A) On the form of the original Cross, the First Life-giving, in fact, the Lord's. Having laid down His life for the life of the world, our Saviour accepted suffering and death from the representatives of this sinful, depraved, evil world – the Romans – the possessors of light, to whom the Jews betrayed Him. In Rome at that time the most cruel and painful punishment was in use – the crucifixion,19 which passed there along with the manners and customs of the peoples it conquered. The Jews themselves, whose malice had lifted up the Messiah to the tree, did not have the crucifixion: for some crimes, the law commanded that criminals should be hanged on a tree, but they were not nailed, and the corpses had to be taken down for burial at nightfall.20 From the Gospel history it is evident that Jesus Christ, through the malice of the Jewish Sanhedrin, was presented to Pilate's praetorium as a disturber of public peace and a villain,21 and the Roman governor, who had the weakness to yield to the frantic cries of the chief priests, scribes, and people to crucify Jesus, handed Him over to them, so that He might be crucified, of course, on such a cross as the Roman laws usually executed criminals. And the very circumstances of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ show that He was crucified precisely on the cross, which was in use among the Romans at that time, with the customs that they had at that time. These are the circumstances of the crucifixion of criminals among the Romans. For the most part, the crucifixion was preceded by scourging,22 and our Lord suffered the same thing before the crucifixion: "But Jesus was beaten," it is said of Pilate, "I will deliver him up to them, that they may crucify him".23 For this reason, St. Matthew the Evangelist uses the very word that expresses this action – scourging – (????????????, (Latin fragellare – to scourge). Crucifiers were soldiers who carried out all the executions of the Romans.24 The criminal himself had to carry his cross to the place of execution, being subjected to ridicule and beatings25; the cross was placed first,26 and then the criminal was nailed to it – hence the expression: to be lifted up, lifted up on the cross.27 which became the property of the soldiers.29 There was no burial for criminals who had already been crucified.30 Sometimes, however, relatives were allowed to bury them.31 In case of need (at the onset of a feast, celebration, etc.), the life of the crucified could be shortened by breaking their legs, as well as by smoke and heat from brushwood burning under the cross,32 and finally, by a blow to the head or heart.

Comparing these circumstances of the crucifixion with what is said in the Gospel story about the crucifixion of the Saviour, together with the preceding and subsequent circumstances, we find that almost all of them were repeated over the Divine Sufferer; The Lord was scourged and crucified by Roman soldiers. He Himself carried His Cross to Golgotha, and, of course, He was exhausted, according to custom, by a great deal of ridicule; they took off all His clothes before His ascension to the cross, and since the clothes were very good and valuable, the soldiers cast lots to see who would take which of them; in Jesus Christ, because of the coming of the feast of the Passover, they wanted to break the legs, but since they found Him already dead, they left His bones in peace, and they broke them in the case of the evildoers crucified with Him. That the Saviour, before being led to the shame of execution, was indeed scourged, although this seems to us to be something new, which our ears, which are so well acquainted with all expressions concerning both the preceding and subsequent circumstances that accompanied the Passion of Christ, are not accustomed to comprehend, as we have noted above, is the very word of the Evangelist John – ??????????, from the Latin fragellum – scourge.

From all that has gone before, there is no doubt that our Lord was crucified by Roman soldiers on the Roman cross. What kind of cross did the Romans use to crucify criminals? In answering this question, we will enter, in accordance with the needs of our so-called Old Believers, into a detailed discussion of the type and composition of the cross, as well as of the kind of tree from which it was made, and, finally, of the fate of this tree after the removal of the Divine dead man from it.

The Romans mainly used crosses of three types:

a) A three-pointed cross like the letter T (tav)33. Its base was a straight pole or plank, about fifteen feet long, anchored in the ground; At the very top of it, for nailing the hands, a crossbeam34 was made, seven or eight feet long35.

b) A cross with a protruding straight end over the diameter visible in the letter tav, which made this end, according to Justin the Martyr, resemble a horn.36

Finally, c) a cross like the Latin letter X, or, as it is otherwise called, the cross of St. Andrew.

But most of all the others, the cross with a diameter lower than the upper end of the pillar, a cross like the letter t, with a prominent end, i.e. four-pointed, was widely used. Now the question arises, on which of the crosses we have indicated was the Lord Jesus Christ crucified? Undoubtedly, first of all, that it was not on the cross of St. Andrew, otherwise he would not have been called by the name of this apostle.

Consequently, the Saviour was crucified on one of the other two crosses, and between them, in the presence of numerous evidences, both material and immaterial, it is easy to point with all certainty to one, a four-pointed one.38 There were no more complex crosses in Rome than those we have mentioned, and there should not be, since for the purpose for which crosses existed at that time, namely, for the crucifixion of criminals on them, a four-pointed cross was needed. as the most convenient for this, since the person for whom it was invented is a four-pointed figure at crucifixion. There were no crosses with two, and even more so with three crosses, and there is not the slightest need, no reason to assume their existence at that time. But, the so-called Old Believers will object, the titla and the foot make up the second and third diameters in the Cross of Christ.

In order to show them that the titla does not refer to the essence of the cross at all, and that the pedestal, and especially the oblique one, appeared already in later centuries and is applied to the cross without a firm historical foundation, solely according to an ingrained custom, we will examine in detail:

1) what is a titla, according to the meaning of the Romans; what substance it was made of; how it was written, whether it was always necessary for the cross and related to its essence, and

2) Were there pedestals on Roman crosses, were they needed for any solid purpose, and, in particular, was there a pedestal on the Cross of Christ and was it necessary?

The word "titla" (Greek ??????) is neither Russian nor Greek, but Roman, from titulus, and has many meanings. We will go through all these meanings here. The word titulus was used by the Romans not only when it was a question of execution, whether crucifixion or some other kind of execution, i.e. not only in the sense of a certain appendage to the cross, but also in many other cases, when there was no talk of it at all, as it is done now not only among the Romans, but also among other peoples. into whose languages this word has passed. Therefore, we will consider the meaning of the word titulus from two sides: what does the word titulus mean – titulus 1) in those cases where there is no talk of execution at all, and 2) in the case when we are talking about execution proper, so that, in this way, the imaginary Old Believers know what the titla of the cross is.