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| St. Helena--St. Peter's Basilica in Rome |
Let me ask you a question: what is the main symbol of
Christianity? If you said “the cross”
you would be correct Biblically (Gal. 6:14, 1 Cor. 2:2) and factually (nearly
every church in the world displays a cross somewhere in its building), but not
so historically. If I could put you in a
time machine and send you back to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
centuries AD, you would find many different symbols in use by the church (such
as the sign of the fish, the dove, the anchor, even loaves and fishes) but not
a cross. Why so? Well, for one reason crucifixion was still
practiced as a form of capital punishment at the time and it would seem very
odd for anyone to wear or display a cross anywhere. What would you think if you walked into your
neighbor’s home and saw a beautiful painting of an electric chair on the wall
or possibly a hangman’s noose over the door?
You would probably think this person has an odd taste for home décor at
best and at worst a macabre fetish for instruments of human torture. Secondly, a cross was largely associated with
criminal behavior. Jesus was not a
criminal himself, but according to the gospel, as the Son of God he was taking
upon himself the sins of all humanity and judicially paying the penalty for
them on our behalf. The Bible teaches
that the wages of sin is death before a holy and perfect God. This is what makes Christianity stand apart
from all other religions. Instead of us
sacrificing to atone for our sins, God Himself makes the sacrificial atonement
on our behalf. But this took some
explaining in the early days of the church because the common understanding was
a person who died by crucifixion must be a horrible person and accursed by God
in some way. If Jesus was God and so
good, then why would he die in that way?
This is why St. Paul called the cross “folly” and a “stumbling block” to
those who have no spiritual understanding (1 Cor. 1:18). So why did this all change and suddenly the cross become a
beloved and universal symbol of Christianity?
This is where the story of St. Helena becomes our important connection.
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| The Cross a cherished symbol by Christians |
St. Helena was born into a humble family of Bithynia
(Northern Turkey). Her father is
believed to have been an Innkeeper or perhaps a shepherd according the bishop
Ambrose of Milan. Helena apparently was
a very attractive woman who caught the attention of Constantius Chlorus, a man
rapidly rising in the ranks of the Roman military. Helena became what we would call the common
law wife (a concubine) of Constantius and when she gave birth to their son he
was given the name Constantine. This son
would grow up to become the Roman emperor who not only legalized Christianity
but openly practiced it and governed as a Christian ruler.
But long before Constantine’s rise to power, his father too
was visited by good fortune and was elevated to the rank of Caesar of the
western Roman empire. For reasons of
state, Constantius was required to put his wife Helena away and marry the
daughter of the Augustus (the Emperor).
Constantine remained with his father living in Britannia (England) and
Helena went into seclusion and obscurity for many years.
When Constantius died unexpectedly, his son, now a general
in the Roman army, is proclaimed the western Caesar and through conquest and
acclamation of the people begins his meteoric rise to power. When Constantine is firmly in control he
brings his mother out of seclusion and gives her a place of honor and leadership
in his court as the Imperial mediatrix or Augusta. By this time Helena herself is also a
Christian with a reputation for acts of charity and devotion to Christ. As Augusta, Helena is given the Sessorian
Palace in Rome where she lives and helps conduct governmental affairs in the
west while her son is building and ruling in the east from the new capitol he
named ever-so-modestly Constantinople.
It is now the year 325 AD.
Constantine the Great respects freedom of religion but believes
Christianity is true and that Jesus Christ has raised him up to unite the Roman
empire under the Christian faith.
Paganism is tolerated but is no longer supported by the state as
Constantine lavishes public and private funds on the Church building
magnificent buildings and elevating the clergy, once poor and beleaguered by
persecution, to positions of honor and yes, even wealth, in society. The fortunes of the church had changed
rapidly, but Constantine was reversing a governmental policy of repression and
persecution that had been going on for several centuries. And he believed the future blessing of the
empire hinged on promoting the faith of Christ in every way he could.
One of the unique ways Constantine promoted Christianity was
through what some have termed “sacred geography.” Rome had always been the capital of the
empire and to its citizens, both Christian and pagan, the very heart of
civilization. But part of the reason why
Constantine moved his capital city to Byzantium (before renaming it
Constantinople) was for a fresh start.
