The Sign of the Cross that Unifies East and West style

[Colliegirl46]

When the only Mass that I could get to on a Sunday was Divine Liturgy I often would forget and cross myself the wrong way and nobody noticed or if they did I didn’t notice them noticing. People are usually looking toward the altar.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

I’m not so sure this is accurate. To my knowledge, the only Church that makes the Sign of the Cross by crossing over from the right shoulder to the left is the Byzantines. The Syriac tradition crosses themselves from left to right, as do the Coptics, if I remember correctly. So, if my memory is serving me correctly, it would seem that the Byzantines are the anomaly when it comes to the Sign of the Cross.

I’m open to correction, of course.

 

[AlNg]

So, if my memory is serving me correctly, it would seem that the Byzantines are the anomaly when it comes to the Sign of the Cross.

Please see the Catholic Encyclopedia 1914:
" At this period the manner of making it in the West seems to have been identical with that followed at present in the East, i.e. only three fingers were used, and the hand traveled from the right shoulder to the left. The point, it must be confessed, is not entirely clear and Thalhofer (Liturgik, I, 633) inclines to the opinion that in the passages of Belethus (xxxix), Sicardus (III, iv),Innocent III (De myst. Alt., II, xlvi), and Durandus (V, ii, 13), which are usually appealed to inproof of this, these authors have in mind the small cross made upon the forehead or external objects, in which the hand moves naturally from right to left, and not the big cross made from shoulder to shoulder. Still, a rubric in a manuscript copy of the York Missal clearly requires thepriest when signing himself with the paten to touch the left shoulder after the right. Moreover it is at least clear from many pictures and sculptures that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Greek practice of extending only three fingers was adhered to by many Latin Christians … However there can be little doubt that long before the close of the Middle Ages the large sign of the cross was more commonly made in the West with the open hand and that the bar of the cross was traced from left to right."

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

The Catholic Encyclopedia is a questionable source at best.

Plus, the article seems to be speaking only of the Greek (i.e. Byzantine) East and the Latin West - which is not uncommon given that most Catholics (and even a good number of Orthodox) believe that the Byzantine East is the entirety of the Christian East, in much the same way that most Catholics believe that Roman Catholicism is the entirety of Catholicism.

I know that in the Syriac tradition the use of only the three fingers when making the Sign of the Cross is the tradition. So the only real question is whether it is more traditional to cross oneself from left to right, or from right to left.

I’d always heard (from both Catholic and Orthodox sources/conversations) that the Byzantine method of signing oneself developed somewhat later - the people essentially making a mirror image of the priest who blesses them from left to right.

If anyone knows of any good books on the history of the Sign of the Cross, I’m all ears.

 

[ziapueblo]

which is not uncommon given that most Catholics (and even a good number of Orthodox) believe that the Byzantine East is the entirety of the Christian East, in much the same way that most Catholics believe that Roman Catholicism is the entirety of Catholicism.

This is true. I’m sure that those is the Assyrian Church of the East and others see Byzantines like me as “western” in a sense (geographically speaking).

ZP

 

[dochawk]

I’d always heard (from both Catholic and Orthodox sources/conversations) that the Byzantine method of signing oneself developed somewhat later - the people essentially making a mirror image of the priest who blesses them from left to right.

You have that exactly backwards.

Initially, East and West both crossed from right to left. Over the course of the medieval period, European laity began following the priest’s hand, thus crossing from left to right instead.

\

 

[babochka]

Phillip_Rolfes:

I’d always heard (from both Catholic and Orthodox sources/conversations) that the Byzantine method of signing oneself developed somewhat later - the people essentially making a mirror image of the priest who blesses them from left to right.

You have that exactly backwards.

Initially, East and West both crossed from right to left. Over the course of the medieval period, European laity began following the priest’s hand, thus crossing from left to right instead.

\

This is what I have also heard, but it fails to address the fact that Oriental Orthodox and Catholic make the sign of the cross from left to right.

 

[dochawk]

This is what I have also heard, but it fails to address the fact that Oriental Orthodox and Catholic make the sign of the cross from left to right.

I have no information on them, but I’d take a wild guess that the same thing happened as in the west . . .

AFAIK, outside the periods of bizarre Catholic/Orthodox polemics against each other, no-one seriously claims that the west didn’t change in the Middle Ages.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

Oh, I totally agree that the West changed in the Middle Ages… Although I’ve known plenty of Orthodox and serious Eastern Catholic scholars who say the same about Orthodoxy in the Middle Ages (one of them being the late Fr. Robert Taft).

