ON THE FINDING OF THE HOLY CROSS
BY SS. HELENA AND MACARIUS AT JERUSALEM.
A.D. CCCXXVI
CommentaryThe Finding of the Holy Cross, by SS. Helena and Macarius at Jerusalem.
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
CHAPTER I.
St. Helena visits the sacred places, and having found the Cross, adorns them with buildings.
[1] In treating of St. Macarius the Hierosolymitan Bishop, on his Birthday March X, regarding what he did concerning the finding of the Holy Cross, we set forth the explained words of two most ancient authors,
Macarius Bp. of Jerusalem. namely Rufinus of Aquileia and Theodoret; of whom the latter was Bishop in the city of Cyrus in Syria, and the former dwelt long and much in Syria; and both flourished only one century after the aforesaid finding, so that they were close in place as in time. I do not wish to repeat their words here: but rather those of St. Theophanes, praised on March XII. For since this man flourished in the IX century, he sufficiently shows that not even then among the learned men of Greece did the fables find credit, which a little later the compilers of the Synaxaria and Menaea followed on October XXVIII, treating of St. Cyriacus. We shall report those fables in full on the following day, in treating of the same, that the falsity may be more evident. The words of Theophanes, describing the matter more copiously, but varying nothing in substance, are these, on the year of Constantine the Emperor XX.
[2] returning from the Council of Nicaea, To Macarius Bishop of Jerusalem, who was present at the I Council of Nicaea, the Emperor entrusted, that on his return he should seek out the place of the Holy Resurrection, and Calvary's Golgotha, and the life-giving wood of the Cross. In that same year also Constantine crowned his mother Helena, a woman endowed with divine sense: she moreover saw a portent, bidding her set out for Jerusalem; and to bring forth into light the divine places, buried under earth by the impious and profane. Then she asks her son Constantine, that he should fulfill what was divinely commanded her: and he, moved by divine impulse, complied with his mother. Thus
Theophanes; he then continues the begun narration in the next
XXI year of Constantine thus: he receives Helena: In the same year the divine Constantine sent Blessed Helena, with a great weight of monies, to Jerusalem, to seek out the life-giving Cross of the Lord.
But the Patriarch having met the Empress with due honor, withdrawn together with her from the tumult of the retinue, with tranquility of mind giving himself to fervent prayers and fastings, was conducting the search for the desired wood.
[3] These things being premised, at length by divine impulse, the place where the temple and image of impure Venus had been erected, and being divinely instructed of the place of the buried cross,
was made manifest to Macarius himself: and Helena, the divinely crowned Empress, using royal power, with a multitude of workers applied, having dug it up from the foundations, cast it down; carried away the rubble, and demolished and purged all things that had once been built there at great expense by Aelius Hadrian. Forthwith the holy
Sepulchre was uncovered, and the place of Calvary disclosed, and next to these three crosses dug up to the east: but also to those investigating more zealously the nails likewise were found.
But while all were anxious as to which then was the Lord's Cross, and Blessed Helena was overcome with strong grief, she discerns the dug-up Cross from the crosses of the thieves by a miracle: Macarius the Bishop, Blessed by the brightness of his own name, dissolved every doubt by his faith. For having applied the woods of this and of those crosses to a certain noble lady, despaired of life and now at the point of death, he recognized the Lord's Cross. For as soon as the mere shadow approached the sick woman; who lay without spirit and destitute of all motion, by divine power she at once leapt up, and rendered praise to God with a great voice. Most pious Helena, and Helena returning to her son
with much trembling and dancing of heart having raised the life-giving
Cross, brought a part with the nails to her son; but the other part enclosed in a silver casket she handed to Macarius the Bishop, as a monument for posterity to follow.
She also ordered a Church to be built at the holy Sepulchre and at Calvary; and a singular other one in the name of her son, where the life-giving Cross was found; and at Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives; and thus she returned to the most illustrious Constantine.
[4] He, when from his returned mother he understood how matters had been done, wrote a Letter to Macarius the Bishop, which is read in Eusebius, in the Life of Constantine book 3 chapter 3, conceived in these words: So great is the grace of our Saviour, that no abundance of speech seems sufficient to narrate the present miracle.
from him he receives a mandate For that the sign of His most sacred passion, hidden under the earth long ago, should have lain concealed for so many years' space, until the common enemy of all having been removed, it should shine forth to His servants vindicated unto liberty; truly surpasses all admiration. For although all who anywhere in the world are held wise, gathered into one, should attempt to say something worthy of the dignity of this matter, they seem to me unable to attain even to the smallest part of it. For the credibility of this miracle exceeds every nature capable of human reason as much as divine things excel human ones. Wherefore this is one and chief scope ever for me, that, as the faith of truth daily grows bright with new miracles, so also the minds of all of us be incited to the observance of the most holy law, with all modesty and alacrity of heart.
Which since I trust to be most clear to all,
of building the most august temple, I would have you persuaded above all, that nothing is dearer to me than that the sacred place, which by God's command I have unburdened of the addition of a most foul image, as of a kind of grievous weight; and which from the beginning indeed by God's judgment was holy, but afterwards was made much holier, since it brought forth into light the proof of the Lord's passion; that place, I say, we should adorn with the beauty of edifices.
