The Exaltation of the Cross

On 14 September the Church exalts the Precious and Life-Giving Cross — the one Great Feast kept as a strict fast, in which the instrument of shameful death is lifted up for veneration as the “weapon of peace” and trophy of victory. Its historical core is the dedication of Constantine’s church at the Holy Sepulchre and the elevation of the wood of the Cross; the celebrated account of the Cross’s finding by St Helena is a later legend, and this file pins each element to its earliest attestation.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The paradox of the feast

The Exaltation (Greek Hypsōsis tou Timiou Staurou) is the one Great Feast that is also a strict fast day: the faithful keep it, even though it is a feast of the first rank, in a fast of abstinence, because its subject is the Passion of Christ (Ware, in The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Ware, Faber, 1969, Introduction and the propers of the feast, pp. 131–163; and see Fasting and Feasting). 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,” “the establishment of the faithful,” “the weapon of peace and invincible trophy” (kontakion and stichera; The Festal Menaion, pp. 131–163). The troparion, still 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).

The historical core: the Encaenia at Jerusalem

The feast’s firm historical anchor is the dedication of the great church complex that the Emperor Constantine built over Golgotha and the tomb of Christ at Jerusalem. After the site was cleared and excavated in the 320s, the basilica (the Martyrium) and the rotunda over the tomb (the Anastasis) were solemnly dedicated in a festival of dedication — the Encaenia — in September 335 (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.40–47, describing the dedication festival; ODB = The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Kazhdan, Oxford, 1991, s.v. “Stauros” and “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 [Travels] 48–49; trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 3rd ed., Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999). The 14 September date of the Exaltation is the day after the traditional 13 September dedication, and the 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 finding of the Cross: pinning the legend

The received liturgical and popular tradition credits the finding (inventio) of the True Cross to St Helena, the mother of Constantine, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land (c. 326–328). This is where attestation-pinning is required, because the earliest and best witnesses to Helena’s pilgrimage say nothing of it.

[Disputed: whether St Helena found the True Cross. (a) The earliest source for Helena's pilgrimage, Eusebius's *Life of Constantine* (c. 337–339), describes her journey and her building of churches at Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives but says *nothing* of her finding the Cross (Eusebius, *Life of Constantine* 3.42–47). (b) St Cyril of Jerusalem, preaching in that city c. 350, testifies that the wood of the Cross had already been found and was by then distributed "throughout the whole world," but does not attribute the finding to Helena (Cyril of Jerusalem, *Catechetical Lectures* 4.10; 10.19; 13.4; trans. NPNF II/7). (c) The attribution of the discovery to Helena appears only from the 390s: St Ambrose of Milan is the first extant writer to credit her with it, in his funeral oration for the Emperor Theodosius (Ambrose, *De obitu Theodosii* 40–48, 395/396), followed by Rufinus (*Ecclesiastical History* 10.7–8, c. 402), Paulinus of Nola (*Letter* 31, 403), and the Greek historians Socrates and Sozomen. The Helena–*inventio* narrative is thus a tradition first attested some seventy years after the events it describes, and modern scholarship (J. W. Drijvers, *Helena Augusta*, Leiden: Brill, 1992, chs. 4–5) treats it as a legend that crystallized in the later fourth century rather than as a report contemporary with the finding.]

The historically defensible statements are therefore narrower than the popular account: that the site of Golgotha and the tomb was excavated under Constantine in the 320s; that a relic venerated as the wood of the Cross was present and being distributed at Jerusalem by c. 350 (Cyril’s testimony); and that the attribution of its discovery to Helena is a tradition of the 390s. The Church keeps the feast of the finding and exaltation of the Cross without the reference to Helena being a documented historical fact — a distinction the Festal Menaion itself does not adjudicate but which honest history requires (Drijvers, Helena Augusta, chs. 4–5; ODB, s.v. “Helena” and “Exaltation of the Cross”).

The second commemoration: the recovery from Persia

The feast of 14 September gathered to itself a second, and firmly historical, memory: 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. [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 bearing 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 rite and its theology

At the Vigil of the feast the celebrant carries the Cross in solemn procession to the center of the church, and in cathedral 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, and Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga, 1900, on the rubrics). The Cross then remains in the center of the church for veneration throughout the afterfeast. The Gospel of the feast is the Johannine Passion narrative of the crucifixion (John 19:6–35), and the theology is that of the Cross as the true “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, so that the Church can sing, “Before Your Cross we bow down in worship, O Master, and Your holy Resurrection we glorify” (the hymn sung in place of the Trisagion on this feast; The Festal Menaion, pp. 131–163). Here the feast joins hands with the whole Paschal mystery: the Cross is exalted in September precisely because it is the throne from which, at Pascha, death is trampled down (see Pascha: The Feast of Feasts).

The icon

The icon of the feast shows the Patriarch of Jerusalem standing on a raised ambo, lifting the Cross with both hands, while deacons support him and a crowd of clergy and people surrounds the platform; the domed rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre often forms the background, and St Helena and Constantine may stand to one side (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982, on the feast icons; and see The Icon of the Feast). The image renders the rite itself: not a historical reconstruction of a fourth-century discovery but the Church in the perpetual act of exalting the Cross.

See Also

References

  • The Festal Menaion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1969. (The propers and rite of the Exaltation, pp. 131–163.)
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Life of Constantine. Trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart Hall. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. (Bks 3–4: the building and dedication of the Holy Sepulchre; Helena’s pilgrimage, with no mention of finding the Cross.)
  • Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical Lectures 4.10; 10.19; 13.4. Trans. NPNF II/7. (The wood of the Cross already distributed by c. 350.)
  • Ambrose of Milan. De obitu Theodosii 40–48. (395/396; the earliest attribution of the finding to Helena.)
  • Egeria. Itinerarium (Travels) 48–49. Trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 3rd ed. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999.
  • J. W. Drijvers. Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross. Leiden: Brill, 1992.
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Ed. A. Kazhdan et al. Oxford, 1991 (s.v. “Exaltation of the Cross,” “Stauros,” “Helena,” “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).