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Re: Helen and the True Cross
2006.06.30 09:50
[This email came to my email address alone (30 June 2006, 03:38 am EST.), yet I'm sure it was meant for the whole list.]
Yes, I think that the cross was found (or a piece of wood considered to be the cross) possibly when the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built but that its inventio was only attributed to Helena later for specific motives. One of the motives was political and had to do with the conflict between Caesarea and Jerusalem about primacy in the church province of Palestine.
There are no historically reliable sources before the last decades of the 4th century that connect Helena with the inventio crucis. There are plenty of references to the Cross, to its finding (see Cyril's letter to Constantius II of 351) and its veneration in Jerusalem before that, but no mention of Helena. The one who probably first mentioned Helena's discovery of the Cross was Gelasius of Caesarea in his (now lost) Ecclesiastical History (c. 390); the core of his story of Helena's inventio crucis can be found in Rufinus' Ecclesiastical History.
As to S Croce in Gerusalemme, even if we assume that the information in the Liber Pontificalis is reliable, Helena and the inventio crucis are not mentioned. I believe therefore that the relevant passage in the LP (I.179) cannot serve as evidence for the finding of the Cross by Helena.
Dr. Jan Willem Drijvers
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