Vera Cruz (Christianity)

The Vera Cruz ("True" Cross) or Holy Cross is the one on which, according to Christian tradition, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. It is considered a relic of the first order by Catholicism and in the Orthodox Church.

History

Towards the year 326, Empress Helen of Constantinople (mother of Emperor Constantine I the Great) had the temple of Venus that was located on Mount Calvary in Jerusalem demolished and excavated there until news reached her that it had been destroyed. found the True Cross. The trip had been made in order to find the Holy Sepulcher, which was lost. The search began due to the cult of the cross, since the death of Jesus Christ.

According to the Golden Legend of Santiago de la Vorágine, when the empress (who was then eighty years old) arrived in Jerusalem, she had the wisest Jews in the country interrogated so that they would confess everything they knew. of the place where Christ had been crucified. After obtaining this information, she was taken to the Skull Mount (Golgotha), where the emperor Hadrian, 200 years earlier, had ordered the erection of a temple dedicated to the goddess Venus. It is believed that Golgotha was actually an old abandoned quarry with a rock mass, of little use for construction, which was left unused and later constituted the scaffold where the Romans placed the crosses. This quarry was outside the wall, but close to it.

Saint Helena ordered the temple to be demolished and excavated in that place, where according to legend she found three crosses: that of Jesus and that of the two thieves. As it was impossible to know which of the three crosses was that of Jesus, the legend says that Helena had a sick man brought, who when he came into contact with the cross of Gestas his health worsened, and when he was touched with the cross of Dimas He remained as he had been at the beginning, but when he was touched by that of Jesus, the True Cross, he was completely restored. The discovery of the relic was formerly commemorated in the month of May with the name of the festival of the Invention of the Holy Cross (festival on May 3), a name that is still preserved in some towns, such as Guadilla de Villamar. or in San Martín de Pusa.

The empress and her son Constantine had a lavish temple built at the site of the discovery, the so-called Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, where they kept the relic. Much later, in the year 614, the Persian king Khosrau II took Jerusalem and, after his victory, took the True Cross and placed it under the feet of his throne, as a symbol of his contempt for religion. of Christians.

After fifteen years of fighting, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius defeated him definitively in the year 628. Shortly after, in a ceremony held on September 14 of that year, the True Cross returned to Jerusalem. It was carried personally by the emperor, in a procession led through the city. Legend says that when the emperor, dressed with great magnificence and pomp, wanted to carry the relic, he was unable to do so, not being able to do so until he stripped off all his finery as a sign of the poverty and humility of Christ. Since then, that day was marked in the liturgical calendars as that of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Relics

In Europe since the Middle Ages, there were many relics of the True Cross to the point that Calvin went so far as to say (in his Traité Des Reliques, a controversial work) that with all that wood it could be built a large ship. However, in 1870 Charles Rohault de Fleury(fr) studied the subject in his "Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion" and he came to the conclusion that the sum of all the existing relics of the Cross amount to one third of a cross three meters high.

One of the relics (considered authentic) is located in the Basilica of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem in Rome, a few meters from the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. Other fragments are also found in Spain, in the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana (Cantabria) and in Caravaca de la Cruz, (Murcia). According to an analysis carried out in 1958, the piece of log preserved in the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana corresponds to the species Cupressus sempervirens, and the possibility that said wood could reach an age greater than the period of time corresponding to the common era. The same study specified that Palestine is located within the geographical area of Cupressus sempervirens.

After the completion of the renovation works on the chapel of the Vera Cruz in the Collegiate Church of Santa María la Mayor in Caspe (Zaragoza), the Vera Cruz de Caspe is once again on display to the public. This relic is one of the largest fragments in the world, only behind those of Paris and Santo Toribio de Liébana.

News

Today, there are fragments of the True Cross in many churches around the world; although it is difficult to specify whether or not they correspond to the relic found by Helena and much less to the cross on which Jesus Christ died.

One of the largest relics of the cross of Christ is found in Heiligenkreuz Abbey (Austria).

In Popayán there is an image of Jesus Christ crucified, called "Santo Cristo de la Veracruz", the work of Juan Martínez Montañés from Jaen from the beginning of the century XVII. It is said that inside the cross of this image there is a small fragment or splinter of the original cross of Christ, acquired by the conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar in Spain. The Holy Christ of Veracruz is located in the Church of San Francisco.

In Honduras a fragment of the True Cross is preserved that was donated by the Bulgarian History Museum, in a gesture of brotherhood between both peoples; along with Venezuela (La Santa Cruz church in Barquisimeto, Lara state), Mexico, Guatemala (it has two fragments, in the church of San Francisco and in the church of La Recolección, both located in the capital city of Guatemala), in Costa Rica, a splinter is kept in the Metropolitan Cathedral, Colombia, Nicaragua, Chile (Basilica de la Merced, Parroquia de la Vera Cruz in the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile and Church of the Sacred Hearts in the Diocese of Valparaíso, and Peru (Basilica de la Vera Cruz in the center of Lima), they would be the only Latin American countries to possess a fragment of the Vera Cruz. Another of the splinters is venerated in the Sanctuary of the Lord of the Good Death, in Rediciones, province of Córdoba in Argentina. The "reduction of Pampas Indians" It was later abandoned with the expulsion of the Jesuits from the American continent, and passed into the hands of the Franciscans, finally being run by diocesan priests. Its main festival is May 3, although it was founded on September 14, the date of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

In the Matriz de la Concepción Church of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain) the founding cross of the Canary Islands capital is kept, considered a relic in itself, it is kept in a glass urn in the shape of a cross. This cross has the patronage of the city shared with Santiago el Mayor. The Holy Cross is also the patron saint of the town of Puerto de La Cruz, also located in Tenerife.

Cult

The Catholic, Orthodox and (partially) Anglican Churches venerate the True Cross on Good Friday, in memory of the Passion of the Lord. On that day, people genuflect before her as with the Blessed Sacrament and usually kiss her as a sign of reverence.

In celebrations and processions made with a relic of the Holy Cross, it is carried under a canopy, like the Blessed Sacrament.^{[citation required]}

Relics are also used in the reception rites of the diocesan bishop, or applied to other personalities of the church or authorities, when upon arriving at a temple they are offered, if it exists there, the cross-shaped reliquary (if there is not just any cross) and, according to the norms, the faithful gathered there are blessed. Then you enter the temple in a procession.^{[citation required]}