Reference: La croix huguenote

[sovevuni]

Son origine reste en fait un mystère, certains disent qu'elle a été inventée par un orfèvre nîmois en s'inspirant de la croix du Languedoc, d'autres qu'elle serait issue de la croix de l'ordre du Saint Esprit qui lui est exactement semblable, sauf la colombe est inscrite dans la croix au lieu d'être pendante au dessous

Comments

[abishag]

Interesting- particularly as I am at present reading a biography of Catherine de Medicis- aka a history of mid-16th century France; Also because my daughter lives in the departement of which Nancy is the chef lieu.
But perhaps the most interesting aspects are that I had never seen it before, and that to my English eyes it looks awfully ornate, and pictorially symbolic and *catholic*.
In England the great divide is between the crucifix and the plain Latin cross, which protestants, especially non-conformists, are taught represents the resurrection.

[sovevuni]

Personally, I also find it rather "heavy symbolic", something you wouldn't expect from Protestants...

[goddessofchaos]

I have one of those crosses! It belonged to my great-aunt - she suffered from dementia the last ten years of her life and when she died we found two of these crosses with the few possessions she had at the nursing home, together with two beautiful crosses from the African Tuareg tribe. It took me many weeks of Internet research to figure out what the crosses were. We never did know why she had them - she was a Methodist missionary in the Ivory Coast, so I'm not sure what significance those crosses had to her. But she always kept them close to her, so they must have meant something.