True Cross

According to Christian tradition, the True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus Christ was crucified. According to medieval legend, the True Cross was built from the Tree of Jesse, which was identified as the Tree of Knowledge that had grown in the Garden of Eden. Whether it still exists is uncertain.

In the fourth century, a search for the site of the crucifixion was launched by Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem. According to legend, now believed to be apocryphal, while on a visit to Palestine, Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine I, is said to have found it in a cave near Jerusalem with two other crosses. However, fragments are known to have been brought back to Constantinople for veneration in approximately 327.

In Constantinople the fragments were 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 were 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.

During this period the remainder of the True Cross remained in Jerusalem from where it was seized by Arnulf Malecorne, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, after the First Crusade. The True Cross then 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 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 subsequently disappeared.

By the end of the Middle Ages so many churches claimed to possess a piece of the True Cross, that Erasmus famously said to have remarked that 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 visited Roman Catholic pilgrimage sites. It is likely that during that time there were many fakes in circulation. Present reforms having eliminated the commercial display of relics, forbidden their sale, and Church authorities having been made aware of the problem of the counterfitting of relics, fakes of unknown provenance have been winnowed from circulation.

In 1870, Rohault de Fleury in his "Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion" (Paris, 1870) made a study of the relics in reference to Erasmus's criticism. He drew up a catalogue of all known relics of the True Cross showing that, in spite of what various authors have claimed, the fragments of the Cross brought together again would not reach one-third that of a cross which has been supposed to have been three or four metres in height, with transverse branch of two metres, proportions not at all abnormal. He calculated: supposing the Cross to have been of pine-wood and giving it a weight of about seventy-five kilograms, we find the volume of the cross was 178,000,000 cubic millimetres. The total known volume of the True Cross, according to his catalogue amounts to approximately 4,000,000 cubic millimetres, allowing the missing part to be as big as we will, the lost parts or the parts the existence of which has been overlooked, we still find ourselves far short of 178,000,000 cubic millimetres, which should make up the True Cross.

A feast day commemorating the "Exaltation of the Holy Cross" is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on October 14. 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 the liturgical year.

External link

Catholic Encyclopedia: True Cross