Today is the Feast of the Exaltatio Sanctae Crucis. Let us always remember the Glory of the Cross upon which Christ was crucified and our salvation won - O Ave Crux, Spes Unica! While Good Friday celebrates the Passion of Christ which includes the Crucifixion, today Holy Mother Church celebrates the Cross as the instrument of our salvation upon which Christ, both Priest and Victim, offered himself to the Eternal Father in reparation for our sins.
Nine years later, then, in 335 the Church was dedicated with a portion of the True Cross. According to legend, in 614, that portion of the cross was carried away from the church by the Persians, and remained missing until it was recaptured by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 628. Initially taken to Constantinople, the cross was returned to the church the following year. The date of the feast marks the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335. This was a two-day festival: although the actual consecration of the church was on September 13, the cross itself was brought outside the church on September 14 so that the clergy and faithful could pray before the True Cross, and all could come forward to venerate it --- hence exaltation.
Though I think most are familiar with the Roman traditions of celebrating this Feast --- particularly that of veneration of the True Cross Relic, I find the Eastern practices to be amazing. In Byzantine liturgical observance, the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-creating Cross commemorates both the finding of the True Cross in 326 and its recovery from the Persians in 628, and is one of the Twelve Great Feasts of the church year. September 14 is always a fast day and the eating of meat, dairy products and fish is prohibited. The Feast of the Exaltation has a one-day Forefeast and an eight-day Afterfeast. The Saturday and Sunday before and after September 14 are also commemorated with special Epistle and Gospel readings about the Cross at the Divine Liturgy.
At vespers on the eve of the feast, the cross is taken from the vessel repository, placed on a tray that has been covered with an Aër (liturgical veil) and decorated with fresh basil leaves and flowers with a candle burning before it, and the priest carries it on his head to the Holy Table (altar) where it is laid in the place of the Gospel Book, which is set at the high place. Those portions of the vespers and matins which in sundry local customs take place before the Icon of the Feast (e.g.,the chanting of the Polyeleos and the Matins Gospel) instead take place in front of the Holy Table.
The bringing out of the cross and the exaltation ceremony occur at matins thus:
... after the Great Doxology, during the singing of the final "Holy God" to a drawn-out, funereal melody, the cross is carried out of the altar by the priest or bishop, upon his head, through the north doors, then carried up to the royal doors with the exclamation, "Wisdom, aright!" It is then set upon an analogion in the center of the temple. A censing is performed around the cross to the thrice-repeated singing of the troparion, "Save, O Lord, Thy people," after which in cathedrals and monasteries[note 1] the exaltation of the cross and the blessing of the people on all four sides therewith takes place, to multiple repetitions of "Lord, have mercy." At this time the deacon pronounces a special litany, at each petition of which "Lord, have mercy" is sung one hundred times. The exaltation itself consists of the following: with the cross the priest or bishop thrice blesses the side for which the exaltation is about to take place (first the east, then the west, then the south, then the north, then again the east); he then bows down to the earth, holding the cross in both hands, until his head is an inch above the ground. He then "raises himself up;" that is, he stands up. During this the servers support the priest — or the senior priests, the bishop — beneath his arms on both sides. Both the bowing down and the standing up must be done slowly, while "Lord, have mercy" is being sung one hundred times; the bow should be performed during the singing of the first half of the hundred, i.e., the first fifty repetitions of "Lord, have mercy," and the raising up, during the singing of the second half of the hundred. At the end of the hundred repetitions the priest again blesses thrice with the cross, and the choir sings "Lord, have mercy" the final three times especially loudly. This should recall how, at the finding of the cross, Patriarch Macarius of Jerusalem ascended to an elevated place and from there raised the cross in all directions so that all might see it, and the people, throwing themselves down before the cross, cried out, "Lord, have mercy." After the fifth exaltation, "Glory, both now" is sung, followed by the kontakion to the cross: "O Thou Who wast lifted up willingly on the cross…" During the singing of the kontakion the cross is again laid on the analogion, after which the veneration of the cross takes place. "Before