Armoria - Themes - the cross

MANY kinds of cross appear in heraldry. The simplest variety is the cross throughout, also called a Greek cross – its arms extend from top to bottom (of a field, if not of the entire shield) and side to side. When this appears in red on argent (silver or white), it is usually called the cross of St George. In the fourth of these examples, the field has been changed to ermine, but it remains a St George’s cross.

St George’s cross can also appear in flag form, as in the crest of St Michael’s Church, Observatory. In fact, this crest has a second cross: a cross botony at the head of the staff, and the shield of arms has a Greek cross in a different form: a blue one worn on a surcoat by St Michael.

The Greek cross can be varied in a number of ways, of which the simplest is an alteration to the line of partition. This black cross (on the sinister side of the shield) is indented. On the dexter side is a cross formy with a point at the foot (allowing it to be planted upright in the ground), making it a cross formy fitchy at the foot.

Here is an example the equal-armed cross, or cross humetty – in fact, several examples, since the gold field of this shield is semy of (strewn with) red crosslets humetty.

A variation on the cross humetty is the cross-crosslet, where each arm of the cross ends in a small cross. In the arms at left, on a Nguni shield, there is one in gold on the blue field, while the crest at right also features a gold cross-crosslet.

An ancient variation on the shortened cross has the ends bend around as is found in the metal mounting called a millrind (by which a millstone is attached to its mountings). This is called a cross moline, and it appears in the ancient arms of the Uitenhage de Mist family. Commissioner-General Jacob Abraham Uitenhage de Mist granted his family arms to the Drostdij of Uitenhage, and this has become widely used in the town of that name. Uitenhage’s cross moline also appears in the arms of the Anglican Diocese of Port Elizabeth (above), although with its colours reversed. A slightly different-looking cross moline is found in the arms of the Laerskool Newtonpark in Port Elizabeth.

But perhaps less common in South Africa is the Latin cross, in which the downward arm is roughly twice the length of the other three (or even longer).

A variation on the Latin cross is the patriarchal cross, where a second crossmember, shorter than the main one, appears across the topmost part of the upright. This is a corruption of the type of processional cross carried in front of Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, where the scroll bearing the legend “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudæorum” (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” – this is the wording in Latin; often it is in Greek) or “INRI” (the Latin abbreviation) has been turned into a second beam.

A form of cross familiar on the African coast is the padrão, several of which were placed at prominent points by Portuguese explorers to mark their discoveries, to proclaim the Christian Faith and to assert the authority of the Portuguese king. The arms of the current Roman Catholic Bishop of Port Elizabeth includes the “padrão de São Gregorio” placed at Kwaaihoek by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488.

A similarly monumental style of cross, common in Scotland and Ireland, is the Celtic cross. The Diocese of St John was founded in part by the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and the new Diocese of Umzimvubu, formed out of the old St John Diocese in 1991, boasts such a cross.

Very rare in heraldry is the plain, rough wooden cross, called a cross rustic. A new example (together with a large number of very small crosses, making a field semy of crosslets) appears below in a coat of arms registered in 2001.

If you turn a cross sideways, you get a saltire, or diagonal cross. This is familiar from the flag of Scotland – where it’s called St Andrew’s cross – but is also quite often found in coat-armour in South Africa. Two examples are in the arms of St Andrew’s College, Grahamstown, and the arms of the Viljoen family.

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