 Atrial cross

Atrial cross () is called, in the Mexican Colonial Conventual constructions, the sculptures of crosses created by the mendicant friars in the atriums of the churches, symbolically pointing to the center of the towns given their arrangement between the longitudinal and transverse axis of the atrium.As Priest Arturo Schroeder Cordero cited in his article "The functions of the conventual atrium in the Mexican 16th century", the crosses were made in the beginning of wood and later in stone, since these functioned as lightning rods, as was the case of the huge atrial cross of the Convent of San José de los Naturales in Mexico City, which was split in two by a lightning in the early 16th century.