Here we will speak only about the more remarkable crosses and their images, namely: 1) the appearance of the cross in heaven to Constantine, Equal-to-the-Apostles, 2) the finding of the Cross of Christ by St. Helena, and 3) the crosses made at the behest of Constantine and erected in various places and on different things: in addition, about the chased images of the cross on the coins of Constantine, his son Crispus and the emperors of the fourth century who followed him; about the conventional sign of the peaceful episcopal letters of the IV century and about the so-called historical Theodosius column with the image of a four-pointed cross on its base, which stood in Constantinople even after its capture by the Turks.

I. On the Sign of the Cross That Appeared in Heaven to Constantine, Equal-to-the-Apostles

This event is narrated by the biographer of St. Constantine, Eusebius, his contemporary and interlocutor.75 It happened before the discovery of the original Cross of Christ by Equal-to-the-Apostles Helena, the mother of Constantine, which is evident, among other things, from the fact that, upon the return of St. Helena from Jerusalem, her Equal-to-the-Apostles son had already erected three large crosses in memory of the three consecutive appearances of the cross in heaven. This is how Eusebius describes this miraculous appearance of the cross in heaven and the form of the military banner made in the image of this cross: "Earnestly lifting up his prayers and petitions (to God that He would enlighten him about Himself and turn him from error to the light of truth), the emperor received a most amazing sign sent from God, so that it would not have been easy to believe, if someone else had spoken. One afternoon. when the sun began to incline to the west, said the king, I saw with my own eyes the sign of the cross, composed of light and playing in the sun, with the inscription: "In this conquer." This sight seized him with horror, as well as the whole army, which, not knowing where, followed him and continued to contemplate the miracle that had appeared." Thus, from the Eusebian description of the military banner, arranged in the image of the cross seen by Constantine in heaven, it is clear that the sign of the four-pointed cross appeared in the sky, and that at that time Christians called the cross of Christ precisely the figure composed of only two trees or lines, longitudinal and transverse. This is a military banner, originally known as a labarum. later became the property of the Church as the banner of her victory over the devil, her fierce enemy, and death. At the present time, as in all times after Constantine, church banners with a four-pointed cross served and continue to serve as a silent visual monument to the appearance of the sign of the cross to St. Constantine in heaven and the construction of a military banner with a cross, or labarum. The real banners differ only from the labarum of Constantine, that on them, at the very top, there is no crown, and in it there is no name of Christ the Saviour, and that above the transverse yard, to which the sacred cloth was hung and which, with a longitudinal shaft, formed the figure of a cross, we make from the top of the longitudinal shaft and a small cross across. But in any case, the arrangement of the four-pointed cross on church banners in accordance with the cross proper, which St. Constantine wanted to see in them, should be preferred to the arrangement of the eight-pointed one: the first type was clearly depicted in the sky. The eight-pointed cross, sometimes visible on banners, is already a Russian invention: in Greece it did not exist and does not exist now

