Crossess — Christian and Otherwise: Their Form and Meaning

In “top-of-the-mind” reading, crosses are the iconographic representation of Christianity, though cross became an embodiment of Christian iconography only after the fifth century ce. In this volume, the author unveils the existence of 500 plus crosses, of which around 300 are of ecclesiastical, heraldic or mundane crosses. Most of these cruciforms were introduced before the twentieth century. Cruciform was antecedent of Christianity. There were numerous cruciform Hindu and Buddhist temples, even before the advent of Christianity and thus these hold no Christian ecclesiastical relevance. Of late many churches, cathedrals and basilicas applied cruciform to their structure and look in conformity with the Christian iconography. This enunciates the endless design possibilities of cruciform. The book discusses the pre-Christian iconographic cruciform Hindu and Buddhist temple structures and in detail the Christian cross iconography and the varied types of crosses. It delves deep into the numerous forms of Latin and Greek crosses, mainly from the ecclesiastical and heraldic viewpoint. Crosses adorned ecclesiastical, military, professional and trade implications, and were carved on shields and coats of arms. This volume also addresses other categories of crosses such as solar crosses, saltire crosses and miscellaneous crosses though they too have occasional ecclesiastical and heraldic implications. The book thus gives a fair account of the emergence, use and application of cruciforms until the twentieth century.