says:

"Illud autem fatendum nobis est, nullatenus ante felicissima
Constantini Magni ad fidem traducti tempora crucem publicae populorum
venerationi expositam fuisse."--Vol. ii. lib. vi. c. xiv. p. 546.

The following statement from Humphrey's _Montfaucon_ (vol. x. part ii. book
iii. cap. 1. p. 158.) is very clear as to the form of the cross:

"The cross, made with beams put together, had the shape of the
Samaritan _tau_, says St. Jerome, whose words are these: 'In the oldest
_Hebrew_ letters, which the Samaritans now make use of, the last, which
is _tau_, had the form of a cross.' This _tau_, like a cross, was like
the [Tau] of the Greeks, according to Paulinus, who says that the shape
of the cross is expressed by the Greek letter _tau_, which stands for
three hundred. The cross of our Lord was something different from the
letter _tau_; the beam that was fixed in the earth crossing that which
was athwart it above, and made as it were a head by rising above it:
such a cross we see in the medals of Constantine the Great, in this
form, [Symbol: cross], and such is it found described in the most
ancient Christian monuments; this is the form of the cross which St.
Jerome means, when he compares it to birds flying, to a man swimming,
and to a man praying to God, with his arms extended."

The Greek church has retained _both_ forms: the Latin Church, in its
ignorance of the Greek language, has lost the more important symbol. These
forms were probably invented by Constantine, who used them on his helmet,
as crests were afterwards used in the ages of chivalry.

T. J. BUCKTON.

Birmingham.

The difference between the manner in which the members of the Greek and
those of the Latin Church used to sign themselves with the sign of the
cross is this: both used the right hand, the thumb and first and second
fingers open, and the third and fourth closed; both began at the forehead,
and descended to the breast: but in crossing that vertical line by an
horizontal one, from one shoulder to the other, the _Greeks go from the
right to the left_, but the _Latins from the left to the right_. It is
said, that in the Latin Church, up to the thirteenth century, the cross
line was traced indifferently from either shoulder.

Whilst there is this difference between the Greek and Latin sign of the
cross when made upon oneself, there is also a difference between the two
when