The Elevation of the Cross Feast

The feast of the Universal Exaltation (Elevation) of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, kept on 14 September — the one Great Feast that is also a strict fast. Its historical core is the dedication of Constantine’s church at the Holy Sepulchre (the Encaenia of 335) and the elevation of the wood of the Cross; it later gathered to itself the memory of the Cross’s recovery from Persia by Heraclius. This file treats the feast, its hymnography, and its theology of the Cross as trophy and tree of life — the Orthodox key in which the whole Constantine-and-Helena story is finally read.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Feast and Its Paradox

The Exaltation of the Cross (Greek Hypsōsis tou Timiou Staurou), kept on 14 September, is the one Great Feast of the Church year that is also a strict fast day — a feast of the first rank observed in abstinence, because its subject is the Passion of Christ (Ware, in The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Ware, London: Faber, 1969, Introduction and the propers, pp. 131–163; and see The Exaltation of the Cross). This is the feast’s central paradox, and its hymns dwell on it: the Cross, an instrument of execution, is glorified as “the beauty of the Church” and “the weapon of peace and invincible trophy” (kontakion and stichera; The Festal Menaion, pp. 131–163). The troparion, sung at every service of the Cross, is a prayer for the people and their rulers: “O Lord, save Your people and bless Your inheritance, granting to the faithful victory over adversaries, and by the power of Your Cross preserving Your commonwealth” (troparion, Tone 1; The Festal Menaion, p. 147) — a hymn born in the Christian empire Constantine founded and pointed at a spiritual victory.

The Historical Core: The Encaenia of 335

The feast’s firm historical anchor is Constantinian. After the site of Golgotha and the tomb was cleared and excavated in the 320s, the great church complex Constantine built there — the Martyrium basilica and the Anastasis rotunda over the tomb — was solemnly dedicated in a festival of dedication, the Encaenia, in September 335 (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.40–47; The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Kazhdan, Oxford, 1991, s.v. “Exaltation of the Cross”). The pilgrim Egeria, writing of Jerusalem c. 381–384, describes the annual Encaenia as one of the great festivals of the Holy City, kept for eight days with immense crowds, and reports that it was on these same days that “the Cross was found” — showing that by the late fourth century the dedication festival and a commemoration of the Cross’s discovery were already joined at Jerusalem (Egeria, Itinerarium 48–49; trans. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 3rd ed., Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999). The 14 September feast grew out of the Jerusalem Encaenia’s rite of lifting up the relic of the Cross before the people (ODB, s.v. “Exaltation of the Cross”). The feast is thus, at its historical root, the dedication-festival of Constantine’s Holy Sepulchre — one more of the churches with which he and his mother marked the sites of the Gospel (see Milan, Legislation, and New Rome).

The Second Memory: The Recovery from Persia

The feast gathered to itself a second, and firmly historical, commemoration: the restoration of the Cross to Jerusalem by the Emperor Heraclius after his defeat of the Sasanian Persians. In 614 the Persians under Khosrow II had captured Jerusalem and carried off the relic of the Cross; after Heraclius’s victory it was returned to the Holy City in triumph, the emperor himself bearing it. [Disputed: the year of the restoration is given variously as 629 or 630 in the sources and in modern scholarship (ODB, s.v. "Heraclius" and "Exaltation of the Cross"); the traditional date is 14 September 629, but 630 is also defended.] This event, with its drama of the emperor carrying the recovered Cross into Jerusalem, reinforced the imperial and triumphal coloring already present in the feast’s hymnography and is a genuine part of its history, whatever the exact year (ODB, s.v. “Exaltation of the Cross”). The feast thus binds together the two great imperial moments of the Cross — Constantine’s dedication and Heraclius’s recovery — in a single celebration.

The Rite

At the Vigil of the feast the celebrant carries the Cross in solemn procession to the center of the church, and in cathedral and hierarchical usage performs the rite of exaltation: standing on the ambo, he lifts the Cross to the four points of the compass while the choir sings “Lord, have mercy” a hundred times, and the people prostrate themselves (the rite of the Exaltation; The Festal Menaion, pp. 131–163). The Cross then remains in the center of the church for veneration throughout the afterfeast. In place of the Trisagion the Church sings, “Before Your Cross we bow down in worship, O Master, and Your holy Resurrection we glorify” (The Festal Menaion, pp. 131–163). The icon of the feast shows the patriarch on the raised ambo lifting the Cross with both hands, deacons supporting him, the domed rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre often behind — and St. Helena and Constantine frequently stand to one side, the imperial patrons framing the rite (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, rev. ed., Crestwood: SVS Press, 1982). The image renders not a historical reconstruction of a fourth-century discovery but the Church in the perpetual act of exalting the Cross.

The Theology: Trophy and Tree of Life

The theology of the feast is the key in which the Orthodox tradition finally reads the whole Constantine-and-Helena story. The Cross is the “tree of life” set in the midst of the Church as it was set in the midst of Eden — the instrument of death become the means of life, the throne from which, at Pascha, death is trampled down (the Gospel of the feast is the Johannine Passion, John 19:6–35; The Festal Menaion, pp. 131–163; and see The Exaltation of the Cross). In this light the “sign” Constantine bore before the Milvian Bridge (see Milvian Bridge and Its Meaning), the relic Helena’s tradition set at the center of the feast, and the “victory over adversaries” the troparion prays for are all gathered into one confession: that the Cross is the true trophy of victory, over death and not merely over enemies. The Church honors Constantine and Helena as the imperial patrons of the Cross’s exaltation — the emperor who fought under its sign and built the church over its site, the mother whose tradition found it — while grounding the feast not in their biographies but in the Cross itself. This is why the feast can stand firm even as the inventio history is pinned to its later sources (see The Attestation Ledger): what the Church exalts on 14 September is the Life-Giving Cross, and that needs no forensic proof beyond the Passion it bears.

See Also

References

  • Egeria. Itinerarium (Travels) 48–49. Trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 3rd ed. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999.
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Life of Constantine 4.40–47. Trans. Cameron and Hall. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. (The Encaenia of 335.)
  • The Festal Menaion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1969. (The propers and rite of the Exaltation, pp. 131–163.)
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Ed. A. Kazhdan et al. Oxford, 1991 (s.v. “Exaltation of the Cross,” “Heraclius”).
  • Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982.
  • Scripture: John 19:6–35 (the Gospel of the feast).