The Triumph of the Cross

Icon of the Finding of the Cross

Today the church commemorates the day when St Helena found the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Being the mother of Emperor Constantine, who ended the persecutions in 313AD, Helena was determined to find the abandoned cross on which Jesus was crucified. The excavations actually found three crosses buried in Jerusalem close to Mount Calvary. To verify which was the actual cross of Christ, they asked a sick person to touch each cross. When he touched the third one, the person was completely healed, and thereby they concluded which was Jesus's cross. The image of the crucifixion, along with the nativity is the most painted subject in the history of art, and every painting is a true meditation on the passion of Christ. To this day the Eastern Churches, Catholic, and Orthodox alike, celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on the September anniversary of the basilica's dedication. The feast entered the Western calendar in the seventh century after Emperor Heraclius recovered the cross from the Persians, who had carried it off in 614, 15 years earlier. According to the story, the emperor intended to carry the cross back into Jerusalem himself, but was unable to move forward until he took off his imperial garb and became a barefoot pilgrim. The cross is today the universal image of Christian belief. Countless generations of artists have turned it into a thing of beauty to be carried in procession or worn as jewelry. To the eyes of the first Christians, it had no beauty. It stood outside too many city walls, decorated only with decaying corpses, as a threat to anyone who defied Rome's authority—including Christians who refused sacrifice to Roman gods.