labarum

labarumLabarum encircled with the Jesus Prayer, from the cover of a Romanian edition of the Philokalia (1782), an anthology of Greek Christian monastic texts.

labarum, sacred military standard of the Christian Roman emperors, first used by Constantine I in the early part of the 4th century ad. The labarum—a Christian version of the vexillum, the military standard used earlier in the Roman Empire—incorporated the Chi-Rho, the monogram of Christ, in a golden wreath atop the staff. The flag was made of purple silk (purple dye being at this time a rarity derived from a shellfish of the genus Murex) richly embroidered with gold. Although usually suspended from a horizontal bar, it appears to have been displayed occasionally by fastening one of its sides to its staff. In the Middle Ages the pastoral staff of a bishop often had attached to it a small purple scarf known as the vexillum, supposedly derived from the labarum.

According to the 4th-century historian Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine, before the victory over Maxentius (312), Constantine saw a sign of the cross in the sky and the words “in this sign thou shalt conquer” and used it as a talisman in battle. Dating of the labarum is attested by coins issued at Constantinople (now Istanbul) after Constantine’s victory over Licinius in 324.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.