Thy cross we fall down in worship, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection we glorify" is sung thrice, first by the clergy, then by the choirs. After each repetition a prostration is made, regardless of what day of the week it may be. Then the choir sings special stichera to the cross, during which first the clergy, then all the worshipers venerate the cross, making three prostrations before it, as usual; that is, two prostrations before venerating, then one after venerating. The exaltation of the cross is not always performed; only in cathedrals and monasteries[note 1]. If there has been no exaltation, the adoration of the cross with the singing of "Before Thy cross…" takes place immediately after the troparion — "Save, O Lord, Thy people" — and the censing. If the exaltation of the cross has been performed, after the veneration of the cross the augmented litany, "Have mercy on us, O God…," is not pronounced, as is usual at a vigil; instead the supplicatory litany is immediately said: "Let us complete our morning prayer unto the Lord." During the bringing out of the cross the ringing of the bells is appointed. The chief clergyman, who carries out the cross, regardless of whether he is a priest or a bishop, vests in full vesture before the time for the bringing out of the cross.
The cross remains in the center of the temple throughout the afterfeast, and the faithful venerate it whenever they enter or leave the church. Finally, on the leave-taking (apodosis) of the feast, the priest and deacon will cense around the cross, there will be a final veneration of the cross, and then they will solemnly bring the cross back into the sanctuary through the Holy Doors. This same pattern of bringing out the cross, veneration, and returning the cross at the end of the celebration is repeated at a number of the lesser Feasts of the Cross mentioned below.
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With this, then, is the classic debate and question over the legitimacy of the relic of the True Cross.
There is a long tradition dating back from Helena. The most well known reference in the Western Tradition is in the Golden Legend. The Golden Legend contains several versions of the origin of the True Cross. In The Life of Adam Voragine writes that the true cross came from three trees which grew from three seeds from the "Tree of Mercy" which Seth collected and planted in the mouth of Adam's corpse. In another account contained in Of the invention of the Holy Cross, and first of this word invention, Voragine writes that the True Cross came from a tree that grew from part of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or "the tree that Adam ate of", that Seth planted on Adam's grave where it "endured there unto the time of Solomon".
After many centuries the tree was cut down and the wood used to build a bridge over which the Queen of Sheba passed, on her journey to meet King Solomon. So struck was she by the portent contained in the timber of the bridge that she fell on her knees and reverenced it. On her visit to Solomon she told him that a piece of wood from the bridge would bring about the replacement of God's Covenant with the Jewish people, by a new order. Solomon, fearing the eventual destruction of his people, had the timber buried. But after fourteen generations, the wood taken from the bridge was fashioned into the Cross used to crucify Christ. Voragine then goes on to describe its finding by Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine.
This of course is a 13th century discussion. Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Theodoret all give detailed accounts of the finding of the True Cross by Saint Helena. Eusebius of Caesaria writes of the building of the Church but nothing of the finding of the True Cross - how the site of the Holy Sepulchre, originally a site of veneration for the Christian community in Jerusalem, had been covered with earth and a temple of Venus had been built on top — although Eusebius does not say as much, this would probably have been done as part of Hadrian's reconstruction of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina in 135, following the destruction during the Jewish Revolt of 70 and Bar Kokhba's revolt of 132–135. Following his conversion to Christianity, Emperor Constantine ordered in about 325–326 that the site be uncovered and instructed Saint Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, to build a church on the site.
Socrates describes how Saint Helena, Constantine's aged mother, had the temple destroyed and the Sepulchre uncovered, whereupon three crosses and the titulus from Jesus's crucifixion were uncovered as well. In Socrates's version of the story, Macarius had the three crosses placed in turn on a deathly ill woman. This woman recovered at the touch of the third cross, which was taken as a sign that this was the cross of Christ, the new Christian symbol. Socrates also reports the finding of the nails with which Christ had been fastened to the cross.
