Joined Dec 2009
5,364 Posts | 1,122+
Blachernai
Regardless of what one thinks of the unlikelihood of one particular instrument of Roman law surviving intact for three centuries, the mother of Constantine travelled to the Levant in the fourth century and supposedly found the "True" (which I put in quotation marks not to question its veracity, which is hardly worth the trouble, but rather because those in the Eastern Empire preferred to call it the "life-giving wood") Cross. Fragments claiming to be from this cross are scattered throughout the western world. I'm not interested in discussing the question of the cross itself, but rather its medieval travels. We know that the cross was taken by the Persians when they conquered Jerusalem in 614. This was subsequently recovered by Herakleios amid much fanfare, although there is an older scholarly opinion which suggests that Herakleios may have invented its return. Even if Helena's cross dates from the seventh century, what then became of it? We know it went to Constantinople, and was presumably scattered further after the crusader sack in 1204, but where did all the pieces go? Is there any evidence to support the idea that the fragments all came from one piece of wood, or are we looking at numerous fabrications? Relic fabrication was certainly practised in Byzantium, but the street-level con-men appear to have mostly dealt in the relics of minor or obscure saints, presumably because claiming to possess more important relics would bring them into conflict with the emperor, who nominally owned all the relics.