[5] It pleased me to give the whole epistle, that it might be more clearly understood, that all these things were ordered by the Emperor with respect to the Lord's Cross, and that with respect to the discovered Cross; dug up and made famous by miracles, which Cross is here called τὸ γνώριμα τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου πάθους, &, τοῦ σωτηρίου πάθους πίσστις, the sign of the Most Holy and saving Passion, &, the faith or testimony of it. We should wonder that Eusebius did not speak more expressly of it, nor mention the miracle wrought for its recognition; were we not to see him so occupied with the praises of Constantine alone, that he did not even remember his mother
Helena, sent for this purpose to Jerusalem; certainly hastening to the description of that most august edifice, upon which he soon expends ten whole chapters: and only then, as if drawing breath, descends to praising the piety of Helena, concluding chapter 41 thus. And these places, namely Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives, adorning with magnificent worship,
Constantine consecrated for the eternal memory of posterity at the same time the name of his mother, by whose work and ministry so great a good was procured for the human race.
Then beginning more distinctly to enumerate the places, by Helena's solicitude and Constantine's expenses built, he pursues the praises and death of the Empress, weaving rather an encomium of her than an ordered and historical narration of things done by her in the East.
What wonder then, if he did not touch on that miracle, which more properly pertained to commending the faith of S. Macarius and the virtue of the Cross itself?
[6] Considering these things, I cannot sufficiently wonder at the precipitancy of a certain Anconitan pleader; whose evidence held by the Jews who, as if there were not enough bad causes at Ancona, has undertaken to bring suit against me also, solely for this cause, that in a familiar letter written to him laboriously requesting it, I had not approved according to his wish all those fables, by which nothing in this whole affair is attributed to S. Macarius, all things are ascribed to a Jewish informer; while, as I shall show below, the Jewish informer himself ought to be held suspect of fabulosity, as taken from those same fables. But here it is wonderful to us that this petty pleader so confidently cites
Eusebius of Caesarea as the author of his opinion, nor Eusebius, who, as I have said, nowhere makes mention of the Cross sought by Helena, much less describes the manner in which it was found. What he alleges, are not the words of Eusebius of Caesarea, but of Rufinus of Aquileia, in book 10 chapter 7. nor Rufinus, About the same time
Helena … goes to Jerusalem: and there inquired of the inhabitants for the place in which the most sacred body of Christ had hung.
The error and lapse of memory, suggesting the name of one author for another, might seem excusable to someone: but the same Rufinus cited on the same little page takes away the excuse, as a witness distinct from Eusebius, and asserting the same thing with a shorter period of words. What then does this Rufinus assert, but that which was most fitting; nor Paulinus, and which
S. Paulinus of Nola, Epistle 11, more fully explains thus? That venerable Queen, when she came to Jerusalem … most studiously set herself to seek out the Cross of the Lord. But what way or means of finding could there be, when no suitable informer could be found, where the memory and care of religious conscience or observance, and antiquity of age and the duration of superstition had abolished?
But… the faithful woman through pious affection deserved the holy
Spirit: by whose inspiration, when the matter long removed from human consciousness she had in vain diligently sought out, she strove to be made certain only of the place of the passion.
[7] Of this alone therefore having hope of learning by consulting the inhabitants, besides Christians she also consulted Jews, the same Paulinus testifying, nor do the words of Rufinus signify more: but their testimony being all confirmed in one concerning the place, she ordered forthwith (urged no doubt by the impulse of a conceived revelation)
the work of digging to be set about in that place. nor finally Sozomen affirm.
Therefore what could still be known by human evidence, that she learned by inquiry; since she had been already divinely instructed in that which men could not teach; namely that in the place where they should say Christ had suffered, His Cross was to be found. The opinion of Paulinus had earlier been thus expressed by Rufinus in fewer words.
When the religious woman had hastened to the place, namely known by diligent inquiry to have once borne the Cross, but designated to her by a heavenly indication that the same was now also concealed; casting down all profane and polluted things from it, with the rubble cleared away to a depth, she found three Crosses in confused order. But Sozomen in book 2 chapter 1, mentions the Jewish evidence by which the Cross was found, in these words. Let us hear.
That place was disclosed, and the deception which the Jews had maliciously perpetrated in it was detected, by the indication of a certain
Hebrew man, of those who dwell in the East, who manifested this place from a certain paternal writing.
Does Sozomen really say this so absolutely and indeed concerning the Cross? Oh notable imposture of a slanderer! Sozomen says in the place cited: At length the place was uncovered, and the error, in the establishing of which so much had been labored (namely by the Gentiles, as he had described at length) was manifestly detected, by the indication (as some relate) of a certain Hebrew dwelling toward the East, who admonished by a certain ancestral writing pointed out the place: or
(which is the truer opinion) by the showing of God most great and good, who by certain signs and dreams stirred up men to the memory of the place: for divine matters, in my opinion at least, do not need human evidence, when it has seemed good to God to disclose them. These are Sozomen's words: about the truth of which, that the published books may be more easily consulted,
I preferred to give them from the older and more vulgar interpretation of John Christophorson, than from the more accurate but new one of Hadrian Valesius.
