ABSTRACT
The origins of the sign of the cross are unknown. It appears in ancient Judaism, Buddhism, Manichaeism, and other central Asiatic religions as well as in Christianity.1 The ‘mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh’ in Ezechiel 9.4 was later interpreted as a cross and contributed to the legend of the cross, tracing it back to the Garden of Eden and the beginnings of revealed religion.2 In the Vulgate a ‘Thau’ was added after ‘mark’ and was said by Tertullian to be ‘a type of cross which predicted the future on our foreheads in the true and catholic Jerusalem’.3 Abbot Berengarius of St Maximin of Trier, who died in 1128, identified the Thau with the cross and said that ‘Gideon, unarmed, fought armed men by the mystery of the cross and the form of the Trinity.’4
