Helen finds the Cross; nails, churches, and Constantine’s memorial

…to make of the longed-for wood. And while all were at a loss about the place, and one was telling one suspicion and another another, the bishop of the city exhorted all to keep quiet and to offer a more earnest prayer to God concerning this. When this was done, the place was at once shown from God to the bishop, in which stood the temple and the statue of the unclean demon.

Then the empress, using imperial authority, gathering a great multitude of craftsmen and laborers, ordered the foul building to be overturned from its foundations, and the rubble to be thrown away somewhere far off. When this was done, the divine tomb appeared, and the place of the Skull, and not far off three crosses lying apart; and searching carefully they found the nails also. From that point helplessness and distress seized the empress, as she sought which then might be the Master’s Cross. But the bishop resolved the discernment through faith. For bringing each of the crosses to a woman of the notable people who was sick, given up by all, and breathing her last, he found the one sought; for as soon as the shadow of the saving Cross drew near the sick woman, she who was breathless and motionless at once sprang up by divine power and cried with a great voice, glorifying God.

And the empress Helen, crying with her voice and glorifying God, taking up the life-giving Cross with great joy and fear, brought a certain part together with the nails back to her son. For the remainder she made a silver casket and handed it to the bishop of the city as a memorial for all generations; and she ordained that a church be made at the life-giving tomb and at holy Golgotha, and at Bethlehem in the cave where our Lord Jesus Christ underwent birth according to the flesh, and on the Mount of Olives where the Lord, having blessed the disciples, was taken up. And having done many other things in Jerusalem, she returned to her son.

And he, receiving her with joy, laying the portion of the precious Cross in a golden case, handed it to the bishop for keeping, ordering that the manifestation of the precious Cross be celebrated in yearly commemorations. Of the nails, some he forged into his own helmet, and others he mixed into the bit of his horse, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: “In that day that which is upon the bit of the horse shall be holy to the Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 14:20).

And the emperor wrote to bishop Macarius to hasten the building, and he sent a superintendent of the work with a lavish supply of money, charging him that the holy places be built ambitiously, so that there should be no such beauty in all the earth. He also wrote to the governors of the province to join the work in every way from the public treasury, in money and outlays and materials. And the emperor was keeping brightly the feast of his twentieth year, giving thanks to God for all the good things he had done in the times of his reign.

The years from Christ’s coming to the finding of the Cross add up to three hundred and fifty-two years. From Adam to Christ’s coming, five thousand five hundred years; according to others, five thousand four hundred seventy-five. And in Aelia Maximonas succeeded Macarius, true to his name. This man was gentle and very distinguished; for in the persecution he endured many tortures for God, and having lost his right eye he was released upon the confession of the faith.

At that time the blessed Helen the empress reached the end of life, being eighty years old, having charged her son much concerning piety toward Christ. Let the history concerning the finding of the life-giving Cross stand thus far. And let no one deceive himself, talking vanity that is of no use and bringing in myth-makings through strange names into the subject. For neither has another bishop of Jerusalem