But on what foundation some relate that the place was disclosed by the indication of a certain Hebrew, I now begin to explain.
CHAPTER II.
The Fabulous Acts of the discovered Cross: and certain other writings on the same subject.
[8] Pope Gelasius, in the Synod of seventy Bishops in the year
CCCCXCIV, distinguishing authentic books from others, Writings on the discovery of the Cross Pope Gelasius reproved in the year 494:
placed among the apocrypha the writings on the discovery of the
Lord's Cross, as being certain new relations.
We saw them in Greek at Rome in Vatican Codex 866, and it was not worth the trouble to take care of a description: but that the author was Greek, and indeed most ignorant of all sacred and profane history, will be shown more fully on the following day, where we shall give in full the fabulous Acts of S. Judas, who is also
Cyriacus, who suffered at Jerusalem: whose name received from the II century and the age of the Emperor Hadrian, this dullard thus transferred to the IV century and the times of Constantine and Helena, as if Helena had taken care to consecrate him, for the merit of the Cross indicated, to the rule of that See; and indeed (if it please the heavens)
through S. Eusebius, who had been dead for fully XIV years, before the Cross was sought.
[9] But it is worth the trouble to read the beginning of that fiction, as it stands in the most ancient Latin MSS., they teem with anachronisms and fables. and at the same time to recognize the levity of the author. Thus it begins. In the two hundred and thirty-third year after the passion of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, in the reign of the venerable worshipper of God, the great man Constantine, in the sixth year of his reign, a great people of barbarians was gathered above the Danube, prepared for war against the Romans. But seeing that the multitude was innumerable, he was saddened and feared even unto death. But on that night a most splendid man came, raised him up, and said: Constantine, fear not, but look up into heaven, and see.
And gazing into heaven he saw the sign of the Cross of Christ, clearly composed of light, and from above written in letters a title, IN THIS CONQUER. Having seen this sign, King Constantine made a likeness of the Cross which he had seen in heaven.
[10] It is certain that the beginnings of Constantine should be placed at least fifty years later than is here said: but the first victory of Constantine over the Sarmatians who crossed the Danube happened at the same time as his affair against Licinius, around the XIII year of his reign; [by which Constantine is feigned, having seen the sign of the Cross, to have defeated the Sarmatians,] which victory
Zosimus describes in book 2. But what here is said to have been divinely shown to have foretold that, we know by the infallible testimony of Eusebius, reporting the matter from Constantine's own mouth, to have happened much earlier, and that in Italy, when the Emperor was going against Maxentius, about to free the City from the tyranny of Maxentius; which truly happened in the VI year of Constantine. So that this fabulist seems to have known only this about a matter most known throughout the whole world, while what was done at the Tiber, against the Romans themselves, who followed Maxentius's standards, he most ineptly transfers to the Danube and barbarians who had crossed it. Then victorious Constantine, returning to his own city, is feigned to inquire of the Priests called together, of which God or Goddess that sign was which he had seen; as if the religion of the Christians were so unknown at that time, that any one of the Gentiles would not know what its sign was.
[11] Then by Eusebius, Bishop of the city of Rome, Constantine is said to have been catechized and baptized: and baptized by Pope Eusebius; but Helena, setting out by the command of her son to seek the Cross at Jerusalem, the place of the holy sepulcher being purged, is brought in calling together the Jews, and rebuking them for their crime against Christ, ordering that the more skilled from their number be selected, who might respond to her questions.
And when five hundred chosen had stood before her, and even these were not enough, but still better were ordered to be sought, and that matter held them all greatly perplexed; but to her mother Helena, Judas to have revealed the Cross, a certain Judas is feigned to conjecture that the question would be about the Cross of Christ: whose Father
Simeon, son of Zacchaeus, had seen Christ in the flesh, and had secretly instructed Judas about Christ's passion, the martyrdom of Stephen, the conversion of Paul (all which the wondering Jews say they had never heard from him before), and had warned that when inquiry was made about the wood of the Cross he should manifest it: which the Jews begged that Judas not do.
[12] But when by the command of the Queen all were to be burned, because they would not declare the truth; at length they are said to have designated
Judas, as conscious of that secret: afterwards Bishop and called Cyriacus. who having tergiversated for some time and being macerated in prison by a seven-day fast, chose to obey, and prayers having been first poured forth received a digger; and when he had dug
XX paces, found three crosses: which carrying into the city to Helena, who wished to know which of them was Christ's, he made her certain by the resuscitation of one then by chance being carried out dead; while a demon lamented, that he who through the betrayer Judas had taken Christ from their midst, was through this Judas being cast out from the city.
