tau.htm for our web site

The logo for the Clinton Franciscan's is a figure of the "Tau" within a double circle. The "Tau" is a traditional Franciscan symbol whose origin is in the Old Testament.

St. Francis used the Tau to sign his name. On one of his journeys to Rome to talk to Pope Innocent III about his new Order, he stopped for Mass at the Church of St. John Lateran. Legend holds that there he heard this reading from Ezekiel, 9:4-6:

Pass through the city [Jerusalem] and mark an X [tau] on the foreheads of those who moan and groan over all the abominations that are practiced within it. To the others I heard him say: 'Pass through the city after them and strike! ...Old men, youths and maidens, women and children, wipe them out. But do not touch anyone marked with the X [tau].'

Moved by the prophet's vision of the faithful marked on their foreheads, St. Francis exclaimed: "This shall be the mark of the Friars Minor, the faithful ones of the Lord." Or so the story goes.

The Tau has been around for a long time and has meant many things in many cultures. In ancient Palestine it referred to a stone marker set up to signify possession and belonging; "taus" were landmarks. Pagan cultures have used the tau cross to symbolize the Tree of Life, regeneration, divine power and hidden wisdom. It has been used as a symbol of Thor's hammer and the cross of Mithraism. The word "Tau" comes from the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet. "Taw" is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and speaks of the concepts of finality and forever. In the Didache, an early Christian text, the tau means the "word of God." St. Anthony, the hermit in the Egyptian desert, chased away a pack of demons with a cross of this type. It is sometimes called "the robber's cross" since the robbers crucified near Jesus were believed to have hung on crosses with the top vertical missing. The Tau cross was used on the standards of the Order of Knights of the Teutonic Crusade during the 14th Century. For St. Francis it was a sign of belonging to Christ.

In the 12th Century Winchester Psalter there is an illustration of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, wherein an angel waits upon the riverbank, holding a garment symbolizing "new life" through baptism. It is drawn in the outline of the Tau. It is a symbol of the act of Jesus on the cross and identifies its wearer as a wholly committed follower of the way of Jesus.

Today the "Tau" is a symbol of consecration for those who follow Christ in the footprints of St. Francis.