Vera Croce
La Vera Croce è il nome dato alla croce sulla quale, secondo la tradizione cristiana, Gesù fu crocifisso. Una delle varie leggende medioevali narra che essa fu costruita utilizzando l'Albero di Jesse (padre di Re David), che è identificato con l'Albero della Vita che creceva nel Giardino dell'Eden.
Secondo San Cirillo di Gerusalemme, "l'intero mondo abitato è pieno delle reliqui del legno della Croce."
La ricerca della Vera Croce
Eusebio descrive nella sua Vita di Costantino [1] come il luogo del Santo Sepolcro, in origine luogo di culto per la comunità cristiana di Gerusalemme, fosse stato interrato e come vi fosse stato costruito sopra un tempio di Venere — sebbene Eusebio non dica molto altro, questo atto faceva probabilmente parte del progetto di ricostruzione di Gerusalemme col nome di Aelia Capitolina del 135 (ordinato da Adriano in seguito alla distruzione della città a causa delle rivolte del 70 e della ribellione del 132–135 di Bar Kochba). In seguito alla sua conversione al Cristianesimo, l'imperatore Costantino ordinò, nel 325–326 circa, che il sito fosse riportato alla luce e incaricò San Macario, Vescovo di Gerusalemme, di far costruire una chiesa sul luogo. Tuttavia, nella sua opera, Eusebio non fa menzione del ritrovamento della Vera Croce.
Socrate Scolastico (nato nel 380 circa), nella sua Storia Ecclesiastica, fornisce un resoconto del ritrovamento[2]. In esso si narra come Sant'Elena, l'anziana madre di Costantino, avesse fatto distruggere il tempio pagano e avesse riportato alla luce il Sepolcro, dove furono ritrovate tre croci e il titulus della crocifissione di Cristo. Nella versione di Socrate, Macario fece porre le tre croci, una per volta, sopra il corpo di una donna gravemente malata. La donna, miracolosamente, guarì perfettamente al tocco della terza croce, che venne identificata con l'autentica croce di Cristo. Socrate sostiene che fossero stati ritrovati anche i chiodi della crocefissione, e che Elena li avesse mandati a Costantinopoli, dove furono incorporati nell'elmo dell'Imperatore e nelle briglie del suo cavallo.
Sozomen (morto nel 450 circa), nella sua Storia Ecclesiastica [3], fornisce in pratica la stessa versione di Socrate. In più egli aggiunge che era stato detto (non specifica da chi) che il luogo del sepolcro era stato "rivelato da un ebreo che abitava ad est, e che aveva tratto questa informazione da certi documenti ereditati da suo padre" (lo stesso autore mette però in dubbio l'autenticità di questo aneddoto) e che un morto era stato resuscitato dal tocco della Croce. Versioni più tarde della vicenda, di tradizione popolare, sostengono che l'ebreo che aveva aiutato Elena si chiamasse Giuda, e che in seguito si fosse convertito al Cristianesimo e avesse preso il nome di Ciriaco.
Teodoreto (morto intorno al 457) fornisce nella sua Storia Ecclesiastica, Capitolo xvii, quella che era divenuta la versione comune del ritrovamento della Vera Croce:
- Quando l'imperatrice scorse il luogo in cui il Salvatore aveva sofferto, immediatamente ordinò che il tempio idolatra che lì era stato eretto fosse distrutto, e che fosse rimossa proprio quella terra sulla quale esso si ergeva. Quando la tomba, che era stata così a lungo celata, fu scoperta, furono viste tre croci accanto al sepolcro del Signore. Tutti ritennero certo che una di queste croci fosse quella di nostro Signore Gesù Cristo, e che le altre due fossero dei ladroni che erano stati crocifissi con Lui. Eppure non erano in grado di stabilire a quale delle tre il Corpo del Signore era stato portato vicino, e quale aveva ricevuto il fiotto del Suo prezioso Sangue. Ma il saggio e santo Macario, governatore della città, risolse questa questione nella seguente maniera. Fece sì che una signora di rango, che da lungo tempo soffriva per una malattia, fosse toccata da ognuna delle croci, con una sincera preghiera, e così riconobbe la virtù che risiedeva in quella del Signore. Poiché nel momento in cui questa croce fu portata accanto alla signora, essa scacciò la terribile malattia e la guarì completamente.
