St Francis' Life
After his commission at the foot of the San Damiano Cross, Saint Francis chose
a more ancient symbol of redemption as his standard: the Tau cross.
In commenting
on the scriptures of Israel, the early Christian writers used its Greek
translation, the Septuagint, in which the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet,
the tau, was transcribed as a “T” in Greek. Prefigured in the last letter
of the Hebrew alphabet, then, the stylized Tau cross came to represent the
means by which Christ reversed the disobedience of the old Adam and became
our Savior as the “New Adam.” Saint Francis had first encountered this symbol
when he was caring for lepers. He and the religious followers of St. Anthony
the Hermit, who were working with him, used Christ’s cross—shaped like a
Greek “T”—as a protection against the plague and other skin diseases. Saint
Francis eventually accepted and adapted the “T” as his own crest and signature.
For him, the “T” represented life-long fidelity to the Passion of Christ.
It was his pledge to serve the least, the leper and outcast of his day.
The Tau imagery was intensified when Pope Innocent III opened the Fourth
Latern Council (1215) using the exhortation of the Old Testament prophet
Ezekiel (9:4): We are called to reform our lives, to stand in the presence
of God as righteous people. God will know us by the sign of the “Tau” marked
on our foreheads. This symbolic imagery, used by the same Pope who commissioned
Francis’ new community a brief five years earlier, was immediately taken
to heart as the friars’ call to reform.
Knowing that the best documents
and decrees from “above” go unnoticed until they are translated into good
deeds in the streets “below,” Saint Francis stretched out his arms and proclaimed
to his friars that their religious habit (tunic) was the Tau cross. Not
only did the habit reflect the shape of this cross, but it also wrapped
each friar in his life-long commitment to become a walking crucifix, the
incarnation of a compassionate God.
Additional Historical Comment
We know from ancient texts that Roman crosses consisted of two pieces. The
stipes was the upright piece, fixed in the ground, often permanently. In
restless areas and times with constant executions there could have been
whole groves of them. The horizontal piece was called the patibulum; it
weighed about a hundred pounds or so, and the condemned person was usually
forced to carry it to the place of execution. Hence his name, the patibulatus.
After the patibulatus carried the crosspiece of his cross out to the field
of execution, he’d be attached to it with ropes or with nails—hence the
term crucifixio, from crux, cross, and figo, to affix. Then he’d be hauled
up so that the patibulum could be fastened to the stipes. We tend to think
of the two pieces being mortised into each other to form the familiar Latin-cross
shape ( † ). More probably the Roman army carpenters, with hundreds and
thousands of crosses to make, didn’t bother with that kind of fancy joinery.
They probably just fixed a peg in the top of the stipes and bored a hole
in the patibulum; that would make it easier to assemble the cross in a single
motion, and it would make the weight of the crossbeam and the crucified
man hold the cross together; it would result in a shape like the Greek letter
tau ( T ).
So, in his reverence for the tau cross, Saint Francis may have
“understood” more about Christian history than most people suspect.
Source: The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi