Cross Pommee With Half-Circle Below

It is a rank badge marking a vigil-level service. A typikon is the Orthodox rulebook that orders services, and this sign says the feast or saint's commemoration beside it gets the vigil order.

Placed beside a date in a church calendar or the margin of a service-book line, it tells the reader how the day should be celebrated. In the Russian tradition a vigil links great vespers to matins in one all-night service, often adding the blessing of bread and anointing with oil near the end. Away from a calendar, surrounding words carry it.

Where did this sign come from?

It grew out of feast-ranking systems in Orthodox liturgical books. The broader system appears in Jerusalem lectionaries preserved in Armenian and Georgian translations from the 5th–7th centuries and in the Constantinopolitan Typikon of the 9th–11th centuries. The three-rank system is first described by Nikon of Montenegro in the late 11th century; the signs appear in Slavonic manuscripts from the 14th century and become regular in the 16th century.

A convention that grew, not an emblem designed once: each publishing tradition redrew the marks while the ranking job stayed.

Why does the same sign look different?

Its job is fixed; each book tradition draws it differently. 'Pommee' is a heraldry word for a cross whose arms end in round knobs; versions also use five-bead construction or arms pinched in the middle, and the half-circle can be a small hint below or nearly wrap the cross.

Documented variants come from Russian editions, Moscow and Pochaev layouts, Kievan Cave and Ukrainian traditions, diaspora printing, and Slovak Byzantine use; Greek books mark the same festivity levels differently. Read the surrounding calendar text, not the silhouette alone.