For the first several centuries following the life of Jesus of Nazareth, crucifixion does not appear in Christian art! The cross was not an object of veneration or identification for Christianity. It was not until a major excavation project directed by Emperor Constantine’s mother, in and around Jerusalem, that crosses started becoming a Christian “thing.”

According to tradition and as reported by Butler, the good Emperor Constantine (discussed in yesterday’s post) had a devout Christian mother, Helena (now a saint). One of the perks of being the mother of the Emperor is money, and lots of it. Helena, at age 80, got it into her head to make a tour of the Holy Land; this was around the year 326. It also helped that Palestine was under Roman control at that time.

Once in Palestine, Helena decided that she needed to find the actual cross that Jesus was crucified on. Inasmuch as money was no object (and the knowledge that they were dealing with the Emperor’s mother), she paid a lot to gain information about where she might find the cross. Helena was told it’d likely be buried somewhere near the tomb that Jesus was laid in. Well, where was the tomb? Likely under some buildings. Even more likely under some pagan temples or similar sacrilege. Hard to find, unknown location.

Helena just asked where the most likely location was, generally. Once she found that out, she simply paid and paid and paid to have ALL the buildings, temples, and structures torn down and the areas underneath them (mind you, the crucifixion was 300 years earlier) dug up. Razing, digging, unearthing, displacing. Who cares who lived there, worshipped there, shopped there, or owned any of that property–this quest was far more important!

Finally, supposedly, Helena’s team struck gold. Or at least found three wooden structures (preserved) that were recognizable as crosses. Scripture reports that Jesus was crucified along with two others, and here were three crosses–but which one was Jesus’s? The sign that Scripture reports was hung on Jesus’s cross was also found in the Big Dig, but no longer identifiably attached to any of the execution implements, so that didn’t help.

To the rescue came a Christian bishop in the area named Macarius. He came to Helena and told her about a gravely ill woman in his diocese and suggested that each of the crosses be brought and laid upon the sick woman. The idea was that the Jesus cross would heal her, while the other two would have no such effect. And of course, two of the crosses provided the sick woman no help–but when touched by the third, she was restored to health and this convinced Helena that she had finally found the cross on which Jesus had been crucified.

Thereafter, the cross became such a venerated symbol that no Christian church I have ever been in, no matter the country, is without some representation of it. Oh, there are differences between the shapes of the crosses represented and whether marathon-runner-looking Jesus is shown as nailed to it and suffering or whether it is shown simply as an unadorned arm and cross-bar.  People wear a cross as jewelry, pray in its name, pray holding one (such as with a rosary), sing hymns about it, and put it on flags. No other symbol represented Christianity more universally…nothing else comes close.

The question that this raises for me is “What does it do for and to groups of people, over centuries, to focus on a tool of execution as their uniting symbol and, in turn, to teach all followers/converts to revere that implement of execution?” It is hard to imagine a religion where the primary symbol is a noose or an electric chair. (Sadly, it’s become easier to imagine one utilizing a gun–but that only serves to make the point about what it does to people to elevate and revere as God-ordained anything that can cause death as a means of salvation.)

Speculation time: What would it have meant for Christianity without its centuries-long fixation on crosses? What if Helena’s Big Dig had come up empty?