Sozomen gives a similar account and the most accepted version is that of Theodoret, found in Ecclesiastical History, bk. xvii - "When the empress beheld the place where the Saviour suffered, she immediately ordered the idolatrous temple, which had been there erected, to be destroyed, and the very earth on which it stood to be removed. When the tomb, which had been so long concealed, was discovered, three crosses were seen buried near the Lord's sepulchre. All held it as certain that one of these crosses was that of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the other two were those of the thieves who were crucified with Him. Yet they could not discern to which of the three the Body of the Lord had been brought nigh, and which had received the outpouring of His precious Blood. But the wise and holy Macarius, the president of the city, resolved this question in the following manner. He caused a lady of rank, who had been long suffering from disease, to be touched by each of the crosses, with earnest prayer, and thus discerned the virtue residing in that of the Saviour. For the instant this cross was brought near the lady, it expelled the sore disease, and made her whole."
Then you have the accounts recorded by the nun Egeria in Egeria's Travels. In the 380s a nun named Egeria who was travelling on pilgrimage described the veneration of the True Cross at Jerusalem in a long letter, the Itinerario Egeriae that she sent back to her community of women:
Then a chair is placed for the bishop in Golgotha behind the [liturgical] Cross, which is now standing; the bishop duly takes his seat in the chair, and a table covered with a linen cloth is placed before him; the deacons stand round the table, and a silver-gilt casket is brought in which is the holy wood of the Cross. The casket is opened and [the wood] is taken out, and both the wood of the Cross and the title are placed upon the table. Now, when it has been put upon the table, the bishop, as he sits, holds the extremities of the sacred wood firmly in his hands, while the deacons who stand around guard it. It is guarded thus because the custom is that the people, both faithful and catechumens, come one by one and, bowing down at the table, kiss the sacred wood and pass through. And because, I know not when, some one is said to have bitten off and stolen a portion of the sacred wood, it is thus guarded by the deacons who stand around, lest any one approaching should venture to do so again. And as all the people pass by one by one, all bowing themselves, they touch the Cross and the title, first with their foreheads and then with their eyes; then they kiss the Cross and pass through, but none lays his hand upon it to touch it. When they have kissed the Cross and have passed through, a deacon stands holding the ring of Solomon and the horn from which the kings were anointed; they kiss the horn also and gaze at the ring...
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The biggest issue then, is the dispersal of these relics overtime that some claim, if you added all those pieces back together would be larger than a boat. By the end of the Middle Ages so many churches claimed to possess a piece of the True Cross, that John Calvin is famously said to have remarked that there was enough wood in them to fill a ship:
"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 Poitiers, 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.
To counter that claim, Charles Rohault de Fleury in his Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion in 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 (more specifically 3,942,000 cubic millimeters), leaving a volume of .174 cubic meters lost, destroyed, or otherwise unaccounted for.
Four cross particles – of ten particles with documentary proofs by Byzantine emperors – from European churches, i.e. Santa Croce in Rome, Notre Dame, Paris, Pisa Cathedral and Florence Cathedral, were microscopically examined. "The pieces came all together from olive."
It is possible that many alleged pieces of the True Cross are forgeries, created by travelling merchants in the Middle Ages, during which period a thriving trade in manufactured relics existed.
If nothing else, the Church in her authority has claimed certain relics authentic. The Christian who approaches the wood of the Cross with veneration for the instrument of our salvation will receive the graces therein (regardless of whether or not they are truly truly relics...though this pious man does)
"We see Jesus crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, that through God’s gracious will he might taste death for the sake of all men. Indeed, it was fitting that when bringing many sons to glory God, for whom and through whom all things exist, should make their leader in the work of salvation perfect through suffering." - Hebrews, 2:9-10
O Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
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