CROSS, a gibbet, consisting of two pieces of timber placed across each other in a variety of forms. The cross was used as a very general instrument of punishment from the earliest times. Among the Syrians, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, and especially the Carthagin ians, it appears to have been the usual military punishment; but in no part of the ancient world was this punishment so generally resorted to as in the Roman empire, where it was regarded as the most infamous of deaths, and, except in cases of sedition, was inflicted only on slaves or the vilest malefactors. By the Jewish law, it was ordained that the body of the culprit should be removed from the cross on the day of his execution; but the Romans frequently allowed it to hang till it dropped piecemeal to the ground.
By the death of Christ, the cross, from being an object of horror, became the symbol of the Christian world, and, from respect for this symbol, Constantine abolished the punishment of crucifixion throughout the Roman world. The cross
is still regarded with the utmost venera tion by the Roman Catholic Church, in which certain festivals are observed in memory of circumstances connected with the cross.
The cross on which our Lord suffered is commonly considered to have been the crux capitata or Latin cross, but the cross with equal limbs (+) or Greek cross, has been the model followed in the architecture of Eastern churches. The large cross over the entrance to the chan cel of a church was called the Rood or Holy Rood. Monumental crosses were and are still often raised in Catholic countries, to mark a boundary, the entrance of a sanctuary, or as record of some event.