Finally baptized, and consecrated Bishop by Eusebius the Roman, no longer Judas, but Cyriacus, according to this little fable, is bidden by Helena also to seek out the Lord's nails: which being found by a sign of divine clarity, illumining the place
(which all of us who were present saw, says the author, that you may believe him as eye-witness) and a royal bridle made from them, the Empress dying on the XVII Kalends of May, sent down to Cyriacus the Bishop many riches, and ordered the discovery of the Cross to be celebrated every year on the fifth of the Nones of May. This is the sum of that fiction, which to have related is itself to refute; but the obstinacy of those who think the greater part of his praise would be subtracted from Quiriacus, the Patron of the Anconitan city, unless that very thing be believed, at least to some extent, as true; compels us to exhibit it word-for-word as it stands in the MSS. on the following day.
[13] Now we seem to have said enough, to justify the censure of Pope
Gelasius, These deceived. calling the Writings on the discovery of the Lord's Cross new narrations. But because some Catholics nevertheless read them, the same Gelasius commands, that when these come into the hands of Catholics, the sentence of B. Paul the Apostle should precede: Test all things, that which is good hold fast. This warning was not before the eyes of the author of the second Pontifical Catalogue, explained by us before April, when he said of S. Eusebius Pope: The Author of the Pontifical Catalogue, under his time was found the holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus
Christ on the V of the Nones of May. Here was baptized Judas
Quiriacus. This author flourished at the beginning of the sixth century, whom without scruple the rest of the compilers of Pontifical Catalogues followed, showing themselves to have copied with greater faith than judgment what they found written by the earlier ones. The same seems to be said of those who received among the Pontifical Epistles one, as if directed by Pope Eusebius to the Bishops of Tuscany and Campania, among other things admonishing thus: Therefore of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus, which lately, while we hold the rudders of the Holy Roman Church, was found on the V of the Nones of May, on the aforesaid day of the Kalends, we command you solemnly to celebrate the feast of the discovery. This epistle, just as no one now does not recognize as supposititious, so also of old all could have recognized it, if they had had the chronological reasons as clearly explained, as we now have. But now they are to be excused, who, destitute of this aid, were less able to discern between the true and the false.
[14] Besides the authors of Catalogues, other great men were also deceived by figments of this kind; and especially S. Gregory of Tours, ancient writer of Frankish History; Gregory of Tours.
and worthy of greater pardon for what he wrote in book I as a kind of preludes to the same, since they were more remote in places and times from his cognition than what he afterwards executes by narration.
In chapter 36 of the said book, where he treats of Constantine the Emperor,
In whose time, he says, the venerable wood of the Lord's cross was discovered, by the zeal of Helena, with Judas the Hebrew making it known, who after baptism was called Quiriacus. Rabanus and Notker, in their Martyrologies on the Kalends of May, followed the same with these words: Florus, Rabanus, Notker, At Jerusalem the passion of S. Judas or
Quiriacus the Bishop, to whom was revealed the wood of the Lord's
Cross. Indeed the same Notker, lest he could seem in any way to have doubted the aforesaid fables, on the V of the Nones of May inserted their beginning thus: At Jerusalem the discovery of the holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by Queen Helena after the passion of the Lord, in the two hundred and thirty-third year, the same words which before him Florus of Lyon, in memory of the Discovered Cross, added, from the aforementioned Legend. Finally Berengosius, Abbot of S. Maximinus, not in the VII century (to which Bellarmine fortuitously ascribed him, Berengosius,
stating that it is uncertain at what time he lived) but at the beginning of the XII century (as the Sammarthani prove from the diploma of Henry V)
Berengosius, I say, the Abbot, writing three books on the praise and discovery of the holy Cross, in the middle of them did nothing other than dilate and adorn the aforesaid little fable about Judas the revealer of the Cross, in this more cautious than Florus and
Notker, that he omitted the designation of the year, nor said any word about the Episcopate of Jerusalem held by him, sticking only to the argument about the Cross. The same Berengosius, while in book
3 chapter 7 he says Constantine was baptized in the Acts of the Greeks is asserted by Eusebius, Bishop of the Roman city; and tries to persuade, that he was called Eusebius by a Greek name, who in Latin was called Silvester; he does not so much prove to us what he intends, as he confirms our opinion of the Greek origin of the whole fiction: for how would Berengosius have alleged the Greeks, if in
Latin scriptures only he had read Eusebius placed for Silvester.
[15] Furthermore as all these, having followed the fabulous Acts which we have mentioned, do not move us to suffer Judas-Quiriacus to be mixed in with the discovery of the holy Cross;
and the author of the Greek oration, so neither are we moved to believe, that any Jews at all manifested the buried cross, by that Greek oration which under the name of S. Andrew of Crete Gretzer published, and Combefis inserted into the works of the same Andrew, and again in tome 8 of the Preacher's Library reprinted for the feast of the Exalted Cross. There first it is said that Helena was divinely instructed, for persuading the Jews or extorting the manifestation of the Cross, to insist partly indeed with royal severity, partly with the common manner of persuasion, and to bring forth all things which could bend the inflexible mind of the Jews. Then in another oration, or rather the second part of the prior, it is held thus:
The Cross is exalted, that it may show vain to be the envy of the Jews; that we may receive the pearl, which those who crucified the Lord, even unwillingly, brought to light.
