INRI
INRI are the initials of the Latin for “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”, the charge the Gospel of John says Pilate had fixed to Christ’s cross. Crucifixes in the Western churches show the four letters on a small board above his head.
Meaning
The Gospel of John says Pilate wrote the title himself and had it put on the cross in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. INRI shortens the Latin words, spelled Ihesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum in the medieval form that Marianne Ritsema van Eck of the Leiden Medievalists Blog quotes (the Vulgate prints Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Judæorum). In the Western tradition the title is lettered with these Latin initials. Orthodox Christians use the Greek initials INBI (ΙΝΒΙ) instead, and on many icons and crosses the bar carries “King of Glory” in place of the charge.
Origin and history
Romans put a placard called the titulus at the top of a cross, giving the condemned man’s name and his sentence, as the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908) explains. The four Gospels word Christ’s title differently. Matthew has “This is Jesus the King of the Jews”, Mark “The King of the Jews”, Luke “This is the King of the Jews”. Only John gives “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”, and INRI takes its letters from his wording. John adds that many people read it because the place was close to the city, and that it was written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The chief priests asked Pilate to write instead “This man said, I am the king of the Jews”, and he answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
The title was soon venerated as a relic. The Peregrinatio Etheriae, a pilgrim’s account of Jerusalem in about 380, describes Good Friday there: the bishop has the wood of the cross and the Title set on a table, and the faithful file past and touch them with forehead and eyes, but are forbidden to touch them with their hands. In the art of the Middle Ages the board at the top of the cross was often lettered I.N.R.I., as on the Crucifixion Fra Angelico painted in the 1440s for the convent of San Marco in Florence.
The relic in Rome
The basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome keeps a relic believed to be the Title itself. On 1 February 1492 the diarist Stefano Infessura wrote, “That day there was a miracle in the city”: builders had found a lead box in a hollow in the church’s roof, under a marble plaque carved HIC EST TITULUS VERAE CRUCIS, “this is the title of the true cross”. Ritsema van Eck points out that the Nuremberg patrician Nikolaus Muffel wrote of seeing the inscription at Santa Croce in 1452, forty years before the find, and suspects that the 1492 discovery was staged.
The tablet is a single piece of walnut about 26 by 14 by 4 cm, lettered with the phrase in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. In 2002 the physicists Francesco Bella and Carlo Azzi of Roma Tre University published a radiocarbon date for its wood of AD 980 to 1146. They wrote that the date allows other explanations of the tablet, such as that it is a copy of the original.
INBI and “King of Glory” on Orthodox crosses
On the three-bar Orthodox cross the top bar is the title board, which St Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKinney, Texas, describes as hung over Christ’s head “in mockery”. Where it carries the charge it is abbreviated to the Greek initials INBI, from John’s Greek, Ἰησοῦς ὁ Ναζωραῖος ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων. The Orthodox Church in America notes that Orthodox icons often write “King of Glory” on the bar instead, and the McKinney parish describes the title board lettered IC XC, the first and last letters of Christ’s name in Greek.
Why three languages
Fr Vladimir Berzonsky, a priest of the Orthodox Church in America, gives the plain reason first: the notice stood on a main route into the city, and the Roman rulers, the Greek merchants and the Jews of Palestine, who spoke Aramaic, could all read the charge. (His translation of John names Aramaic where the Knox Bible has Hebrew.) He then gives the reading of Maximus the Confessor, in Chapters on Knowledge 96: the Hebrew stands for “theological revelation” and the Greek for natural contemplation, and Berzonsky ties the Latin, the language of the empire Maximus thought the most severe, to the discipline of asceticism.
Often confused with IHS
INRI and IHS are both letters carved or painted on crosses. IHS is the name of Jesus, contracted: the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that Christian inscriptions shortened the holy names from the beginning, writing IC and XC or IHS and XPS for Iesous Christos. INRI is the charge on the cross, taken from Latin.
See also
Orthodox cross, Latin cross, IHS, Chi-Rho, Skull and crossbones, Ichthys.
Sources
- John, chapter 19, The Holy Bible, Knox translation, via New Advent, John 19:19–22 (Knox, Vulgate and Greek)
- Archæology of the Cross and Crucifix, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–1912), via New Advent, Crucifixion among the Romans; the Cross of Christ
- The True Cross, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–1912), via New Advent, Growth of the cult
- IHS, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–1912), via New Advent
- Fake news in fifteenth-century Rome: The miraculous discovery of the Titulus Crucis relic, Marianne Ritsema van Eck, 11 May 2018, Leiden Medievalists Blog
- 14C Dating of the ‘Titulus Crucis’, Francesco Bella and Carlo Azzi, Radiocarbon 44 (3), 2002, pp. 685–689, Radiocarbon (University of Arizona), via Cambridge Core, Sample description; conclusions
- An Explanation of the Russian Orthodox Three-Bar Cross, St Nicholas Orthodox Church, McKinney, Texas (orthodox.net), The Top Bar
- The Russian Orthodox Cross (Questions & Answers), Orthodox Church in America, Answer
- Languages of the Cross, Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky, 22 March 2009, Orthodox Church in America
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research