How real is the True Cross?

Are these holy relics really the remains of the wooden cross on which Christ died two thousand years ago, or the petrified crumbs of a medieval hoax?

The True Cross is perhaps the holiest relic in all Christendom (since the grail has yet to be found), and bits of wood have drawn huge crowds of pilgrim worshippers since the 3rd century AD. In all that time, skeptics must have scratched their heads and wondered… Is it real?

The True Cross is definitely the most precious relic to emerge from the Crusades. It trumps the Bones of Saints and all four heads of John the Baptist. It’s even holier than the Crown of Thorns and the Spear of Longinus sold by King Baldwin II of Jerusalem to King Louis IX of France. Why? Because the True Cross could (can) heal the terminally ill patients, change the direction of the wind and give immediate aid to Christian soldiers losing battles in the Holy Land. But a more significant contribution was felt back in Europe, after it was broken into pieces and enshrined in the best churches of many different nations. Santo Toribio de Liébana in Spain presently holds the largest of these pieces and is one of the most frequented Roman Catholic pilgrimage sites. For many centuries the True Cross has brought pilgrims with pennies in their pockets – it was medieval big business and miraculously profitable today.

To trace the story of the True Cross through the pages of Roman Catholic hagiography we must first travel to ancient Britain in the latter half of the third century AD. A Roman army under Constantius Chlorus was holding the untamed island for the Empire primarily for its tin. Now in that time, the political situation in Rome was quite unsettled. It came to pass that Constantius was made a "Caesar." With that appointment, he was compelled to cast off his legal concubine, an attractive British barmaid called Helena, in order to take the Emperor's step daughter to wife.

To complicate matters, Constantius had a son by Helena. His name was Flavius Constantine, and he was born in Britain around 272 AD. Flavius received little education and took up soldering early in life. He proved his valor in wars against Egypt and Persia. When his father died, the troops made him Caesar and a year and a half later, Emperor. A dutiful son, Emperor Constantine commanded that the Empire honor Helena as was due the mother of a Sovereign. It was about at this time that Helena, now 63 years old, converted to the Christian faith.

Constantine, together with Licinius, eager to consolidate Christian support in all provinces, issued the Edict of Milan, extending religious toleration to all religions and ordering the restoration of Christian property seized during the persecutions. This historic declaration, in effect, conceded the defeat of paganism.

After years of struggle, Constantine defeated and eventually killed Licinius and became sole emperor. At this time he declared himself a Christian and invited his subjects to join him in embracing the new faith.

When Constantine set up shop in Constantinople he sent his mother to the Holy Land to search out the cross upon which Christ had been crucified some 300 years earlier. At that time legends of its existence filled Christian dinner halls with delight - it was a mystical coveted object to fresh converts eager to embrace all details of Christ’s compelling story.

As a former Briton, Helena had spent most of her life following Roman Legions, and she knew how to get things done. Upon her arrival in Palestine she convened a group of Rabbin and demanded they tell her where the cross was hidden. These men either could not or would not reveal its location - so she ordered they be burned alive. Upon sentencing they produced a man whom they promised could find the "True Cross" as he knew where it lay hidden. But unfortunately this man also refused to cooperate - so good Saint Helena sentenced the entire ensemble to death by starvation. After only six days without food the Rabbi took her to the place where he said the cross was hidden – it was now buried underneath a pagan temple dedicated to Venus.

Why would the Jewish elders, who were so concerned that followers of Jesus might try to sneak his body out of the tomb (they demanded a full guard of Roman soldiers watch over it) not have been more thorough in their disposal of the cross?

After all, if we are to believe the legend, these Jews removed the True Cross, apparently along with at least two others, and hid them away from the cultish followers of Jesus for three centuries... If they did not want the Christians to have the cross as a relic, why hide it? Why not simply burn it up and scatter the ashes?

Catholic mythology next tells us that Helena and her searchers offered prayer, which was immediately followed by a miraculous movement of the earth. It’s also mentioned that a perfume filled the air and converted everyone not already Christian. But it seems more likely that Helena had the temple destroyed and set the Jews to digging. When they had dug down about 20 feet or so, someone discovered not one but three crosses, which were placed before Helena.

Helena now had three crosses, but how could she tell which was the True Cross?

Enter Macarius the Bishop of Jerusalem, (St Macarius of Jerusalem is usually shown holding the cross in medieval art) who came up with an ingenious suggestion: why not test the three relics to see which has the most miraculous powers? They used a sick woman in their testing, and by some accounts she was near death. She was made to lie on each of the three crosses in turn; the one that healed her would be the True Cross. It was not until she lay upon the third cross that she was miraculously revitalized. This then, had to be the very crucifix upon which Jesus had died.