… For to the Empress, as I said a little before,
God sent burning desire, but on those struck fear, which would disturb their whole life: and when they saw it could not be done that the inquiry be desisted from, showing themselves to do of their own accord what they did unwillingly, they manifested first the venerable sign of the Lord.
Thus he; nowhere naming Judas, but sufficiently showing that he had received such things from his fabulous history.
But far be it that we should believe those orations to be of Andrew of Jerusalem, afterwards called of Crete from his Episcopate; still less that we should assent to Combefis in the notes, suspecting that they were pronounced in the Hierosolymitan church itself, by Andrew, before he had transferred to Constantinople. He observes, that the style of the periods is more uncultivated than is usual in other works of Andrew, wrongly attributed to S. Andrew of Crete. nor does it delight with that majesty and those flowers with gravity. Why did he not also observe, that it cannot be believed that a man most cultivated, raised and educated in the bosom of the Hierosolymitan church in the VII century, should have said things most foreign to the true history of the discovery, and that in the very place where it had occurred, and where even the sole memory of his elders ought to have refuted him?
Let that oration therefore, as Combefis confesses to have found it in the Mazarinian Codex, be of an uncertain author.
[16] Now as for the remaining circumstances of the discovered Cross;
S. Paulinus Bishop of Nola, describing the matter probably from hearing rather than from certain monuments of letters, varies somewhat in his relation of that miracle, through which the true Cross was discerned from the other two, S. Paulinus's somewhat different narration of the miracle. when in Epistle II to his friend S. Severus Sulpitius, sending him a particle of the life-giving wood, he speaks thus: When three crosses together, as once they had stood fixed by the Lord and the thieves, had been found; rejoicing at the discovery began to be confounded by anxious doubt, by the just fear of the pious, lest perhaps either they should choose for the Cross of the Lord the gibbet of a thief, or violate the saving wood for the trunk of a thief.
The Lord regarded the pious cares of those faithfully striving; and to her especially, who was Princess of so pious a solicitude, He infused the light of this counsel, that she should order someone recently dead to be sought and brought in.
Without delay: the word done, the corpse brought in, is set down: to the lying one is moved one of the crosses, and another: but death scorned the woods of the guilty.
Last the Lord's cross is revealed by resurrection, and at the touch of the saving wood, with death fled, the funeral was shaken off and the body raised. Thus Paulinus, whose narration some try to save, when they say that successively a moribund woman was saved, a dead [man] resuscitated; but they do not effect that it should not seem one and the same miracle to be narrated under some variety of circumstances.
[17] S. Ambrose, the familiar of Paulinus, the third way of recognizing the sacred wood, S. Ambrose's singular opinion concerning the Title of the Cross, perhaps from his own conjecture rather than from the report of older writing, has handed down in these words, speaking thus of Helena in the oration on the death of Theodosius. She opens the ground, shakes off the dust, finds three gibbets confused, which the ruin had covered, the enemy had hidden; but the triumph of Christ could not be obliterated. She hesitates uncertain as a woman, but the holy Spirit inspires a sure investigation, because two thieves had been crucified with the Lord. She therefore seeks the middle wood: but it could happen that the gibbets were confused among themselves by ruin, chance had stripped and inverted them. She sat down to the reading of the Gospel: she found that on the middle gibbet was placed a title, Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.
Hence the series of truth was gathered, by the title the Cross of the Saviour was made manifest. This is what Pilate answered to the petitioning Jews, What I have written I have written: that is, I have not written what would please you, but what the future age would know:
I did not write for you, but for posterity; almost saying: Let Helena have what she may read, whence she may recognize the Cross of the Lord. This narration is altogether singular, and vehemently diminishes the glory of the Cross. nor sufficiently probable,
A much more probable opinion seems to be, that the Title and the nails were thrown apart and found separately, as Sozomen expressly writes concerning the Title, and concerning the nails all agree. The other
Greeks treating these things did not mention the Title, as neither the Crown of thorns nor the Sponge, about all of which though a long treatise could be instituted, we, as foreign to our scope, dismiss it.
CHAPTER III.
On what days the Cross is shown at Jerusalem; when did the feast of the Discovery begin among the
Latins? what is the oration of Alexander the monk on the Cross?
[18] The discovery of the Cross is not celebrated by the Greeks with a movable feast, As to the feast day itself, to be celebrated on May III, it is altogether unknown to the Greek Menologies.
Baronius in the Notes on the Roman Martyrology thinks the cause is, that they number the discovery of the Cross among the movable feasts, to be celebrated on the third day from the Resurrection of the Lord.
It would therefore pertain to the Typicon, among the sacred services of the Paschal ferials, to treat of the same: and yet nothing of the kind is found in the whole Typicon. But the places which Baronius alleges from
SS. Sophronius and Paulinus, if they proved anything, would prove nothing other than that in the Hierosolymitan church of the holy Resurrection it was so customary to be done; not for the other churches or monasteries of the holy city, from whose ancient use the Typicon is described and printed; still less for the other
Patriarchates of the Greeks, of Antioch, Alexandria, or
Constantinople.
[19] But neither did Baronius read Sophronius accurately enough, although translated into Latin by Achilles Statius. nor at Jerusalem itself was it set forth on the 3rd ferial of Easter, For he in the Oration which is in the Library of the Fathers volume 7 of the Cologne edition, asks: Why does not, just as before the divine cross having first arisen shone, the Lord on the cross hanging on Friday, before he should rise here; so also now does not the light-bringing Resurrection of the same Lord shine on the third day after that?
that is, why is the mystery of the Resurrection not celebrated on the third day after the Cross has been solemnly exalted or shown?
But after he has asked this, himself answering himself to the proposed interrogation, he signifies that on the day after the Resurrection the Cross is more conveniently shown: and We think, he says, and led by conjecture we persuade ourselves, that those who from the ends of the earth gather to the adoration of both, were the cause of this following and going before; so that the most joyful and most splendid feast of the Resurrection having been first attended and celebrated, after this however immediately on seeing the exaltation of the Cross, its most powerful company, as a kind of distinguished viaticum, they may carry with them; and may have the Cross, walking together with them on the land,
but the second; sailing together with them at sea as companion, and as defeater of all hardships. Lest however you should think that even one ferial could be interposed, he himself precluded this in the words he had professed before: Today the Resurrection proceeds, and by its procession illumines and adorns all things; tomorrow the Cross is manifested and bestows gifts on its worshippers: today the Resurrection is unfolded, tomorrow the Cross in a high place somehow flies above.
[20] And this is what these words of S. Paulinus indicate in the aforementioned
Epistle to Severus: A Basilica gleaming with gilded panels,
nor only at that time, preserves the Cross, set in a hidden sanctuary: which the Bishop of that city yearly, when the Pasch of the Lord is kept, brings forth for the people to adore, himself the foremost of the venerators. The same Paulinus then adds:
Nor besides this day, on which the very mystery of the Cross is celebrated, is the very thing, which is the cause of the sacraments, brought forth as a kind of insigne of sacred solemnity; except sometimes most religious people request it, who came as pilgrims thither for this cause only, that the revelation of it may be given to them as a kind of price of the long pilgrimage: which they say is obtained only by the office of the Bishop.
But in this which he says, that on this day only it was customary to be done, we cannot agree with him any more than with Baronius, who wrote that this day was called by him in the very act the Resurrection of the Cross; since only the name of Adoration was used by the Greeks in this matter.
[21] Now this Adoration of the Cross brought forth from the sanctuary, was customarily done not only on the contiguous day of Easter: but also on the middle of the week of Fasts, but also in the middle of Lent which to us is the third week
of Lent, as another oration of the aforementioned Sophronius proves for that festivity, published after the other under the same title of adoration: in which he expressly says, that in the middle of the fast, for the sake of adoration, it is customary to set forth the life-giving wood of the venerable
Cross. The same was done with even greater concourse of peoples on the feast of the Exaltation, and on the feast of the Exaltation, which the universal Church, both Western and Oriental, undertook to keep on September XIV; as is clear from the Life of S. Mary of Egypt, converted on occasion of the said showing, and that in the year of the common Era
CCCLXXXIII, as we showed before her Acts on April 2 number 7.
[22] which alone the Greeks knew Meanwhile it remains, what I said before, that the feast of the Discovery, under that name is unknown to the Greeks. Feast,
I say: for what is noted in the printed Menaea on the VI day of March, the Discovery of the venerable Cross, when by Helena it was discovered, & the Discovery of the venerable
Nails with two distichs, is too slight to deserve to be considered, nor is it found everywhere in the MSS., but in some one church, for a private reason, something similar could have been introduced. But that for so notable a matter no proper feast was established at Jerusalem, I do not at all wonder.
For when immediately upon the discovery of the Cross, Helena had decreed, that for the honor of the same and of the holy Resurrection, with her own and her son's expense, a most magnificent temple should be built, with multiplied works to be completed as quickly as possible; and before that should be dedicated, no fitting opportunity could be given for bringing forth the Cross in public; it was not worth the trouble to institute a festivity different from that which was now expected to be performed, and which was afterwards propagated to posterity, under the title of the Exaltation, to be performed yearly, on the day on which by the showing of the Cross the place was publicly dedicated, prepared for that purpose: so that it is vain to seek another feast of the Discovered Cross among the Greeks.
[23] The Romans also keep the feast of the discovery. But at Rome the matter was differently composed. There long since, in memory of that Cross which had appeared to Constantine about to fight against Maxentius, a church stood erected in the Sessorian buildings: to this, as to its proper place, Helena can be believed to have brought a part of the sacred wood, as soon as returning from the holy Land she landed in the city. And if I should believe this: why should I not also think that in this church, before the Hierosolymitan structure was finished, the memory began to be celebrated of that day on which Helena related that she had found the Cross? Yet I would so believe this, that
I also should think that festivity remained proper to that Basilica, until some one of the succeeding Pontiffs, before the sixth century probably, wished the same feast to be celebrated by other churches of the city of Rome also; whence gradually it was propagated itself to other Churches, and at length also was numbered among the feasts to be kept by the people on holiday, just as today the entire Western Church observes.