I’d be fascinated to see a good history of the Sign of the Cross that includes a discussion of the Oriental Churches as well as the Byzantines and Romans.

Anyway. I guess ultimately how one makes the Sign of the Cross doesn’t matter, so long as it is in keeping with the tradition of one’s own church sui iuris and, most importantly, is done attentively and reverently.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

Okay. So I’ve done a little more digging. What I’ve found is that there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on which method of making the Sign of the Cross is more ancient. A Coptic Orthodox priest I just read mentioned that the only consensus is that the earliest Christians made the Cross on their foreheads. All other traditions of making the Sign of the Cross are a development of that.

That being said, the Latin West seems not to have settled on one particular way of making the Sign of the Cross (left to right or right to left) until some point in the Middle Ages. Pope Innocent III mentions both forms rather casually and says that both are perfectly fine.

The discussions I was just reading indicate that the Syrian and Oriental Christian form (left to right) is not a result of Latinization, but is a very ancient practice in those churches. Given the symbolism of moving from left to right (Christ moves us from darkness to light

, and from the goats [on the left] to the sheep [on the right]), I find it highly likely that this is the more ancient form for the Oriental Churches - who tend to stick very closely to Biblical symbolism.

Bar Saliba, from the 12th Century, also had some… interesting things to say about the Byzantine method of making the Sign of the Cross.​

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

quote from Bar Saliba:

You write :“The sacrament of the sign of the cross consists in the Word of God who became flesh and came down from heaven to earth, and removed mankind from the left hand and darkness to the right hand and light.”

We do not drive away darkness with light, as you write, by making the sign of the cross from right to left ; everyone knows that darkness is the very antithesis of light, and that if the latter is mixed up in the former it becomes swallowed up in it in the same way as the bitterness of a little brackish water in a jug of sweet water, or that of a little myrrh or wormwood in a considerable quantity of honey. Let us admit that light drives away darkness, how can the left hand drive away the right ? Our Lord has said that He will set the sheep on His right hand and the goats on His left ; in this our Saviour demonstrated that the right cannot expel the left, but those who make the sign of the cross from right to left, move, out of their own free will, from the right hand to the left which is that of the goats, and are counted with the robber who was on our Lord’s left.

But see how in the consecration of the elements and in the final prayers of the service the Greeks make the sign of the cross like us, from left to right, and in this way they contradict themselves.

…

You write : “Is it not more advantageous that a man should cross himself in beginning with the right side, which is the side of light, and then pass this light over his face and with it drive away darkness, than to cross himself from the side of darkness and pass it over his face ?”

If darkness and light are defined by the right hand moving horizontally, tell me what is meant by the first act we do in crossing ourselves, which consists in moving our hand in a perpendicular way from our head downwards ? You might say that the top movement means light and the bottom one darkness, and that a man first takes light and comes down to darkness, and then takes light again to another darkness. The Greeks would have thus two lights and two darknesses, and would begin with light and end with darkness. This theory of yours is not a happy one, and the single cross is not light in one of its horizontal sides and darkness in the other, but it is light in both of its sides. It is also advantageous that the end of all our works should be on the right hand, that is to say, good, and it is thus better to end the sign of the cross with the side of the right hand, and not with the side of the left which is, according to the words of our Lord, that of the goats.

…
In administering the baptism even the Greeks make the sign of the cross on the child with a collyrium-pencil which has one point only and not two points, which would correspond with the two fingers, and move also the instrument from left to right as we do, and not from right to left. Had they not done so in this case even their cross would not have been straight but twisted.

 

[Usagi]

I have heard (but given the discussion in this thread it is likely a completely erroneous speculation) that the “Holy” of “Holy Spirit” is to be said while touching the right shoulder. That makes it left to right in Latin (“Spiritus Sancti”) and right to left in Greek. Of course, that would imply that we should switch to right-to-left when saying Mass in the English vernacular, which uses the adjective-noun structure.

 

[Vico]

…
go back to the original method of making the sign of the cross
…
Unfortunately, this is the answer.
…

Would the answer then be the small style used before the monophysite controversy?

 

[ioannes_pius]

Am I the only Latin who crosses himself in the Eastern way in private devotion?

 

[Margaret_Ann]

If you follow the rubrics re the sign of the Cross, you make it 36 times during Liturgy.