Let us now decide the last question: was it not necessary for our Saviour to have a footstool on the Cross proper, i.e., did He not need it because of the extreme exhaustion that preceded the Crucifixion, and the complete exhaustion of His strength?

This, too, cannot be answered in any other way than in such a way that for the Saviour, in spite of the exhaustion of His powers. The foot was not necessary. According to the testimony of surgeons, the weakening of bodily strength does not make the sinewy fabric of the hands weaker – it becomes even stronger as the soul leaves the body, and the veins of the dead body are the strongest. This explains the circumstance why Christians were so often flogged with animal sinews during persecutions. In their wiry, muscular and bony being, the arms are at any rate strong and sturdy enough to hold a hanging body. In conclusion, if human hands were so weak in general, if the pedestal were really necessary, then wouldn't anatomists and surgeons have noticed such an incongruity in the depiction of the Crucifixes with reality during the eighteenth century, and would not have advised the painters, carpenters, statue painters, and the priests themselves, who are in charge of it, to eliminate this incongruity – to make a pedestal, precisely for the very reason that that the body cannot hang on one hand? However, most of the oldest and most modern Crucifixes on crosses do not have pedestals, and no one noticed to anyone that this was wrong or ridiculous.

Having determined, as far as possible, on the basis of reliable testimony, the appearance of the original Cross on which our Lord was crucified, and having said what seemed necessary about the title and pedestal on the cross, let us now say a few words about the wood of which this first Precious Cross was made and what happened to it after the removal of the Most-Pure Body from it.

According to the reliable reports of ancient Roman writers, the cross, which for the most part bore the contemptuous name of the "unfortunate tree" (arbor infelix), was always made of the trees of the so-called unfortunate and damned (arbores infelices damnataeque religione), but never of the best trees, which were for the most part dedicated to the gods by the Romans (for example, the oak to Jupiter, the laurel to Apollo, the olive to Minerva, the myrtle to Venus, the poplar to Hercules) or used to make idols (for example, wood: cedar, grape, etc.). To make a cross from wood brought as gifts to the gods – a shameful instrument of death – meant, in the opinion of the pagan, to offend the gods. Among these unfortunate trees were some trees that were barren, wild, and thorny. In all likelihood, on one of these trees, cursed in popular opinion, our Saviour also suffered. From the history of the Gospel we know that the soldiers, at whose disposal Pilate gave Jesus Christ in order to dishonor the Lord more and mock Him, to the satisfaction of the people, wove Him and put them on His head, perhaps according to the custom of the Roman kings, who, as can be seen on the coins, wore laurel wreaths on their heads, not laurel or oak or any other used wreath, but thorns, like a wreath of such a tree, which, because of its thorns and barrenness, was considered contemptible. If they did so in this case, why should they have done otherwise in choosing the tree for the Cross itself? Both here and there the Roman soldiers and the Jews had, of course, the same goal, to the exclusion of all others: the disgrace and suffering of the condemned to the crucifixion; therefore, if the wreath on the head of the Saviour was made of thorns, instead of oak or laurel, as was customary, then why should they have made the Cross itself of good wood, and not of bad and contemptible wood? Moreover, if an unusual tree had been used for the Cross of the Lord, if something special had happened during the selection of it, then Sts. the Evangelists would not have left this without remarking, since, for example, they noticed that the body of Christ the Savior was laid in a new tomb. Not to mention the fact that the Roman soldiers had no motives on their part to use a special, better wood for the Cross of the Lord. For some incomprehensible reason, they were too bitter against the Saviour: they spoke mocking greetings to Him, struck Him on the head with a cane, spat in His face, and, kneeling before Him, bowed to Him. What good could be expected from them? When the Saviour was condemned to the cross as a criminal, the majority of the people who were present at the crucifixion also looked at Him unfavorably: there were not many chosen ones who either believed from the bottom of their hearts, or only guessed that this was not an ordinary person, but the Son of God; but the majority saw in Him an ordinary man, and precisely a criminal worthy of shameful execution. From the circumstances following the crucifixion, it is evident that even those who passed by on the path of Golgotha boldly mocked the Savior, nodding their heads. The robbers hanging with Christ seem to have been almost ignored by the frenzied people; perhaps he even expressed a feeling of pity for them. The main attention of all was directed to Him Who hung on the middle cross, so that even "one of the evildoers" together with the people blasphemed the Saviour. Is it possible, therefore, even to think that a special tree, better than the others, was used for the cross of such a contemptible man, in the opinion of the soldiers and the people? Judging by the excessive malice and bitterness of the Jews, who, of course, set fire to the soldiers with fresh slander, one can ask more quickly and with greater reason, whether they did not use the most accursed, so to speak, tree, on the Cross of the Lord, if there was one, the worst and most contemptible. Indeed, it was made of contemptible wood, of the same kind as the crosses of the evildoers crucified with Christ were made. This is confirmed by the story of the discovery of the Cross of the Lord and the testimony of St. Gregory of Nyssa, who, in turn, bases it on the general opinion of the people.