[24] There will perhaps be one, who, to prove the greater antiquity of the common observance in celebrating this feast, will wish to use those words with which the Hieronymian Martyrology begins the present day, its mention wrongly inserted in the Hieronymian Martyrology
according to the faith of the Lucca exemplar formerly written in Gaul, published by Francesco Maria Florentini; and so much the more confidently because the same words are also found in the older codex of Henry Julius Baron de Blum, with which Florentini, comparing the Lucca Codex, in his appendix at the end notes that it belonged to the Church of Utrecht; likewise in the MS.
of Corbie, whence Lucas D'Achery published the same Martyrology.
All begin this day thus: At Jerusalem the discovery of the Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ by Helena
Queen after the passion of the Lord in the year CCXXXIII, while Constantine the Emperor was reigning. There will perhaps also be one who will wish to confirm the same from that Calendar, rather than
Martyrology, which is called the Companion of S. Jerome, published by the same
Florentini at the end of the work, where on the IV of the Nones of May is noted the Discovery of the holy Cross.
[25] But of these I receive nothing as of S. Jerome.
For as concerns the Companion or Lectionary of S. Jerome;
Jacob Pamelius published it whole from the best codices, in volume 2 of the Latin
Liturgical, and the Lectionary or Companion, without any mention of such a feast: but in the most ancient transcript of the Martyrology of Echternach the said words taken from apocryphal Acts are likewise absent, and on day VII May (which happens nowhere else)
is noted in the first place the Discovery of the holy Cross of the Lord. But on this day III in the genuine Martyrology of Bede, only in the last place, as a feast added to the fasti by more recent memory, is read noted the Discovery of the holy Cross, after a long eulogy of Alexander,
Eventius, and Theodulus. Rightly therefore John
Fronto, Canon Regular at S. Genevieve at Paris, when he found no memory of this same feast in the Roman Calendar, nine hundred years older, which he published from a domestic MS.
illustrated with learned annotations in the year 1652; rightly,
I say, did Fronto judge, [since this very feast was absent from the sacred fasti up to the age of S. Gregory,] that such a feast began to be celebrated after the year DCCXX, that is, to be numbered among the common feasts of the universal Church.
This however we think does not stand in the way, that the place truly of S. Gregory may not be in the Sacramentary as well as in the
Antiphonary, where this feast is noted: for why should not the rite, formerly observed in one of the Roman churches, that Pope have transferred to the other churches of the City, the example gradually being followed by other dioceses even beyond the mountains? But the Calendar published by Fronto could have been transcribed from an exemplar drawn up before the Pontificate of Gregory.
[26] Some at this place attack Scaliger, as if he with a Calvinist mind against the Cross and sacred matters, judged that to the Chronicle of Eusebius, not by his own or by S. Jerome's hand but by another's, was added the mention of the discovered Cross, That nothing is read concerning the discovery itself where, on occasion of Alexander the Bishop being introduced to the Alexandrian See, Arius is named, cast out of the church by him, and the condemnation of the Arians that followed in the Nicene
Synod is indicated; and certain exemplars then read thus: Helena, mother of Constantine, warned by divine visions, found at Jerusalem the most blessed sign of the Cross, on which the salvation of the world hung. There are other things in which Scaliger's doctrine and faith are rightly questioned by pious and learned readers: but on this point, where from the sole faith of ancient codices he defined what is genuine or spurious,
I cannot but assent to him, that this place is a pure and mere gloss of an idle scribe, who, reading the Nicene synod, named indeed not in its own year, but yet from the occasion, presumed to fill the empty space of a few lines in his perhaps codex with this commemoration of the discovered Cross, taken from Rufinus; not heeding how this had nothing to do with Alexander and Arius, for whose sake the Nicene synod had been named.
[28] But that it is a gloss is proved, not only by the Greek Codices, from which Scaliger himself published the genuine text of Eusebius: but also by most and the more ancient Latin ones, in which Jerome's version is read without that strip. in the ancient Mss. of the Eusebian Chronicle. Some such are with us; and indeed one, finished in France in the XIV year of Heraclius and the XL of King Chlothar, that is of Christ DCXXIV, than which I do not think a more faithful and ancient one is to be found hitherto.
In speaking thus for the truth, we think we are taking nothing away from the honor of the holy Cross. The certitude of its discovery and its celebrity stands, nor is it more weakened by this silence of the Eusebian Chronicle, than infinite other things passed over in the same, and which either Eusebius himself elsewhere, does not impede its truth. or other authors of great faith, have left explained at length, as most worthy of relation; as we have seen done in this argument. But by what right the sacred wood is honored and venerated by all those, who profess themselves redeemed by the death of the Crucified, is clearer from all the Greek and Latin Fathers, than that it should be demonstrated by us against the madness of Calvinist ranters.
