The Cross

I have been interested in crosses for over forty years and, thanks to being in the travel business since 1970, I have photographed countless examples as I went around the world for my travel company, Serenissima and subsequently for Noble Caledonia and TransIndus.  My collection of colour slides provided me with a substantial choice of crosses from destinations as far apart as Peru and Australia. I have tried to present a balance between the many different strands of the Christian faith and for each century, from the earliest Christians in Pompeii until today, and crossing the globe from Norway to South Africa and Hawaii to China.  Categories include architecture, painting, sculpture, textiles, metalwork, jewelery and portraits of people wearing crosses, as well as examples of the Cross in nature.

The pages are arranged chronologically within each country, beginning in Israel with Jerusalem, and they radiate out from there, first through the Middle East and Turkey, then to the countries of the Orthodox world which includes the Greeks and the Russians as well as the Copts and the early independent churches of the Armenians and the Georgians . It then features the Catholic Mediterranean world, and moves north to where the Catholic Church was split by the Reformation.  Then to the ends of the earth with the expansion of empires by the Portuguese, the Spanish and the British.

This attempts to illustrate the near fullfillment of Jesus’ “Great Commission” to  Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.  Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. (Mark 16: 15 – 16)