip Wales
The Coventry cross of nails came to symbolise not just the suffering of war, but also the hope of survival, of resurrection. Now, the Cross of Nails community at the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral takes its distinctive symbol to war-zones around the world, to inspire peace and reconciliation. Canon Justin Welby is a leader in that community.
In that sense, the cross within Christian thinking marks the end of disruption of a relationship, and of a new future. And we see, in the work we do now in the Community of the Cross of Nails and in our reconciliation world-wide, that the cross is a powerful way of demonstrating hope. Because it speaks of the possibility of new harmonious and peaceful relationships. First with God and then with others.
I work very often in areas of conflict. And you take people round the cross, or you talk about the cross of nails or allow them to hold the small cross of nails that we wear round our necks, you begin immediately to find a transforming of attitudes. There is a power within the cross which reaches deep into the human heart and into the human emotions, that challenges hatred and challenges unforgiveness, and challenges a commitment to violence.
Canon Justin Welby, Cross of Nails community
Meaningful?
It's such a rich symbol - a symbol of healing, sacrifice, reconciliation, hope, love - but how much of that is still held after two thousand years, in the pure, clear shape of the crosses we wear? Mother Claudia of Tyburn Convent believes there's a whole world of meaning in even the simplest cross.
The physical symbol of the cross - there's a vertical coming down from heaven, entering into the earth, implanted in the earth. There's the horizontal, the human, crossing the vertical, crossing the divine.
If you take away one of those parts, the vertical - there's no cross. If you take away the horizontal - there's no cross.
So it's the fusion, the union of those two aspects - the divine and the human - that gives the cross its power and its significance and its meaning; that God is always with us and He's particularly with us in our sufferings, in our cross. And he cannot and will not separate Himself from us in our sufferings - he's always there to help us and console us, give us the strength to go on.
So it is a great symbol of hope in that way. You can look up at the cross and see the vertical, and keep going up to God, to Heaven.
Mother Claudia, Tyburn Convent
Of course, the cross is not the only sign of Christianity. When modern believers display fish-shaped lapel badges or car stickers, they're connecting with a tradition going right back to the earliest Christians.
The ubiquitous cross. Justice live at Radio 1's Big Weekend 2008
But there's something about the cross that still holds us in its sway. The poet RS Thomas put the survival of the cross down to its great simplicity, its perfect geometry. But for me it has more than that. It has everything. It connects with the violence and the goodness of humanity in equal measure. It deepens my sense of what it means to be a parent, to be someone's child, to love, to lose, to suffer, to hope. For some, it represents the seminal event in human history. For others, it's a great piece of jewellery. But it still counts. It still matters.
The point of all this is no matter how poppy or trashy one's sensibility of the cross becomes, thanks to the Madonna videos and it turning up in horror videos and gangster movies, there is behind it, still, an absolute anxiety that it means more than that. There is something about that symbol that you have to be careful with and it's interesting that very often, when that form of cinema oversteps that boundary as far as the censors or distributors or audience are concerned, the symbol of the cross is involved in it. People are more reverential about the symbol of the cross than perhaps the secular world that we live in would suggest.
Mark Kermode, film director
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