Paulinus of Nola, in a letter to Sulpicius Severus of 400/403 (Letter 31), narrates the discovery of the True Cross by *Helena (empress and mother of Constantine, ob. 328, S00185) in response to a divine revelation. Written in Latin at Nola (southern Italy).
E02994
Literary - Letters
Paulinus of Nola
Paulinus of Nola, Letter 31.4-6
After the opening of the letter (E02995), in which Paulinus promises to send Sulpicius Severus a fragment of the True Cross, he narrates the history of the Cross, beginning with the centuries when it was lost and a pagan temple was built on the site of the crucifixion. He continues:
(4.) Mansit hoc saeculi prioris nefas in tempora nostris proxima Constantini, qui princeps esse principibus Christianis non magis sua quam matris Helenae fide meruit, quae diuino, ut exitus docuit, inspirata consilio, cum Hierosolymam agnosceret, nomine conregn<ans Augustae eum rog>abat, ut sibi facultatem daret cuncta illic loca dominicis inpressa uestigiis et diuinorum erga nos operum signata monumentis purgare destructis templis et idolis ab omni prophanae inpietatis contagio et religioni suae reddere, ut ecclesia tandem in terra originis suae celebraretur. [...]
‘The wickedness of an earlier age continued to the time of Constantine, shortly before our day. He deserved to be prince of the princes of Christ as much through the faith of his mother Helena as much as through his own. The outcome proved that she was inspired by God’s plan when she set eyes on Jerusalem. As co-regent with the title Augusta, she asked her son to give her a free hand in clearing all the sites there on which our Lord’s feet had trod, and which were stamped with remembrances of God’s works for us. She sought to cleanse them of all the infection of profane wickednesses by pulling down temples and statues, and to restore them to their rightful allegiance so that the Church might at last be famed in the land of its beginnings. [...]'
Paulinus relates how Helena built numerous churches in the Holy Land, and describes the miraculous properties of the site of the Ascension, before returning to the subject of the Cross:
(5) Sed in historia crucis accipite magnum et uere diuinum miraculum. regina illa uenerabilis ut uenit Hierosolymam diligenter et pie locis illic et circa omnibus diuinorum curiosa insignium et oculis haurire gestiens fidem, quam piis auribus litteris que perceperat, crucem domini studiosissime inquirere adorsa est. sed quae uia uel ratio inueniendi subesset, cum index idoneus nemo inueniri potuisset, ubi memoriam et curam religiosae conscientiae uel obseruantiae et antiquitas aeui et superstitionis inpiae diuturnitas aboleuisset? Verum ipso omnium et terris et animis opertorum conscio et teste domino fidelis mulier sanctum spiritum per affectum pium meruit, quo adspirante, cum rem ab humana conscientia diuinitus remotam frustra diligens requisisset, de loco tantum passionis certior fieri studuit. itaque non solum de Christianis doctrina et sanctitate plenos uiros, sed et de Iudaeis peritissimos ut propriae, qua miseri et gloriantur, inpietatis indices exquisiuit et accitos in Hierosolymam congregauit.
Tum omnium una de loco testificatione confirmata est. iussit ilico urgente sine dubio conceptae reuelationis instinctu in ipsum locum operam fossionis accingi parata que mox ciuium pariter et militari manu breui laborem istius molitionis hausit, et contra spem omnium sed secundum ipsius tantum reginae fidem alta egestione reseratis terrae sinibus abditae crucis arcana patuerunt.
Sed cum tres pariter cruces, ut quondam fixae domino et latronibus steterant, repertae fuissent, gratulatio repertarum coepit anxia dubitatione confundi iusto piorum metu, ne forsitan aut pro cruce domini patibulum latronis eligerent aut salutare lignum pro stipite latronis abiciendo uiolarent. Respexit pias fideliter aestuantium curas dominus et ipsi potissimum, quae tam piae sollicitudinis princeps erat, huius consilii lumen infudit, ut aliquem recens mortuum inquiri et inferri iuberet. nec mora; uerbum factum, cadauer inlatum est; deponitur, iacenti una de crucibus admouetur et altera; sed reorum ligna mors spreuit. postremo dominicam crucem prodit resurrectio et ad salutaris ligni tactum morte profuga funus excussum et corpus erectum est tremefactis que uiuentibus stetit mortuus et funebribus, ut Lazarus quondam, uinculis expeditus, ilico inter expectatores suos rediuiuus incessit.
‘But hear of the great, truly God-sent miracle in the history of the Cross. When that revered queen reached Jerusalem, with care and devotion she avidly visited all the places in the city and vicinity which bore the marks of God’s presence. She was eager to absorb through her eyes the faith which she had gained by devoted listening and reading; but most eagerly of all she began to seek after the cross of the Lord. But what method or plan of discovering it was at hand, when no suitable informant could be found, since both the long interval of years and the persistence of wicked superstition had removed all recollection and interest in religious awareness and observance? But the Lord himself is aware of and awake to all that is hidden in earth and in men’s minds; so this faithful woman through her devoted love deserved to experience the breath of the Holy Spirit. After carefully but vainly searching for this object which God had removed from men’s knowledge, she became eager to obtain information solely on the site of the Passion. So she sought out not only Christians full of learning and holiness, but also the most learned of the Jews to inform her of their native wickedness which, poor men, they even boast. Having summoned them she assembled them in Jerusalem.
