Crozier
.
The ceremonial staff carried by Christian bishops (and sometimes by abbots and abbesses).
Crucifix
.
A representation of the
cross
of Christ, usually with the figure of Christ.
Evangelicals
sometimes have a horror of it as idolatrous or as suggesting a dead rather than a risen Christ; at best, therefore, for them the cross should be empty (i.e. not bearing a figure).
Crucifixion
.
The punishment of death suffered by Jesus (and, traditionally, a few other Christian
martyrs
). Realistic crucifixion scenes emerged in the West with devotion to the passion, which developed in the 12th–13th cents.
Crusades
(Lat.,
cruciata
, ‘cross-marked’, i.e.
cruce signati
, those wearing the insignia of scarlet crosses). Military expeditions in the name of Christianity, directed chiefly against Muslim territories to recapture the Holy Land, but sometimes also against other non-Christians, and occasionally against Christian heretics. Of the crusades to reconquer the Holy Land, the traditional count lists eight.
Juridically, a crusader was one who had ‘taken the cross’, i.e. vowed to go on a crusade. Failure to fulfil the vow might entail
excommunication
, but in return for it the Church granted
indulgences
(crusade bulls by the mid-13th cent. promised full remission of temporal punishment incurred by
sin
) and security of a crusader's property in his absence on the crusade. These privileges came to be offered by the
papacy
to those engaging in almost any campaign which could be presented as a defence of the Church including, in the 13th and 14th cents., the defence of the Church's property in Italy.
Cry of dereliction
(of Jesus on the cross)
:
Crypto-Jews
.
Jews who secretly practised their religion while officially converting to either Christianity or Islam. Well-known examples are the
Almohads
of Spain and N. Africa of the 12th cent, the neofiti of S. Italy (late 13th–16th cent.), the Conversos or
Marranos
of Spain (15th and 16th cents.) and the Jadid al-Islam of Meshed, Persia (19th cent.). See
ANUSIM
.