Triclavianism

Triclavianism is the belief that three nails were used to crucify Jesus Christ. The exact number of the Holy Nails has been a matter of speculation for centuries. Three nails are sometimes depicted as a symbolic reference to the Holy Trinity. In the early Church, two nails were posited by Ambrose (omitting any in the feet), notably in Ambrose's De obitu Theodosii. Nonnus of Panopolis, in his paraphrase of the Gospel of John, has the crowd cry for Jesus to be crucified upon "four spikes" (19:15) but eventually hung with only three, "a single nail [...] hammered into both his feet" (19:18).