Con la Croce furono anche rinvenuti i Santi Chiodi, che Elena portò via con sé a Costantinopoli. Secondo Teodoreto, "(Elena) fece trasportare parte della croce di nostro Signore a palazzo. Il resto fu chiuso in un rivestimento d'argento e affidato al vescovo della città, che fu da lei esortato a conservarlo con cura, affinché potesse essere tramandato intatto ai posteri."
Un'altra versione popolare di tradizione siriaca sostituisce Elena con una mitica imperatrice del I secolo di nome Protonike.
Gli storici considerano questi racconti più o meno apocrifi. È certo, comunque, che la Chiesa del Santo Sepolcro era stata completata entro il 335 e che presunte reliquie della croce erano lì venerate già entro il 340, così come riportato nelle Catecheses di Cirillo di Gerusalemme.
La conservazione delle reliquie
Il reliquiario d'argento, custodito nella chiesa dal Vescovo di Gerusalemme, era mostrato periodicamente ai fedeli. Negli anni intorno al 380 una monaca di nome Egeria recatasi a Gerusalemme in pellegrinaggio, descrisse la venerazione della Vera Croce in una lunga lettera, l'Itinerario Egeriae che mandò alla sua comunità religiosa:
- Then a chair is placed for the bishop in Golgotha behind the [liturgical] Cross, which is now standing; the bishop duly takes his seat in the chair, and a table covered with a linen cloth is placed before him; the deacons stand round the table, and a silver-gilt casket is brought in which is the holy wood of the Cross. The casket is opened and [the wood] is taken out, and both the wood of the Cross and the title are placed upon the table. Now, when it has been put upon the table, the bishop, as he sits, holds the extremities of the sacred wood firmly in his hands, while the deacons who stand around guard it. It is guarded thus because the custom is that the people, both faithful and catechumens, come one by one and, bowing down at the table, kiss the sacred wood and pass through. And because, I know not when, some one is said to have bitten off and stolen a portion of the sacred wood, it is thus guarded by the deacons who stand around, lest any one approaching should venture to do so again. And as all the people pass by one by one, all bowing themselves, they touch the Cross and the title, first with their foreheads and then with their eyes; then they kiss the Cross and pass through, but none lays his hand upon it to touch it. When they have kissed the Cross and have passed through, a deacon stands holding the ring of Solomon and the horn from which the kings were anointed; they kiss the horn also and gaze at the ring…
Before long, but perhaps not until after the visit of Egeria, it was possible also to venerate the crown of thorns, the pillar at which Christ was scourged, and the lance that pierced his side.
The Old English poem Dream of the Rood mentions the finding of the cross and the beginning of the tradition of the veneration of its relics.
In 614 the Sassanid Khosrau II ("Chosroes") removed the Cross as a trophy, when he captured Jerusalem. Thirteen years later, in 628, the Emperor of the East Heraclius defeated Khosrau and retook the relic, which he at first placed in Constantinople and later, took back to Jerusalem. Around 1009, Christians in Jerusalem hid the cross and it remained hidden until it was rediscovered during the First Crusade, on August 5, 1099, by Arnulf Malecorne, the first Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, conveniently at a moment when a morale boost was needed. The relic that Arnulf discovered was a small fragment of wood embedded in a golden cross, and it became the most sacred relic of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, with none of the controversy that had followed their discovery of the Holy Lance in Antioch. It was housed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre under the protection of the Latin Patriarch, who marched with it ahead of the army before every battle. It was captured by Saladin during the Battle of Hattin in 1187 and subsequently disappeared.
Other fragments of the Cross were further broken up, and the pieces were widely distributed; in 348, in one of his Catecheses, Cyril of Jerusalem remarked that the "whole earth is full of the relics of the Cross of Christ," [4] and in another, "The holy wood of the Cross bears witness, seen among us to this day, and from this place now almost filling the whole world, by means of those who in faith take portions from it." [5] Egeria's account testifies how highly these relics of the crucifixion were prized. Saint John Chrysostom relates that fragments of the True Cross were kept in golden reliquaries, "which men reverently wear upon their persons." Around the year 455, Juvenal Patriarch of Jerusalem sent to Pope Leo I a fragment of the "precious wood", according to the Letters of Pope Leo. A portion of the cross was taken to Rome in the seventh century by Pope Sergius I, who was of Byzantine origin.
