Classifying the Cross: Justus Lipsius’s Forensic History of Crucifixion

J. Neil Daniels

In 1593, the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) published a work unlike anything his contemporaries had seen. De Cruce, libri tres (“Three Books on the Cross”) was not a devotional meditation nor a theological treatise in the conventional sense. Rather, it was a meticulous, almost forensic investigation into crucifixion in the ancient world, an unflinching study of the mechanics, the variations, and the sheer brutality of Rome’s most infamous execution method.

Classifying the Cross

Lipsius began by untangling the terminology. The crux simplex was the simplest form—an upright stake, bare and unadorned. More complex was the crux compacta, composed of two beams joined in several possible configurations: the decussata (X-shaped, as in the cross of St. Andrew), the commissa (T-shaped), and the immissa (†-shaped). Drawing on both Roman authors and early Christian witnesses such as Irenaeus and Tertullian, Lipsius argued convincingly that Jesus was executed upon the crux immissa, the form most familiar in Christian iconography.

His text was often accompanied by stark engravings, which gave visual weight to his descriptions. They conveyed, in black ink and sharp lines, the reality that crucifixion was not merely a death, but was an ordeal designed for public degradation and prolonged suffering.

A Humanist Amid Upheaval

Born in 1547 in what is now Belgium, Lipsius came of age in a Europe fractured by religious war. A gifted classicist, he edited Seneca, Tacitus, and Livy, his scholarship marked by precision and depth. His philosophical project—later called “Neostoicism”—sought to combine Stoic fortitude with Christian faith, offering a moral framework suited to an age of turmoil.

Lipsius traveled widely, taught at some of the most respected universities of his day, and eventually settled in Louvain, where he served as a professor until his death in 1606. His works left a lasting mark, shaping both historical inquiry and moral thought.

In De Cruce, Lipsius accomplished something rare. He stripped the cross of purely sentimental treatment, studying it as an artifact of history and a device of execution, yet without emptying it of its profound significance. One could measure it, diagram it, classify its forms… and still feel the weight of what it bore.

For Further Study

Lipsius, Justus. De crvce libri tres : ad sacram profanamque historiam utiles ; vnà cum notis. Antwerp: Ex Officina Plantiniana, apud viduam & Ioannem Moretum, 1593. PDF available at Internet Archive, URL: https://archive.org/details/decrvcelibritres00lips

And as a secondary reference (the corrected 1640 edition):
Lipsius, Justus. Iusti Lipsii De cruce libri tres : ad sacram profanamque historiam utiles : vna cum notis … Braunschweig: Typis Andreae Dunckeri, impensis Godfridi Müllers, 1640. Available at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/iustilipsidecruc00lips