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 CROSS

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CROSS

and simple. In the latter part of that centiuy what is known as the "monogrammatic cross" 'P' makes its appearance; it closely resembles the T^ plain cross, and foreshadows its complete triumph in Chris- tian art. The early years of the fifth century are of the highest importance in this development, because it was then that the undisguised cross first appears. As we have seen, such was the diffidence induced, and the habit of caution enforced, by three centuries of persecution, that the faithful had hesitated all that time to display the sign of Redemption openly and publicly. Constantine by the Edict of Milan had given defitiitive peace to theChurch ; yet, for another century the faithful did not judge it opportune to abandon the use of the Constant inian monogram in one or other of its many fonns But the fifth century marks the period when Christian art broke away from old fears, and, secure in its triimiph, displayed before the world, now become Christian also, the sign of its redemption. To bring about so profound a change in the artistic traditions of Christianity, besides the altered condition of the Church in the eyes of the Roman State, two facts of great importance played a part: the miracu- lous apparition of the Cross to Constantine and the finding of the Holy Wood.

Constantine having declared war on Maxentius had invaded Italy. During the campaign which ensued he is said to have .seen in the heavens one day a lu- minous cross together with the words EN- TOTTfil- JflKA (In this conquer.) During the night that followed that day, he saw again, in sleep, the same cro.ss, and Christ, appearing with it, admonished him to place it on his standards. Thus the Labarum took its origin, and under this glorious banner Constantine overcame his adversary near the Milvian Bridge, on 28 October, 312 (see Constantine the Great). The second event was of even greater importance. In the year 326 the mother of Constantine, Helena, then about 80 years old, having journeyed to Jerusalem, undertook to rid the Holy Sepulchre of the mound of earth heaped upon and arovmd it, and to destroy the pagan buildings that profaned its site. Some revela- tions which she had received gave her confidence that she would discover the Saviour's Tomb and His Cross. The work was carried on diligently, with the co-opera- tion of St. Macarius, bishop of the city. The Jews had hidden the Cross in a ditch or well, and covered it over with stones, so that the faithful might not come and venerate it. Only a chosen few among the Jews knew the exact spot where it had been hidden, and one of them, named Juda.s, touched by Divine inspiration, pointed it out to the excavators, for which act he was highly praised by St. Helena. Judas afterwards be- came a Christian saint, and is honoured under the name of Cj-riacus. During the excavation three crosses were found, but because the tilvlus was de- tached from the Cross of Christ, there was no means of identifying it Following an inspiration from on high, Macarius caused the three crosses to be carried, one after the other, to the bedside of a worthy woman who was at the point of death. The touch of the other two was of no avail; but on touching that upon which Christ had died the woman got suddenly well again. From a letter of St. Paulinus to Severus inserted in the Breviary of Paris it would appear that St. Helena her- self had sought by means of a miracle to discover which was the True Cross; and that she caused a man already dead and buried to be carried to the spot, whereupon, by contact with the third cro-ss, he came to life. From yet another tradition, related by St. Ambrose, it would seem that the titulus, or inscrip- tion, had remained fastened to the Cross.

After the happy discovery-, St. Helena and Constan- tine erected a magnificent basilica over the Holy Sepul- chre, and that is the reason why the church bore the name of St. Constantinus. Tlie precise spot of the finding was covered by the atrium of the basilica, and

there the Cross was set up in an oratory, as appears in the restoration executed by de Vogii^. When this noble basilica had been destroyed by the infidels, ,\rculfus, in the seventh century, enumerated four buildings upon the Holy Places around Golgotha, and one of them was the "Church of the Invention" or "of the Finding". This church was attributed by him and by topographers of later times to Constantine. The Franki.sh monks of Mount Olivet, writing to Leo III, style it St. Constan- tinus. Perhaps the oratory built by Constantine suf- fered less at the hands of the Persians than the other buildings, and so could still retain the name and style of Marlyrium Constantinianum. (See De Rossi, Bull, d' arch, crist., 1865, 88.)

A portion of the True Cross remained at Jerusalem enclosed in a silver reliquary; the remainder, with the nails, must have been sent to Constantine, and it must have been this second portion that he caused to be en- closed in the statue of himself which was set on a porphyry column in the Forum at Constantinople; Socrates, the historian, relates that this statue was to make the city impregnable. One of the nails was fast- ened to the emperor's helmet, and one to his horse's bridle, bringing to pass, according to many of the Fathers, what had been written by Zacharias the Prophet: "In that day that which is upon the bridle of the horse shall be holy to the Lord" (Zach., xiv, 20). Another of the nails was used later in the Iron Crown of Lombardy, preserved in the treasury of the cathe- dral of Monza. Eusebius in his life of Constantine, de- scribing the work of excavating and building on the site of the Holy Sepulchre, does not .speak of the True Cross. In the story of a journey to Jerusalem made in 333 (Itinerarium Burdigalense) the various tombs and the basilica of Constantine are referred to, but no mention is made of the True Cross. The earliest refer- ence to it is in the " Catecheses " of St. CYril of Jerusa- lem (P. G., XXXIII, 468, 686, 776), written in the year 348, or at least twenty years after the supposed discovery.

In this tradition of the "Invention", or discovery, of the True Cross, not a word is said as to the smaller portions of it scattered up and down the world. The .story, as it has reached us, has been admitted, since the beginning of the fifth centurj', by all ecclesiastical writers, with, however, many more or less important variations. By many critics the tradition of the find- ing of the Cross through the work of St. Helena in the \-icinity of Calvary has been held to be a mere legend, without any historical reality, these critics relying chiefly upon the silence of Eusebius, who tells of all else that St. Helena did in Jerusalem, but says nothing about her finding the Cross. Still, however difficult it may be to explain this silence, it would be imsoimd to annihilate with a negative argument a universal tradi- tion dating from the fifth century. The wonders re- lated in the Syriac book " Doctrina Addai " (si.\th cen- tury) and in the legend of the Jew Cyriacus, who is said to have been iaspired to reveal to St. Helena the place where the Cross was buried, are responsible at least in part for the common beliefs of the faithful on this matter. These beliefs are universally held to be apocryphal. (See Duchesne, Lib. Pont., I, p. cviii.) However that may be, the testimony of Cj-ril, Bishop of Jerusalem from 3.50 or 3,51, who was on the spot a very few years after the event took place, and was a contemporary of Eusebius of CiPsarea, is explicit and formal as to the finding of the Cross at Jerusalem during the reign of Constantine; this testimony is contained in a letter to the Emperor Constantius (P. G., XXXIII, 52, 1167; and cf. 686, 687). It is true that the authen- ticity of this letter is questioned, but without solid runds. St. Ambrose (De obit. Theod., 45-48 in P. XVI, 401) and Rufinus (Hist, eccl., I, viii in P. L., XXI, 476) bear n-itne.ss to the fact of the finding. Silvia of Aquitaine (Peregrinatio ad loca sancta, ed. Gamurrini, Rome 1888, p. 76) a-ssures us that in her time