Her resolve was strengthened by the unanimous witness of all about the site. There and then (undoubtedly under the impulse of the revelation she had experienced) she ordered digging operations to be prepared on that very site. A force of civilians and soldiers was quickly mustered, and the work of digging soon completed. To the general astonishment, but precisely as the queen alone had believed, deep digging opened up cavities in the earth and revealed the secret of the hidden cross.
But three crosses were found together, as they had once stood together with the Lord and the thieves fastened to them. So the thanksgiving for their discovery began to be compounded with troubled doubts. The devoted faithful were rightly afraid that they might perhaps choose the gibbet of a thief in mistake for the Lord’s cross, or outrage the cross of salvation by discarding it as the stake of a thief. The Lord looked with mercy on the pious anxieties of those whose faith put them in a ferment, and especially on her who was outstandingly agitated in the devotion of her heart. So he poured light on her counsels. So inspired, she ordered a man newly dead to be sought out and brought to her. Her command was instantly obeyed; a corpse was carried in and set down. As the body lay there, the first and then the second cross was placed on it, but death spurned the wood which had supported the guilty. Finally the Lord’s cross was revealed by a resurrection, for at the touch of the wood of salvation mortality fled, death was shaken off, and the corpse brought upright. Whilst living men trembled, the dead man stood up; like Lazarus of old he was freed from the bonds of death, and there and then joined the group of spectators watching him, a man brought to life.’
Paulinus goes on to describe the basilica built for the Cross, the numerous pilgrims who travelled to it, and the miracles that took place there.
Text: Hartel/Kamptner 1999.
Translation: Walsh 1967.
Summary: David Lambert.
Revelation of hidden knowledge (past, present and future)
RelicsDiscovering, finding, invention and gathering of relics
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesWomen
Monarchs and their family
Source
Letter 31 in the letter collection of Paulinus of Nola (ob. 431). It is one of many letters which Paulinus addressed to aristocratic and ascetic Roman circles in the later 4th and early 5th centuries. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Paulinus did not curate any collection of his letters: instead collections were compiled by friends and admirers. The letter was written after the visit to Nola of Melania the Elder in 400 but before the dedication of the basilica at Primuliacum in 403/4 (Walsh 1967, 327, n. 1).Discussion
This is an early example of the portrayal of Helena in saint-like terms in relation to the discovery of the True Cross. Helena's visit to the Holy Land (exact dates not recorded, but during the period 326/8), and the building activities she oversaw there, are well-attested in contemporary evidence. The belief that she played a major role in the discovery of the Cross, however, emerged only several decades later, though it then quickly became established throughout the Christian world. While the earliest surviving references to the discovery of the Cross appear in works of Cyril of Jerusalem dating from the 350s, and while the evidence of Egeria's Itinerary (36.5-37.3, 48.2) shows that veneration of the Cross was an established ritual at Jerusalem by the 380s, the first surviving work to mention Helena's role in its discovery is Ambrose of Milan's funeral oration for the emperor Theodosius (On the Death of Theodosius 40-51), delivered in 395: that is, less than a decade before Paulinus' letter.Paulinus' account is not based on Ambrose's, from which it differs quite considerably as to the details of the story. Instead it resembles the Greek tradition represented by the 5th century ecclesiastical historians (Socrates 1.17; Sozomen 2.1-2; Theodoret 1.17) and their successors, such as Theophanes (E07995). Drijvers 2011, 151, argues that this version of the story originated in the lost Ecclesiastical History of Gelasios of Caesarea, written around 390. Paulinus differs from the Greek sources by omitting from the story Bishop Makarios of Jerusalem, who in their version has a prominence almost equal to Helena's. Paulinus attributes to Helena, not Makarios, the idea of identifying the True Cross by seeing which of the three uncovered crosses has the power of healing; in his version the True Cross brings a man back from the dead, rather than healing a sick woman, as in the Greek tradition. Paulinus' letter was the source of the account of the finding of the Cross in Sulpicius Severus' Chronicle (2.33-4).
(Users of our database should note that, while her discovery of the True Cross was undoubtedly central to the emergence of a cult of saint Helena, we have not systematically entered all the texts that relate to the finding of the Cross, a relic of the Crucifixion, rather than of a saint.)
Bibliography
Edition:Hartel, W., Sancti Pontii Meropii Paulini Epistulae, 2nd ed., revised M. Kamptner (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 29; Vienna, 1999).
Translation:
Walsh, P.G., Letters of St. Paulinus of Nola, vol. 2 (Ancient Christian Writers 35; Westminster MD: 1967).
Further Reading:
Conybeare, C., Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Trout, D., Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters and Poems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
Drijvers, J.W., Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden: Brill, 1992).
Drijvers, J.W., "Helena Augusta, the Cross and the Myth: Some New Reflections," Millennium 8 (2011), 125-174.
David Lambert
24/10/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00185 | Helena, empress and mother of Constantine, ob. 328 | Helena | Certain |
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