Rome had been a city long polluted with idol worship and paganism. The new capital was to be a place marked by
Christianity. In fact later visitors
were so impressed with the splendor of the city and its many, many churches,
they wondered if it wasn’t already a province of heaven. But Constantine took this even one step
further. Part of his empire was a province called Palestine by the Romans, and
it was the very stage where Jesus Christ lived his life, conducted his
ministry, suffered death on the cross, rose from the grave, and will be
returning in the future. This was holy
ground and it must be preserved to reinforce the faith of Christians. And just as Christianity triumphed in Rome,
its triumph would also be shown in Jerusalem through Constantine’s efforts.
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| Israel named Palestina by Romans |
Israel has a very sad history after Jesus. When he arrived in Jerusalem on what we call
Palm Sunday, Jesus looked upon the city with its great temple and with a heart
of sadness prophesied that it would be left desolate (Mt. 23:38). When the chief priests rejected Jesus of
Nazareth before Pontius Pilate they declared “we have no king but Caesar (Jn
19:15)!” They really did mean to reject
Christ, but the stuff about Caesar, not so much. Within one generation, sedition was in the
air and Rome enthusiastically retaliated destroying Jerusalem and its temple in
70 AD. Nearly 62 years later the Jews
under Simon bar Kokhba attempted to seize control of Jerusalem and restore the
Temple. After the failure of this
revolt, the emperor Hadrian kicked all
Jews out of Jerusalem and changed the name of the city to Aelia
Capitolina. The Temple mount, so sacred
to the Jews, was defiled with a shrine dedicated to Jupiter built on top. Wanting to be equally offensive to Christians,
Hadrian had a temple of Venus built over Golgotha, the very place Jesus was
crucified. Jerusalem eventually became a
small, run-down city that was a mere shadow of its former glories. Its population included a small Christian
community, a few stalwart Jews and a lot of Bedouins and foreigners who were
down on their luck. But now, after
nearly 200 years, on outskirts of Jerusalem the Empress Helena and her royal
entourage were arriving on a very special assignment.
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| Modern pilgrims trace Christ's steps on Good Friday |
Constantine had sent his mother with a large amount of funds
and imperial authority to locate, preserve, and aggrandize as many sites
pertaining to the gospel as possible.
Even though it is known that Christian believers have always traveled to
Israel to see Biblical points of interest, the number of people who actually
made this journey is relatively small. Helena,
who made her one and only journey to Israel at age 79, is rightly the mother of
Holy Land pilgrimages. In fact, it is
either her or Constantine that is credited with first referring to Israel as
the Holy Land. But from Helena’s time to
the present day, Christians have for reasons of faith, penance, and simple
curiosity have ventured in great numbers to Israel to see the sites where the
Gospel drama unfolded.
When Helena arrived in the Holy Land she was baptized in the
Jordan river, visited Bethlehem and the cave where Joseph and Mary welcomed
Jesus into the world, and went in search of the places where Jesus was
crucified and then buried and rose from the dead.
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| Helena also built church of Nativity |
That Calvary could still be found nearly 300 years later is
neither impossible or even improbable.
All sorts of important events and their locations are recalled by locals
long after they occur. Humans are story
tellers by nature and most history, even if not totally accurate, is oral
before it is committed to writing.
Combine this with the knowledge that within a century after the
crucifixion of Jesus, there was a shrine of Venus built there, the spot
wouldn’t be hard to detect even if only ruins remained.
However it was detected (and it has been suggested that Helena may have had her Roman guard use torture to get this information), Helena was able to find the Holy Sepulcher
(the tomb of Jesus) nearby and there a glorious church has stood (rebuilt
several times) up to the present day.
The discovery of the Sepulcher no doubt led to another question:
whatever happened to the cross that Jesus was actually crucified on? A search ensued, and near the area of the
Holy Sepulcher in an empty cistern were found the remains of three crosses and
separate and unattached the titulus
crucis or the sign that hung above Jesus mentioned in the gospels.
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| Helena and the discovery of the True Cross |
Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem who was in attendance suggested
the one which was used by Jesus Christ could be determined by a miracle and it
was suggested that three incurably ill people be brought to the site and have
them touch one of the crosses. The
person that was cured was obviously touching the cross of Jesus. The experiment happened as described and one
of the three people was miraculously cured by touching the cross and so this
was identified as the true cross from that day forward. Of course, it didn’t occur to anyone to have
the other two unhealed persons also touch the cross of Jesus and see if they
got well too. But, this was a
prescientific era and so the idea of double-checking your results was not yet
known.
The story of finding the true cross is found in the works of
4 credible historians of the times. But
there is a huge difficulty in the fact that the premier church historian
Eusebius, who was in the court of Constantine and possibly knew the empress as
well, speaks only about the discovery of the Holy Sepulcher but says nothing
about this relic or that Constantine received a portion of it for himself. Obviously this is an argument from silence
but that silence seems rather loud.
