Invention of the Cross

Invention of the Cross is the name of a festival in the Latin and Greek churches, celebrated May 3, in memory of the invention of the cross said to have been miraculously discovered at Jerusalem by Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine the Great, in 326. The legend of it runs as follows: Helena, being admonished in a dream to search for the cross of Christ at Jerusalem, took a journey thither with that intent; and having employed laborers to dig at Golgotha, after opening the ground very deep (for vast heaps of rubbish had purposely been thrown there by the spiteful Jews or heathens), she found three crosses, which she presently concluded were the crosses of our Saviour and the two thieves who were crucified with him. But, being at a loss to know which was the cross of Christ, she ordered them all three to be applied to a dead person. Two of them, the story says, had no effect; but the third raised the carcass to life, which was an evident sign to Helena that that was the cross she looked for. As soon as this was known, every one was for getting a piece of the cross, insomuch that in Paulinus's time (who, being a scholar of St. Ambrose, and bishop of Nola, flourished about the year 420) there was much more of the relics of the cross than there was of the original wood. Whereupon that father says "it was miraculously increased; it very kindly afforded wood to men's importunate desires without any loss of its substance." Dr. Schaff comments on it thus: "The legend is at best faintly implied in Eusebius, in a letter of Constantine to the bishop Macarius of Jerusalem ( Vita Const. 3, 30-a passage which Gieseler overlooked though in 3, 25, where it should be expected, it is entirely unnoticed, as Gieseler correctly observes), and does not appear till several decennia later, first in Cyril of Jerusalem (whose Epist. ad Constantiusm of 351, however, is considered by Gieseler and others, on critical and theological grounds, a much later production), then, with good agreement as to the main fact, in Ambrose, Chrysostom, Paulinus of Nola, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and other fathers. With all these witnesses the fact is still hardly credible, and has against it particularly the following considerations: (1.) The place of the. crucifixion was desecrated under the emperor Hadrian by heathen temples and statues, besides being filled up and defaced beyond recognition. (2.) There is no clear testimony of a contemporary. (3.) The pilgrim from Bordeaux, who visited Jerusalem in 333, and in a sill extant itinerarium, (Vetera Rom. itinieraria, ed. P. Wesseling, p. 593) enumerates all the sacred things of the holy city, knows nothing of the holy cross or its invention (comp. Gieseler, 1, 2,279, note 37; Edinb. ed. 2, 36). This miracle contributed very much to the increase of the superstitious use of crosses and crucifixes. Cyril of Jerusalem remarks that about 380 the splinters of the holy cross filled the whole world, and yet, according to the account of the devout but credulous Paulinus of Nola (Epist. 31, al. 11) (whom we mentioned above), the original remained in Jerusalem undiminished-a continual miracle!" (Schaff, Ch. Hist. 2, 450; compare particularly the minute investigation of this legend by Isaac Taylor, The Invention of the Cross and the Miracles therewith connected, in Ancient Christianity, 2, 277-315; Wheatley, Common Prayer, p. 61 sq.; Walcott, Sacred Archceöl. p. 351). SEE CROSS. (J. H. W.)