Show and Tell: The Story of Constantine's Cross

Welcome to my contribution to Mel's Show and Tell. Thanks for stopping by, but don't forget to check out what the rest of the class is showing.

Today I'd like to tell the story of a particular photograph that I took during one of our travels that I absolutely love. But, in order to really capture the whole story we are going to have to crack our history books open to the time of Constantine I. I believe it's an interesting story in history regardless of one's religious affiliation.

Constantine I was a Roman Emperor during the time period of the early 300's AD. One of the interesting things about Constantine was his famous story of conversion to Christianity during the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. He much like others of his time would have been considered a pagan, revering many different gods. This was during a time Christians were heavily persecuted. They were arrested, tortured, starved, mutilated and also were thrown in the gladiator stadiums to be executed for sport.

Before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, while the troops were marching on, Constantine had a vision where he saw an image of a cross on the sun. This was accompanied by the words "Εν Τούτῳ Νίκα", in latin translates to "In hoc signo vinces", and in English to "In this sign, conquer". According to some accounts, with this revelation, Constantine has all of his troops carry the symbol "Chi-Rho" on their shields.
The symbol is basically the first two letters of the Greek word for "Christ", "Χριστός" on top of each other and they considered this a representation of the crucifixion.

I found various versions of this symbol, like in Rhodes Greece on this piece in a museum.


Constantine won the battle, and eventually went on to make a number of influences to what Christianity looks like today. His actual conversion to Christianity is by some speculative, as evidenced by his continued affinity for some of the pagan gods, but his influence marked some very notable changes for the religion. For example, Christians at the time observed Saturday as a day to remember God but it was because of Constantine that Christians commonly observe Sunday as a day for God. Some believe this is because of Constantine's glorious vision from God with a cross on the sun. Others believe it was because he still had an affinity for Apollo, the god of the sun. Regardless of the truth of the inspiration, the fact of his influence still remains.

Eventually, it was Constantine's desire to have a capital of the Roman Empire to be outside of Rome to a more centrally located area. He took the city of Byzantium which was located on the Bosphorus Straights of present day Turkey and turned it into Constantinople.

And just like the song goes..."Istanbul was once Constantinople..."

Now on to the story of the photo. Marvy and I took a trip to Europe in 2007, which included a stay in Istanbul, Turkey. On our last day there as we were pulling out of the port, the sun was setting beautifully to the gorgeous backdrop of Istanbul. I had my camera on a mini-tripod and just snapped away shots. It wasn't until I was able to view the photo on my laptop before I realized the hidden gem in the photo, a cross on the sun.


Obviously this isn't a real cross, as this is a Muslim country. It is two large construction type of scaffolding that are coincidentaly forming a cross but...I like to think that while in his city I captured a shot of Constantine's cross.