True Cross

The True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus Christ was crucified. Whether it still exists today is uncertain. A feast day commemorating St. Helena's "Invention of the True Cross" is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on May 3. (See also Roodmas) The same event is celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox Church as the "Exaltation of the Holy and Life-giving Cross" on September 15, and is one of the twelve Great Feasts of their liturgical year.

It was allegedly found by Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine I, in a cave near Jerusalem with two other crosses. She brought fragments back to Constantinople for veneration in approximately 326. From Constantinople, the True Cross was broken up, and the pieces were widely distributed; in the fourth century, St Cyril of Jerusalem remarked that the "whole earth is full of the relics of the Cross of Christ." His contemporary, the travelling nun of Bordeaux, Silvia (Etheria), in her Peregrinatio of the Holy Land testifies how highly these relics of the crucifixion were prized. St. John Chrysostom relates that fragments of the True Cross are kept in golden reliquaries, which men reverently wear upon their persons. About 455 Juvenal, Patriarch of Jerusalem, sent to Pope Leo I a fragment of the precious wood, according to the Letters of Saint Leo.

In the meantime, the rest of the True Cross remained in Jerusalem, still in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, when Arnulf Malecorne, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, seized it after the First Crusade. The True Cross became the most sacred relic of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. A piece of the True Cross was the most important relic carried by the later Crusaders. It remained housed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, now under the protection of the Latin Patriarch, who marched with it ahead of the army before every battle. It was captured by Saladin during the Battle of Hattin in 1187 and disappeared.

Finally, so many churches claimed to possess a piece of the True Cross, that Erasmus said there was enough wood in them to build a ship. Santo Toribio de Liébana in Spain holds the biggest of these pieces and is one of the most privileged pilgrimage sites for the Catholic Church. It is possible that many of these pieces are fakes, which may have been sold by travelling merchants in the Middle Ages.

According to its medieval legend, the True Cross was built from the Tree of Jesse, which was identified as the very Tree of Knowledge that had grown in the Garden of Eden.

External link

Catholic Encyclopedia: True Cross