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05165
March 30, 2005
Cross fertilization
Holy Land rife with Christian symbol of one and many meanings
by Alexa Smith
EAST JERUSALEM — In a mosaic-filled chapel in the corner of Holy Sepulchre Church, Deacon Artur Harutyunyan is drawing an Armenian cross on a scrap of paper.
He’s frustrated by his English, or rather, his lack of it.
So he draws.
The cross is straight, its three edges upturned, like an inverted crown. Sprouting from those curves are flowers, blooming wildly.
He looks up earnestly and says: “Yes, like lilies. Or flowers. Maybe grapes
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on a vine. It is a symbol of life, yes? Sorry, I don't |
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speak very well English.”
He has a slight hint of a beard. Big eyes.
At first glance, he looks like a priest in his black, cassock-like robe.
But Harutyunyan is a deacon in the Armenian Orthodox Church and he serves here, singing the liturgy and giving impromptu lessons on the symbolism of the cross.
That isn’t as simple as it sounds: Transforming an instrument of torture into a symbol of life takes some doing, not to mention centuries of theological wrangling.
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Which is why Deacon |
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Artur is so persistent, aided now by a young |
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Crosses of many types are offered for sale to tourists in Jerusalem. Photos by Alexa Smith |
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Pole named Martin who has wandered into the chapel and overheard some of the discussion.
“You can find in Armenian crosses the tree of life,” Martin says.
“I did not know that,” says Martin’s wife, Margaret.
She is peering over Artur’s shoulder at a symbol of infinity he is drawing at the bottom of his sketch. He points out that the cross stands in the midst of eternity.
“And on Armenian crosses, there is no Jesus. Because Jesus has risen,” he tells Martin, who duly translates.
The two Christian quarters of Jerusalem’s Old City are full of crosses. So many, in fact, that they all but disappear.
Rudimentary crosses are carved into the buttresses of ancient churches, like St. James Armenian Church. More elaborate designs are sculpted in seemingly random stones facing the courtyard.
In the vast corridors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, there are only a few ornamental crosses but one large, dramatic one, planted firmly on the rock
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that tradition holds is Golgotha.
But there are some other simple crosses. Etched in the pavement on the rooftop chapel where the Copts worship. Burnt by Orthodox worshippers into the cement doorways of the |
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chapel at Calvary, with the |
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Greek symbol X — the first letter of Christ's name |
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Tiny crosses are carved into the stones of a courtyard at St. James Armenian Orthodox Church. |
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— cut into the center. |
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Those crosses are remnants of the holy fire that the Greek patriarch carries from Christ’s tomb on Orthodox Easter, this year May 1.
Still more crosses are painted above doorways. Another serves as a hand-hold for pilgrims stumbling up a dimly lit stairway to a rooftop chapel.
Another is wound in steel above an entrance to a monastery off of the cathedral’s square central plaza.
They are so basic to Christian tradition, they almost go unseen.
But they are laden with centuries of symbolism culled by the world’s most ancient churches. All testifying to life overwhelming death and violence, suffering and pain.
Take the Jerusalem Cross, one of the popular items in Christian gift shops here. The design is built around a large, central cross — with four other crosses tucked into the joints where the two beams meet.
Ask a sales clerk what the cross symbolizes and you get a different answer at every store. One says the four smaller crosses stand for the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Another says the five crosses represents the five kings of Europe who launched the Crusades against Islam in the Middle Ages and murdered their way through Jerusalem — England represented by the dominant cross, with France, Spain, Germany and Italy getting smaller-
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scale recognition. |
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An italicized sign in a Christian gift shop in the Old City says the crosses represent the five wounds of Christ. Some say the Jerusalem cross symbolizes Calvary: One big cross and two smaller ones on each side.
A dozen sellers will tell you their versions, nod appreciatively at alternative stories and say that the cross means all of the above.
But Father Eugenio Alliata, a Roman Catholic archeologist at Flagellation Monastery on the Via Dolorosa, shakes his head. No, he says, a fellow monk studied this
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Olive-wood crucifixes of all styles and sizes are for sale in the Christian Quarter. |
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in depth, and the original meaning — according to fourth-century scholar Cyril of Jerusalem — is far more cosmic.