II. On the Finding of the Precious Cross by St. Helena

At the same time, to complete the great gifts of His Holy Church, the Lord vouchsafed the most pious Mother Constantine to find in the earth that original Cross on which the Blood of our Divine Redeemer was shed. According to the testimony of Sozomen,76 this happened after the Council of Nicaea, which restored perfect truth in the Church of God, History and tradition tell us the following details about this event. In the year 326, the pious Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, went to Palestine to venerate the holy places, having at the same time the intention of finding, if possible, the Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. The fulfillment of her desire at the very beginning faced a great difficulty: the place where the Wood of the Cross of the Lord was hidden remained unknown to the Christians of that time and was a deep mystery of the enemies of Christ. It was necessary to expel this mystery by the power of royal power. On the advice of the patriarch, Helena gathered together the oldest Jews. To the question: where the crucifiers of the God-Man hid His Cross, the elders, forced by threats of cruel tortures, answered by pointing to a certain Judas, who, according to the tradition coming from the ancestors, could definitely know the place sought. The stubborn Jew did not want to reveal the secret he kept for a long time: only a six-day hunger at the bottom of a deep waterless spring forced him to confess. "On the north-eastern side of the mountain," said the exhausted Jew to the queen and the patriarch, "in the very place where the pagan temple of Venus is, you will find the Cross you are looking for." The pagan temple was razed – they began to dig the ground, and after long labors they finally found three crosses. It remained to find out which of them was the Cross of the Lord – a sign that the Cross of the Savior did not differ in its appearance from the crosses of the robbers. Titlo, which was on the Cross of the Lord, lay in a special place.77 According to the faith of the patriarch, the Lord revealed this through a miracle. While the three crosses were opened, the body of the dead man was carried for burial. Then the patriarch commands the bearers to stop and, in the undoubted hope that the weapon with which the Redeemer of the world crushed hell and death will now break the bonds of death, he places all the crosses on the lifeless body, one after the other. The first two crosses did not raise the dead from the grave; from the touch of the third the dead man suddenly came to life, and then everyone recognized in this cross the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord. St. Helen was the first to prostrate herself in reverence before the Venerable Tree and kissed it; her example was followed by the nobles who accompanied her. The fame of the miracles wrought by the power of the Cross of Christ quickly spread throughout the city and attracted to Golgotha such a great multitude of people that the crowd did not allow everyone to approach and kiss the venerable Tree, and many began to ask the patriarch that it be shown to them even from afar. Macarius, standing on an elevated place and erecting the Precious Cross, showed it to the distant people, and the people, seized with holy rapture and trembling, cried out: Lord, have mercy! From here the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Life-Creating Cross began in the Church, the foundation of which was laid from the very time of its discovery, i.e. from the year 326. The history of the discovery of the Holy Cross, as well as the institution on the occasion of this sacred feast with the well-known rites still observed, serve as the strongest confirmation for everyone that the appearance of the Holy Cross was precisely four-pointed. A priest or bishop, according to the rule, on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, makes four appeals, holding the cross on his forehead: first to the east, then to the west, then to the south, and finally to the north. When the first hundred times "Lord, have mercy" is sung, then the priest or bishop signs the people with the cross three times in the form of a cross, i.e. in the image of the four-pointed cross. The same happens when the next hundreds sing.

III. On the crosses made at the behest of Saint Constantine and erected in various places, also on the chased images of the cross on the coins of Constantine and the sovereigns who followed him in the fourth century, on the conventional sign of the peaceful episcopal letters of the fourth century, and on the baptismal vestments of Saints Gregory the Theologian and Epiphanius of Cyprus

a) About the three crosses erected by St. Constantine in memory of the three crosses he saw at different times in heaven, and about the origin of the cross with the inscription: IC.XC Nike.

On the return of Equal-to-the-Apostles Helen from Jerusalem, says Nicephorus,78 by order of Constantine three very large crosses were forged of brass, on each of which he inscribed separately the following words: on one cross – I?????, on another – ???????, on the third – ????. The cross with the name "Jesus" was all gilded and placed on the triumphal gate – in the square; another, bearing the name "Christ," the emperor, according to Nicephorus, placed on a Roman purple column, in a place called ???????????,, i.e., brotherly love. And the third, with the inscription ????, which Constantine called ?????,, i.e., victory, and Heraclius, ????????,, i.e., invincible, he set up on a high marble pillar, in a place that bore the name of ??????????,, i.e., the square of bread. Here is hidden the beginning of the four-pointed cross with the inscription: IS, which is still used in the Greek and our Churches almost exclusively for printing prosphoras. CHOLESTEROL. Nick.

It is not known from what time these three inscriptions were transferred from three separate crosses to one cross and began to be used for printing prosphoras. On the Constantinople column, which existed even after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks and which was attributed to the Emperor Theodosius, one four-pointed cross with the inscription is already visible on the base. In the X century, such a cross was already depicted on coins, as we will see below. In any case, our so-called Old Believers cannot but admit that the three crosses erected by St. Constantine in three different places in the capital were four-pointed, because they were made in the likeness and memory of those seen in heaven; and in heaven there was no sign of the eight-pointed cross.

b) Let us now speak about other crosses erected by Constantine and which also had a four-pointed appearance.