A letter from Paulinus to Severus, incorporated into the Breviary of Paris, declares that Helena herself came up with the idea for discovering the True Cross. She had the body of a dead man exhumed and brought to her and touched his body with each of the crosses until he was restored to life. In another story Ambrose claims that the "titulus" was still on the real cross. This would, as one would imagine, obviate the necessity for any further validating tests.

If one thinks upon this tale, it becomes apparent that (in common with so many other treasure hunting stories) despite the intervening centuries there is always somebody somewhere who knows just where to look for any desired object. In the case of the True Cross, Judas knew that it was buried some 20 feet below the temple of Venus which had been constructed well before he was born. Also, one considers the soldiers of Rome to have been practical men, certainly unlikely to go to the trouble and expense of making crosses for one-time use, after which they were discarded… After all, they used a lot of crosses in their work. When Rome's legions put down the slave rebellion led by Spartacus, in the year 71 BC, they lined the Appian Way from Capua to Rome with 6,000 crosses bearing former members of the rebel army. Emperor Augustus boasted he had captured 30,000 runaway slaves and that he had crucified every one of them who was not claimed (W.S. Davis, "Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome," New York, (1913) p.211). When Varus, governor of Syria, took his troops to Palestine (6 AD) to put down one of the innumerable Jewish rebellions, he crucified 2000 rebels. In putting down the Jewish rebellion which resulted in the destruction of the Temple, so many Jews were crucified that Josephus was prompted to write that "the multitude of these was so great that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses were wanting for the bodies." (Josephus, ix 3) Josephus informs us that 1,197,000 Jews died in the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, but Tacitus says it was no more that 600,000 (Tacitus, v. 13).

With all the crosses used by Rome in Palestine and the three hundred year interval between the crucifixion of our Lord and Helena's serendipitous discovery, does it not seem likely that she was given any old cross made "holy" more by her eagerness to lay her hands on a relic than by any blessings attributable to the Lord's passion?

After raising churches at the site and in Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives, Helena returned to Constantinople, apparently taking part of the True Cross with her to her son the Emperor and leaving the rest in Jerusalem, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. (Some accounts claim a third portion was dispatched to Rome).

The True Cross that remained in Jerusalem was enshrined in a sliver box in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher until the year 614 AD when Chrosroes II of Persia conquered the land, captured the city and moved the sacred relic to his own kingdom as a curiosity. Thirteen years later the Roman Emperor Heraclius defeated Chrosroes and recaptured the relic, which he at first placed in Constantinople and later, back in its original site in Jerusalem.

Again another portion of the cross was taken to Rome in the seventh century by Sergius I, a Pope of Byzantine origin.

The True Cross that remained in Jerusalem was no longer displayed but hidden by dutiful Christians who only allowed it to be uncovered in 1099 during the First Crusade.

It remained a venerated item in Christian hands until the Battle of Hattin in 1187, when the Moslem leader Saladin captured the relic. There follows a curious story that Saladin, after winning the Battle of Hattin and capturing of Jerusalem, rode a horse through the streets of Damascus with the relic dragging behind his mount's tail.

‘After The Horns of Hattin, Saladin was master of the Moslem world, and rode through the streets of Damascus with the captured True Cross tied to his horse's tail and dragging in the dust."
The Crusades
Henry Treece
1962

Despite the valiant efforts of Richard I (The Lion Heart) during the Third Crusade, the True Cross remained in Moslem hands. The beam itself disappeared, but fragments of the cross that broke off were collected and brought back to Europe after the Crusades.
Indeed a great many pieces seem to have broke off and been collected… By the end of the Middle Ages so many churches claimed to possess a piece of the True Cross that John Calvin remarked,
"There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poictiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it."
— Calvin, Traité Des Reliques

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 the criticisms of Calvin and Erasmus. 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 meters in height, with transverse branch of two meters wide, proportions not at all abnormal. He calculated: supposing the Cross to have been of pine-wood (based on his microscopic analysis of the fragments) and giving it a weight of about seventy-five kilograms, we find the original volume of the cross to be .178 cubic meters. The total known volume of known relics of the True Cross, according to his catalogue, amounts to approximately .004 cubic meters, leaving a volume of .174 cubic meters lost, destroyed, or otherwise unaccounted for.

Other scientific study of the extant relics has been conducted which confirms that they are from a single species of tree. Four cross particles from four European churches, i.e. S.Croce in Rome, Notre Dame, the cathedral of Pisa and the cathedral to Florenz, were microscopically examined. "The pieces came all together from olive." (Ziehr, William, Das Kreuz, Stuttgart 1997, Seite 63)

Is the True Cross real?

It was real enough for 12th Crusaders to fight and die for, and today the relics continue to draw thousands of tourists from all around the world – the pieces that remain should be venerated as the spectacular little bits of history they truly are.

This article is copywrite material and is not available for distribution without express written permission.