Jerusalem, represented by the stabilizing center cross, is the center of the world. And it embraces the Earth with its arms — north, south, east and west.
It is depicted in a fourth-century mosaic in Nazareth. By the fifth century A.D., it is almost commonplace.
“It is symbolic, not realistic,” Alliata says.
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Symbol, he says, is a |
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potent force that early Christians understood. “Crosses took many shapes from the beginning ... and, in the beginning, there was no Christ on the cross,” he says.
Early Christians preferred representations |
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Deacon Calistos of the Greek Orthodox Church. |
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of the cross to naturalistic depictions of the crucifixion.
Rather, it was a boat with a mast, like a cross but not a cross. Or a male figure standing with his arms stretched out to his sides. Or a letter of the ancient Hebrew alphabet, x, or the Greek symbol, T.
“When we represent the cross. we don’t represent a historical (event) ... but the meaning,” Alliata says in a rich Italian accent.
Eastern Christians, he says, have always been more at ease with symbol, while Westerners lean toward realistic representations — embodied best in the contemporary Catholic crucifix, which appeared for the first time on the door of St. Sabina’s Church in fifth-century Rome.
“Early Christians did not represent Jesus in this way: A dead man on a cross,” the priest says. “(Maybe) it was too hard to understand the meaning. ... It says this is real history, not mythology. This is something that happened, really.”
But the meaning of the Catholic cross cannot be grasped by seeing only the moment of death, Alliata says. The faithful must remember the entire story of Jesus. “The meaning,” he says, “is positive. In the suffering of this man we see the salvation given by God to all humanity.”
Twenty-eight-year-old Deacon Calistos is standing inside the Holy Sepulchre’s chapel at Golgotha, helping pilgrims light candles to illuminate petitions made literally |
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at the foot of the cross.
He is eager to talk about the ornate Greek Orthodox cross, with icons where the beams cross — usually images of Jesus’ mother Mary and St. John, his beloved. And the sculpted top of the cross, which depicts |
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Crosses of virtually any type can be found in the shops in the Old City. |
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God the Father. At the foot,
typically, is a skull and crossbones, symbolizing death.
It is all about life, the journey of faith.
“The cross,” Calistos says, “is like the soul of each person. Vertically, it shows how the spirit goes to God, how our heart is dedicated to Him. And horizontally, it shows love for others. Jesus opened his hands on the cross to take in the world.
“It really is the two commandments: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind. And love your fellow human as yourself.”
For Calistos, who says he no longer has a surname, the symbolism in the cross is rich and deep and rewards study with insight.
The skull at its base is gruesome, of course. But the blood of Jesus on the cross washes it away, cleansing even the first sin. Scanning it from bottom to top illustrates how the human spirit passes from death to life. As Deacon Calistos says: “All the way up. ... If you look at this cross ... it says everything. The passion. The resurrection. All of his life comes to your mind.”
The suffering it shows, Calistos says, helps Christians find the strength to carry on, to carry their own crosses because the life of mercy and love thay have chosen guarantees pain in a harsh world.
And the icons help people pray, he says.
“When you look at a picture of your mother, your father, someone close to you — but they are far away — it helps you feel something different, even if they are not so close,” he says, and it is much the same with Mary, St. John, Jesus. Or God.
The cross is a symbol that Orthodox integrate into worship. When Greek Orthodox children are baptized, they are dunked three times into the Baptismal font. The sign of the cross is then made all over their tiny bodies, the hands, the belly, the toes, the chin, the forehead, sealing the Baptism.
Congregants cross themselves in worship, beginning at the head, saying, “God is powerful.” Then the belly, saying, “God is immortal.” And the right shoulder: “God is merciful,” remembering the thief on the cross who asked to join Jesus in Paradise.
A Kyrie Eleison (God have mercy) is said as the penitent touches the left shoulder, remembering the unsaved sinner at the cross.
“The cross,” Calistos says, “is a symbol of victory against death, against evil.
When you study the cross, it represents life.”
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