To the Nations 1.12

And whoever asserts that we are priests of the cross will be our fellow worshipper. The nature of a cross is a sign made of wood; you too worship the material, with an image on it. Although, just as yours has a human figure, so ours has its own. Never mind the features, so long as the nature is the same; never mind the shape, so long as it is the very body of a god. But if a difference arises on this point, how does the Athenian Pallas, or the Pharian Ceres, differ from the stake of a cross, when they are represented without shape by a rough stake and a mere unformed block of wood? Every piece of timber that is fixed upright is part of a cross, and indeed the greater part. But the whole cross is charged to us, with its crossbar, of course, and with that projecting seat. In this you are the more blameworthy, who have dedicated a maimed and truncated wood, which others have consecrated whole and built up. Yet for the rest you have the religion of the whole cross intact, as I shall show. You do not know that the very origin of your gods came from this gibbet. For every image, whether carved from wood or stone, or cast in bronze, or produced from any other richer material, must be preceded by the modeller's hands. Now the modeller first sets up a wooden cross, since our own body too has the line of a cross silently and secretly placed in it: the head rises up, the spine runs straight, the shoulders project crosswise; if you set a man with his hands outstretched, you will have made the image of a cross. On this beginning, and as it were a prop, the clay, woven on over it, gradually fills out the limbs, builds up the body, and puts over the cross within whatever posture the clay was meant to take; from there, by compass and leaden rules, the preparation of the image will pass over into marble, or clay, or bronze, or whatever the god is to be made of. From the cross the clay, from the clay the god: in a way the cross passes into the god through the clay. So you consecrate the cross, from which the consecrated one begins. Let it be said by way of example: from an olive stone, a peach kernel, or a peppercorn tempered under the earth, a tree rises up into branches, foliage, and the appearance of its kind. If you transplant it, or use a shoot from its branches for another, to what will what comes from the layer be attributed? Surely to that grain, kernel, or stone? For when the third stage is ascribed to the second, and likewise the second to the first, the third will be traced back to the first, passing through the second. No more need be argued on this, since by a natural rule every kind refers its standing to its origin, and the more a kind is valued by its origin, the more the origin is found in the kind. If, then, in the kind of the gods you worship the cross as their origin, this will be the kernel and primordial grain from which whole forests of images are propagated among you. But now for the plain facts. You venerate Victories as divinities, and indeed as the more august the more joyful they are. The supports in the middle by which they raise the structure will be crosses; the trophy is, so to speak, crosses within. So the religion of the camp worships crosses even in its Victories: it adores the standards, swears by the standards, prefers the standards even to Jupiter himself. But that whole array of images and all that worship of gold are necklaces of crosses. So too in the banners and flags, which the soldiery guards with no less sanctity, those streamers are the clothing of crosses. You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship crosses unadorned and bare.