The ubiquitous cross
The cross
Cross at Cape Kamenjack, Istria, Croatia. Photo: Florian Frühstück ©
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?
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?
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.
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.