Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/645

Rh CROSS 611 concurrent testimony of four Byzantine ecclesiastical historians (Rufiuus, i. 7 ; Socrates, i. 13 ; Theodoret, i. 18; and Sozomen, ii. 1), who all wrote between 75 and 100 years after the incidents related, and whose story was accepted and supported by Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, and Chrysostom (seealso Tillemont, Mem. Ecdes.,the chapter on Helena, and Jortin s Remarks, vol. iii.). The story is to the effect that the empress, when visiting the scenes hallowed by the Saviour s ministry and sufferings, in the seventy-ninth year of her age (326), was guided to the site of Calvary by an aged Jew who had treasured those local traditions which the anti-Christian animosity of the heathen con juerors of Jerusalem had not been able to obliterate. On excavation at a considerable depth three crosses were found ; and with them was the title placed by Pilate s command on the cross of Christ, lying apart by itself. The cross of Christ was identified by a miracle, one only of the three crosses found having proved to be endowed with the power of instantaneous healing conveyed by a touch. This test by miracle was applied at the suggestion of Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem ; and its result, of course, was held to be con clusive. Having built a church over the site of the &quot; Invention,&quot; where she deposited the greater part of the supposed real cross, Helena took the remainder to Byzan tium, whence a portion of it was sent by Constantino to Rome, where it was placed in the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, built expressly to receive so precious a relic. A festival to commemorate the discovery of this relic soon was established ; pilgrimages, undertaken in order to obtain a sight of it, next followed ; then fragments of the sacred wood were sold at high prices to wealthy votaries ; and, after a while, in order to meet the exigencies of the case, the Roman ecclesiastical authorities assured the increasing crowds of anxious purchasers that the wood, if no longer working miracles of healing, exercised a power of miraculous self-multiplication, ut detrimenta non sentiret, et quasi intacta permaneret (Paulinus, Ep. xi. ad Lev.}. In the 13th century, what remained of the portion of the cross taken by Helena to Constantinople is said to have been removed, during the reign of St Louis, to Paris, and to be still preserved in the Sainte Chapelle. After the capture of Jerusalem by the Persians, in 614, the remains of the cross were taken to his capital by Chosroes II. ; but, having been recovered by Heraclius (628), they were brought by him to Constantinople, and after wards to their former resting-place in Jerusalem, where their re-appearance was said to be hailed with a miraculous welcome. In after times this restoration was comme morated by the festival of the &quot; Exaltation of the Cross,&quot; held on the 14th of September. The transient revival of the Christian power in Jerusalem was speedily followed (637) by the conquest of the Holy City by the Saracens, by whom the cross relic may be assumed to have been destroyed; at all events, after the Saracen conquest nothing more is heard of that relic in connection with Jerusalem. A subterranean chapel, however, said to have been built upon the site of Helena s church, and which bears the title of the &quot; Chapel of the Invention of the Cross,&quot; still exists, and is connected by a flight of steps with the so-called Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The piece of wood supposed to have been inscribed with the title placed upon the cross of Christ, and found with the three crosses by Helena, and retaining traces of Hebrew and Roman letters, is said to be still preserved at Rome, whither it was sent by Constantino. After having been long lost to sight and apparently to remembrance also, this relic so goes its history was accidentally discovered in the leaden chest in which it had been deposited by Constantine ; and both the fact of its discovery and the genuineness of the relic itself were attested by a Bull of Pope Alexander III. The earliest writers are silent as to the kind of wood of which the title-board and also the three crosses were made ; but a tradition, which notwith standing its extreme improbability may be traced to a very early era, represents the true cross to have been formed either of cypress, pine, and cedar, or of cedar, cypress, palm and olive. (See facsimile reproduction, 18G3, 4to, by J. P. Berjeau, of the History of the Holy Cross, originally printed by J. Yeldeuer in 1483.) In connection with the discovery of the cross itself and its attendant title, the nails used at the crucifixion, and asserted to have been included in the &quot;Invention&quot; by Helena, have a legendary history of their own. One of the original four is declared to have been thrown by the empress herself into the Adriatic when agitated by a violent storm, with the efftct of producing an instanta neous calm. A second nail after having been placed either in his crown or in his helm by Constantine, is said to have been found in a mutilated state in the church of Santa Croce. The Duomo of Milan claims the possession of the third nail, and Treves that of the fourth. It must be added that some early traditions limit the number of the nails to three ; while, on the other hand, certain writers have raised the number of the nails as high as fourteen, for the safe keeping of each one of which places have been found. In the illustrations of the crucifixion given by Lady Eastlake (History of our Lord, vol. ii.), sometimes we find a single nail, and at other times two nails, used for the feet. That accomplished lady seems to consider the separa tion of the feet with a nail for each to be characteristic of the earlier conceptions of the crucifixion, which present Christ after He had been nailed on the cross as still &quot; alive and erect, and apparently elate ; His feet always separate, and with two nails upon the footboard, or sup- pedaneum (a Greek feature), to which they were attached ; the arms at right angles with the body, the hands straight, the eyes open.&quot; The suppedaneiim is supposed to have been a piece of wood projecting slightly from the shaft of the cross beneath the feet of the sufferer, with a view to afford some support to his body. Ifc is in the later representations that one of Christ s feet appear placed over the other, the ankles being crossed, when a single nail pierces both the feet, or both the ankles. For many curious particulars concerning representations of the crucifixion and its attendant incidents in early and mediaeval art, readers are referred to Lady Eastlake s volume ; also to Mrs Jameson s Legends of the Madomut, and Sacred and Legendary Art. Early writers all incline to the more probable opinion that Christ was attached to the cross while it lay on the ground; Bonaventura. however (born 1221), states that he ascended a ladder, and was nailed to the cross standing, after the cross itself had been erected and fixed in its position. &quot; The impress of each opinion is seen in art,&quot; writes Lady Eastlake (Hist, of our Lord, ii. pp. 130-133), &quot; that of our Lord ascending the ladder on the cross being the earliest, that of His extending himself on the ground being the most frequent.&quot; A remarkable example of the latter opinion occurs in the sculpture of one of the bosses in the vaulting of the twelfth bay of the nave of Norwich Cathedral, where the figure of Christ is further represented as having the extremities of the limbs drawn by cords to the shaft and the ends of the transverse beam of the cross, as a preliminary to the driving the nails. The cross, when raised and fixed erect, doubt less elevated the sufferer to no unnecessary height, his feet then probably being not more than 18 or 20 inches above the surface of the ground. In comparatively late mediaeval heraldry the cross, with the other instruments connected with crucifixion as the hammer, nails, ladder crown of