However, it could simply be that for Eusebius the discovery of the Holy
Sepulcher was the headline event and the discovery of the relic an entailment
that was implied but not mentioned.
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| Titulus Crucis housed in Rome today |
Although the story is not completely absurd, what is absurd
is what happened to pilgrims in later years.
As they gathered at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to view the relic
of the cross, they were offered an opportunity to bring a sliver of it home as
a souvenir for a price. When asked how
it could be possible to do this with so many people coming every year, the
pilgrims were told the cross has a special power to regenerate itself. But this was many centuries after Helena’s visit.
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| Typical size of most relics of the cross |
At the time of the visit, a significant
portion of the cross was left to be shown the pilgrims when the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher was completed. Helena
sent to her son Constantine the great a piece of the true cross and two of the
nails that were found with it.
Constantine is said to have incorporated the nails in his military
helmet and the wood was put inside a huge statue of himself in
Constantinople. This would enhance his
image as Christ’s ruler on earth as people would look at him or his statue and
would be reminded that they were also in the presence of the relics of Christ’s
passion. Finally, Helena took a
significant portion of the true cross and the titulus crucis back to her palace in Rome along with a large
shipment of soil from the area of the Calvary that was being excavated for the
building of the Basilica that stands today.
Shortly after her death in 327 AD, the Sessorian palace was
converted into a church in Rome called Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Holy Cross
of Jerusalem) where pilgrims to Rome, also a holy city, could also be in the
presence of these relics. Today, the
only portion of the original Sessorian palace that remains is the small chapel
of St. Helena underneath the apse. It is
said that under the floor of the chapel is the soil that Helena brought back
from Jerusalem so that technically visitors are standing on an outpost of the
Holy Land. The relics once housed in the
wall of the chapel now reside in their own chapel on the top floor of the
church.
Helena lived long enough to return to Jerusalem one more
time to inspect the progress of the construction of the churches being
sponsored by her son and then died in her early eighties in the imperial palace
at Nicomedia (in Bithynia the region of her birth).
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| Pilgrims at Church of Holy Sepulcher today |
Pieces of the true cross were shared with many of the
churches throughout the Roman empire to the extent that Bishop Cyril of
Jerusalem said several decades after Helena that the whole world was filled
with pieces of the cross. With such
widespread awareness of the cross and the memory of its appearance, it became
after Helena’s discovery the most popular symbol of Christianity as it remains
today.
Whether or not the relics of the true cross were actually
found by Helena so many centuries ago is a question of endless debate between
scholars, skeptics and believers.
Authentic or not, the cross represents a physical connection to the
passion of Jesus Christ which is the centerpiece of all Christian hope and
confidence and an event beyond doubt. In
that sense, the relics of the cross that exist today are holy as reminders to
all who view them that the son of God did in fact take our sins upon himself on
a Roman cross that by faith we too may become sons and daughters of the living
God.
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| Empress Helena |
Today, over 4 million people a year visit the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The church
of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem in Rome has significantly less visitors, but has
always been a popular with Christian pilgrims visiting the city.
Sources
Cairns, Earle E. Christianity Through the Centuries : A
History of the Christian Church. (Grand
Rapids : Zondervan, 1981)
“Chapel of St. Helena.”
Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. 12,
Piazza di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Roma, Italy. Feb. 5, 2015.
Personal visit.
Chidester, David. Christianity : A Global History. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000)
Cohn-Sherbok, Lavinia.
Who’s Who in Christianity. (London : Routledge, 1998)
Day, Malcolm. A Treasury of Saints: Their Lives and
Times. (New York : Chartwell, 2002)
Ferguson, Everett. Church History : From Christ to
Pre-Reformation. (Grand Rapids :
Zondervan, 2013)
Guy, Laurie. Introducing Early Christianity: A Topical
Survey of Its Life, Belief, and Practices.
(Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2004)
“Helena” Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and
Ecclesiastical Literature. McClintock
and Strong eds. (Grand Rapids : Baker
Book House, 1981)
“Helena” Dictionary of Christian Biography. Michael Walsh ed. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001)
“Helena” Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity. Angelo Di Berardino ed. (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2014)
Leithart, Peter J. Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an
Empire and the Dawn of Christendom. (Downers
Grove : Intervarsity Press, 2010)
McCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand
Years. (New York : Viking, 2009)
Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church Vol.
III. (Grand Rapids : Eerdmanns, 1910)
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