Why skull on crucifix

Longinus wields the spear, and Stephaton the sponge. Adam lies in his grave under the cross. MS7, Cathedral Archive, Girona, c. A wonderfully detailed and labelled Crucifixion scene from a Spanish illuminated manuscript of the late 10th Century, now in the Girona Cathedral Archive, has names for all the characters involved in the Crucifixion story, depicts the holy grail collecting the blood of Christ, and the tomb of Adam directly beneath the cross of Christ.

A somewhat anti-Semitic scene carved by Pisano for a baptistery in Pisa, Italy, in about AD, has the good disciples in a crowd on the left and the unbelieving Jews to the right. Mary is swooning in a very uncomfortable-looking posture. He depicts the grave of Adam and the place of the crucifixion by the skull he has beneath the cross. The scandal of the cross, dividing believers from unbelievers, Pisano, c.

The skull became an established part of the Russian icon tradition of the crucifixion and on some medieval free-standing crucifixes.

The covering of the skull, a bodily image of fallen man, with the sacrificial blood of the Lamb generates a new image, one which recalls St. In other words, at the time of the Passion, Christ lends His Sacred Image to fallen man, cascading it over the faithful through His sacrificial blood. It is because Golgotha is considered the burial place of the first man that depictions of the death of the Son of Man often include a skull at the foot of the cross. This is the skull of Adam, and offers to those of us unable to make pilgrimage to the Holy Land some small share in the Chapel of Adam.

We make of our prayer and veneration a type of mental pilgrimage to the Chapel of Adam, not as it is known in reality, but as it is depicted at the foot of the Cross. Darren and Brad CC. An ancient tradition links Golgotha to the very beginnings of sin. It is known by many names — Golgotha, Calvary, the Place of the Skull.

Support Aleteia! Was it an allusion to the fact that Christ was killed on Golgotha, which means the place of the skull? See, there is a tradition that Calvary is near where Adam was buried. There is an ancient Jewish tradition that Adam was buried just outside of the place where Jerusalem is. Jerome, all the way back in A.

Legend holds that the skull of Adam was lifted up in the earthquake that happened after the crucifixion. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre — which is the Church that is right on Calvary — has a chapel for Adam exactly one floor below the altar of the crucifixion.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they created original sin, which cursed all the generations after them. If I, being pregnant, drink buckets of wine, I will probably physically hurt my unborn child and the rest of the generations after will be affected.

If someone heaven forbid! But, with Jesus, the new Adam, that changes. His blood washes us all clean from this original sin and we are free to be with God in paradise once more. Furthermore, it is a reminder that the promises of the Old Testament are fulfilled in the New Testament.