After the discovery of the Cross of the Lord together with the two crosses of the evildoers crucified with Christ, the former, without the miraculous instruction of God, could not be distinguished from the latter.66 This circumstance makes us think that either the Cross of the Savior was made of the same wood from which the crosses of evildoers were usually made, or the crosses of the evildoers crucified with Christ were made of the same best kinds of wood that our so-called Old Believers wish to see in the composition of the Cross of the Lord (which will be discussed at the end). But the latter is impossible according to the customs of the Romans, and the former, for this very reason, remaining true, is confirmed by it. that the found Cross of Christ in the eyes of eyewitnesses did not have the physical qualities that people of later times see in it. Christians of the fourth century saw for themselves and proclaimed to all that the tree that is part of the Cross of the Lord belongs precisely to such kinds of trees that in the opinion of people are considered worthy of contempt. True, few of the fathers of the fourth century convey to us such an opinion of their contemporaries about the wood of the Cross of the Lord, but nevertheless it is reliable. St. Gregory of Nyssa, on the basis of a universal rumor that reached him, does not hesitate to attribute the Life-Giving Wood of the Cross of the Lord to the despised trees. "Paying attention," he says. – on many of the things of the Church, although you see them as contemptible. what is subject to the eye, but at the same time great is what they produce... And the wood of the Cross of the Lord is salvific to all men, despite the fact that it is a part, as I hear, of the despised and most dishonorable tree."67 This testimony of the famous theologian and Church Father of the fourth century, in all fairness, deserves complete trust.

As for the fate of the Cross of Christ itself, after Joseph of Arimathea removed the Most-Pure Body of Christ the Savior from it, it is known from Jewish tradition that all the instruments with which the death of the guilty was inflicted were usually buried in the ground at the place of execution. Such a tradition was preserved by Moses of Corduba, the most famous rabbi among the Jews, in his extensive work – "Manus fortis" (The Hand of the Brave), in the treatise Sanhedrin (Chapter 15, Article IX) and in his commentary on the "Miznayot" – the most ancient book of the Jews, which serves as the basis of all their law and tradition. What was usual with the instruments of execution for criminals, the same followed with the Cross of the Lord. Relying on the tradition now indicated, the Christians then, at the behest of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Empress Helena (as will be said below), dug up from the place of the Lord's execution on Golgotha a large thickness of earth (which had been poured here with intention) and found here what they were looking for. We now proceed to describe, as briefly as possible, but in the order of time, the most ancient monuments of the cross, made in any way whatsoever, and preserved to our time in their original form, or only in photographs, or, finally, described in books, from the first century of Christendom to the seventeenth century. The so-called Old Believers will see in the very faces, so to speak, in the very things the cross which all Christians from the very beginning to later times depicted and venerated under the name of the Cross of Christ. Whether or not they believe what we wish to present to their eyes here is their business; but we will do our work conscientiously, in the eyes of the All-Seeing God, from Whom no deception or falsehood will be hidden.

For the most convenient survey of the monuments of the holy cross and its images over the course of seventeen centuries, we can, not without reason, divide this vast space of time into four periods, and in each period we consider these monuments separately. It is the first part, or the first period of time, in the fate of the Cross of Christ that we will limit to the first three centuries, when the Cross was originally hidden from human eyes in the earth, and all crosses made in imitation of this Cross, because of persecutions, were rare in the Christian world of that time.

The second part should embrace the fourth Christian age, when the glory of the Cross of Christ shone like the sun, when the original Cross of the Lord appeared, when the very heaven proclaimed to people about its universal glory, and when all Christians – kings and subjects, masters and slaves, old men and children, men and women – began to make and depict crosses everywhere, so that almost the entire universe was filled with crosses. The third part will embrace the time from the fifth to the eleventh centuries, i.e., until the time when monuments of the cross and images of it can already be found among our Russian antiquities. Finally, the fourth period lasts from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, or almost to the time of Patriarch Nikon, whose contemporaries, in the opinion of the so-called Old Believers, introduced the two-part cross, and retained the true cross, i.e., the eight-pointed one.

In the first three Christian centuries the Holy Church was under the heavy yoke of persecution, strengthening and flourishing internally, it was at the same time suppressed in its outward appearance: in worship and in the rites of faith. Therefore, under the narrow external circumstances, the external church life could not fully develop: Christians had to perform their church services either at night, or only before dawn, in certain houses, sometimes in dungeons. Constantly hiding from the persecution of the pagans, they, naturally, had everything only with them, and therefore, by the way, the cross of Christ – the object of Christian veneration – in its material form was not used as often as it was later, three centuries later. The Cross of the Lord was in the ground, and there was almost no place on earth for other crosses, as a Christian shrine: they were still the subject of persecution by the pagans along with the followers of the Crucified One. For this reason, almost all the monuments of the cross and its images have survived from the first three centuries only in the Roman dungeons, where Christians for the most part were forced to take refuge from persecution.

B. On the Crosses Preserved from the First Three Centuries of Christianity

In this section we will speak 1) about the cross, which the most ancient tradition ascribes to St. Nicodemus, the secret disciple of Jesus Christ, and 2) about the images of the cross in the Roman dungeons, or catacombs.