Michael,

             I had been taught that the IHS was a kind of monogram for the name of Jesus Christ, and the front part of “In hoc signo vinces”.

However, 25 years ago, I used to smoke, and my brand was Pall Mall filter-less.

On that red pack they had “In Hoc Signo Vinces”.

Of course the cigarettes had nothing to do with, “In this sign you will conquer”.

Unless that was Constantine’s favorite brand also  :^)

Seriously, it was like the combined ρ through the center of χ

That was the Chi-Rho, for the first two letters of Christos, the Chi (χ) and the Rho (ρ).

It was not an anagram.

You can still see it around.

In a similar way is IHS, it is also not an anagram, though most on the web think so.

The more common attempt at making an anagram of it has been, “Iesus Hominum Salvator”.

                                                             Gino

btw – every time I typed IHS, it kept getting auto-“corrected” to HIS, so I had to write things a number of times