Cross

Monastiraki, Athens

Much of the research I have been doing has by necessity woven in and around issues of Church Union in the 1420s and 1430s.  I have written here of an emperor shattered and a bride broken in its name, of men embittered, and of one turned great.  But for this year -- and amazingly, for next -- the churches of East and West are united in sharing the day of the Easter feast, united in the centrality of their symbol of the cross.

For the Greeks, as Paul wrote, foolishness.  Humiliation become triumph, torture become healing.  For this day I offer a gleaning of  Greek crosses -- apotropaic, spolia, one representing all those painted crosses in all those olive-scented churches, one a church constructed as a cross.

Christianized gate at Mantinea

Sixth-century cross from the church in the Parthenon

Spolia at Karitena.

Spolia at Nemea

Spolia at Tegea, cross and monogram.

 Spolia at Ag. Triada, Argolid

Areopolis, Mani

Archaeological storeroom, Halkida

Twelfth-century church, Plataniti, Argolid