[29] These things being thus deduced, lest the discourse should stick almost solely in the refutation of others' errors, Oration of Alexander the monk on this argument I wished to subjoin the Historical eulogy of Alexander the monk Historiographer, on the discovery of the precious and life-giving Cross, such as our Gretzer published in Greek and Latin from MSS. of Crypta
Ferrata and the Augsburg Library. To this I was inclined the more, because Francesco Combefis, having it reprinted in tome 6 of his Preacher's Library, had noted at the end, that the oration seemed to be written before the Heraclian times and the Cross brought back from Persia, in which no mention is found of its return to Jerusalem. It also pleased me, and seemed not a little pertinent, conformable in substance to Theophanes' narration; that this Alexander, concluding his narration, which is for the most part conformable to Theophanes, expressly cautions and declares, Let no one deceive himself, inserting fabulous narrations contexed with strange names into this argument: for, he says, there was no other Bishop of Jerusalem besides the aforesaid (namely Macarius successor of Hermon, and
Maximus succeeding to him, and so far refuting the fabulous Acts, who is there called Maximonas) nor any other Roman Emperor, nor was the venerable cross found in any other manner. By this reason that Judas
Cyriacus is exploded, who by betraying the secret of his nation should have merited the Bishopric of Jerusalem; and I could not but approve of this being exploded.
[30] But when I inspected that oration more closely, I judged it not only later by a long interval than the Heraclian times; but altogether such, that besides the substance and almost the words of the narration received from Theophanes or a similar writer, it has nothing at all, it is of a man unskilled not only in ancient history, by which a base ignorance of many most known matters is not made manifest; so that nothing less can suit its author than the title of Historiographer. For he says, to omit other things, that the Fathers of the Nicene Council, Those who remained in the depraved opinion of Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia, cut off from their body and condemned to exile, with others created in their place: when the Arian Bishops themselves, even Eusebius, then subscribed to the right faith, though dissemblingly. Afterwards he makes Macarius, Hierosolymitan
Bishop, meet the Empress Helena with his comprovincial Bishops, as if that See had then by Metropolitan or Patriarchal right others subject to it, when it was itself subject to the Caesarean Metropolitan for a long time afterwards.
[31] But these are slight matters: but what follows is plainly such that, were the oration not written in Greek, I would scarcely believe that one had touched Greek letters who could so note times: but also in the chronology used by the Greeks, There are gathered, from the presence of Christ in the flesh up to the time of the discovery of the venerable Cross, three hundred fifty two years: but from Adam up to the time when Christ appeared in the flesh, five thousand five hundred: according to others, five thousand four hundred seventy five. That round number of five thousand five hundred years before Christ, is of the Alexandrian Era, commonly most known, and used everywhere by ecclesiastical writers, which
Era as much as it runs after the nativity of Christ, so much it subtracts from the years to be numbered from the same nativity and from the reigns of the Gentile Emperors, with this end that the numbers of mundane and Christian years should progress equally, and so the XX year of Constantine is conjoined with the year from the origin of the world five thousand DCCCXVIII, of Christ CCCXVIII; to be compared with the year CCCXXVI of our common Era; but from the true birth of Christ, demonstrated elsewhere by us, to be removed by
CCCXXXI years: but an Era which would defer the Twentieth-anniversary Vicennalia
of Constantine to the year CCCLII has not hitherto been found. Similarly the
Constantinopolitan Era, called by the Romans, in numbering the years of the World differs from the Alexandrian, before Christ, by VIII years, after his birth, by XVI years; and so the XX year of Constantine is to them the year of the World five thousand DCCCII, but the year preceding the nativity of Christ five thousand
CCCCXCII: but who from that number has further subtracted XVII, so that only the years of the World before Christ should be gathered as five thousand
CCCCLXXV, has, so far as I know, been no one.
[32] Of no less ignorance was it, concerning the number of the Roman
Emperors and Hierosolymitan Bishops, to write thus:
From Augustus the Emperor, and the successions of Emperors and Bishops; under whom Christ according to the flesh was born, up to Constantine the great thirty five Emperors intervened: similarly from James the brother of the Lord, up to his Empire, thirty five
Bishops were at Jerusalem. For in all the Catalogues of the Hierosolymitan see which were everywhere passed through hands, in Eusebius, Epiphanius, Gregory the Syncellus and Nicephorus
(to be silent of Latin catalogues cited elsewhere) at least the fortieth is S. Macarius, who sought out and found the Lord's Cross with the Empress Helena: but Constantine the son of Helena, in the series of Roman Emperors, surpasses by several grades the fortieth; and if you add those, perhaps composed at Crypta Ferrata. who together with others reigning were also themselves Emperors, and who held a tyranny rather than an Empire for a most brief time, he would advance beyond the fiftieth almost to the sixtieth. These things considered, we judge that eulogy unworthy of this work: but we suspect the author was a monk of Crypta Ferrata in Latium near Rome; whence many like trifles among the Greek Legends of the Saints have come to the Vatican library, as we showed on March III, repudiating the Acts of SS. Agape, Chionia, and Irene, there compiled with similar levity and temerity. Therefore let suffice what we have said at the beginning of this Commentary, certain and sufficiently attested.