Crucifixion facts for kids

Jesus being crucified

Crucifixion is a way to execute (kill) someone, usually because they have committed a crime. It was used as a capital punishment by the government of Rome. A prisoner was beaten with whips, and made to carry their own cross. They were either tied or nailed to the cross. The Romans used different types of crosses: T-shaped, X-shaped, and sometimes just trees. It killed people by making them bleed, go into shock, and making it hard for them to breathe, eventually dying of suffocation. Some of the people would live for several days before dying. The Roman soldiers (which were like the police of that time) would often break the legs of the criminal to speed it up.

Jesus Christ

The most famous person to have been crucified was Jesus Christ, the Son of God according to the Christian religion. He was crucified along with two thieves. The cross later became a symbol of Christianity. Six of the twelve apostles of Jesus were also crucified later on, but most of them asked to be crucified in a different way from Jesus. For example, Andrew (who later became the patron saint of Scotland) was crucified on an X-shaped cross. In the year 337 AD, Emperor Constantine I abolished crucifixion in the Roman Empire.

Images for kids

• 

  A 15th century depiction of Jesus crucified between the two thieves

• 

  Gabriel von Max's 1866 painting Martyress depicts a crucified young woman and a young man laying flowers at her feet

• 

  Crucifixion window by Henry E. Sharp, 1872, in St. Matthew's German Evangelical Lutheran Church, Charleston, South Carolina

• 

  A nineteenth-century depiction of the crucifixion of rebel leaders by the Carthaginians in 238 BC.
• 

  The Twenty Six Martyrs of Japan

• 

  Poster showing a German soldier nailing a man to a tree, as American soldiers come to his rescue. Published in Manila by Bureau of Printing (1917).

• 

  Prisoner kneeling on chains, thumbs supporting arms, photographic print on stereo card, Mukden, China (c. 1906)

• 

  Devotional crucifixion in San Fernando, Pampanga, Philippines, Easter 2006

• 

  Sculpture construction: Crucifixion, homage to Mondrian, by Barbara Hepworth, United Kingdom (2007)

• 

  Allegory of Poland (1914–1918), postcard by Sergey Solomko

• 

  Car-float at the feast of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos, Colonia Doctores, Mexico City (2011)

• 

  Christ crucified, by Diego Velázquez (1632)

See also

In Spanish: Crucifixión para niños