Dispersal of relics of the True Cross
An inscription of 359, found at Tixter, in the neighbourhood of Sétif in Mauretania, was said to mention, in an enumeration of relics, a fragment of the True Cross, according to an entry in Roman Miscellanies, X, 441.
But most of the very small relics of the True Cross in Europe came from Constantinople. The town was captured and sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204: "After the conquest of the city Constantinople inestimable wealth was found, incomparably precious jewels and also a part of the cross of the Lord, which Helena transfers from Jerusalem and was decorated with gold and precious jewels. There it attained highest admiration. It was carved up by the present bishops and was divided with other very precious relics among the knights; later, after their return to the homeland, it was donated to churches and monasteries." Chronica regia Coloniensis (sub annorum 1238 - 1240), page 203.
By the end of the Middle Ages so many churches claimed to possess a piece of the True Cross, that John Calvin is famously said to have remarked that there was enough wood in them to fill a ship:
- There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poictiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it.
- — Calvin, Traité Des Reliques.
Santo Toribio de Liébana in Spain presently holds the largest of these pieces and is one of the most visited Roman Catholic pilgrimage sites. It is possible that many of the extant pieces of the True Cross are fakes, created by travelling merchants in the Middle Ages, during which period a thriving trade in manufactured relics existed.
In 1870, Rohault de Fleury in his "Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion" (Paris, 1870) made a study of the relics in reference to the criticisms of Calvin and Erasmus. He drew up a catalogue of all known relics of the True Cross showing that, in spite of what various authors have claimed, the fragments of the Cross brought together again would not reach one-third that of a cross which has been supposed to have been three or four meters in height, with transverse branch of two meters wide, proportions not at all abnormal. He calculated: supposing the Cross to have been of pine-wood (based on his microscopic analysis of the fragments) and giving it a weight of about seventy-five kilograms, we find the original volume of the cross to be .178 cubic meters. The total known volume of known relics of the True Cross, according to his catalogue, amounts to approximately .004 cubic meters, leaving a volume of .174 cubic meters lost, destroyed, or otherwise unaccounted for. Other scientific study of some extant relics has been conducted which confirms that they are from a single species of tree. Four cross particles - of ten particles with documentary proofs by Byzantine emperors - from European churches, i.e. S.Croce in Rome, Notre Dame, the cathedral of Pisa and the cathedral to Florenz, were microscopically examined. "The pieces came all together from olive." (William Ziehr, Das Kreuz, Stuttgart 1997, p. 63) [6], in German
Veneration of the Cross
St John Chrysostom wrote homilies on the three crosses:
- Kings removing their diadems take up the cross, the symbol of their Saviour's death; on the purple, the cross; in their prayers, the cross; on their armour, the cross; on the holy table, the cross; throughout the universe, the cross. The cross shines brighter than the sun.
The Catholic Church, many Protestant denominations (most notably those with Anglican origins), and the Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14, the anniversary of the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In later centuries, these celebrations also included commemoration of the rescue of the True Cross from the Persians in 628. In the Gallician usage, beginning about the seventh century, the Feast of the Cross was celebrated on May 3. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, when the Gallician and Roman practices were combined, the September date, for which the Vatican adopted the official name "Triumph of the Cross" in 1963, was used to commemorate the rescue from the Persians and the May date was kept as the "Invention of the True Cross" to commemorate the finding. (Note: the term "Invention" is from the Latin invenire, to find (lit. to come across), and should not be understood in the modern sense of creating something new. ) The September date is often referred to in the West as Holy Cross Day; the May date was dropped from the liturgical calendar by the Second Vatican Council in 1970. (See also Roodmas.) The Orthodox still commemorate both events on September 14, one of the twelve Great Feasts of the liturgical year, and the Procession of the Venerable Wood of the Cross on August 1st, the day on which the relics of the True Cross would be carried through the streets of Constantinople to bless the city [7].
In addition to celebrations on fixed days, there are certain days of the variable cycle when the Cross is celebrated. The Roman Catholic Church has a formal Adoration of the Cross during the services for Good Friday, while the Orthodox celebrate an additional Veneration of the Cross on the third Sunday of Great Lent. In Greek Orthodox churches everywhere, a replica of the cross is brought out in procession on Holy Thursday for the people to venerate.
Film
Nel film Le crociate l'esercito cristiano porta la croce in battaglia. Dopo la battaglia di Hattin, essa giace abbandonata sul campo circondata da cadaveri.