On September 13, 335, the two great Constantinian basilicas in Jerusalem were dedicated: the Martyrium on Golgotha—also called ad Crucem—and the Anastasis, or Church of the Resurrection. The following day, September 14, the relic of the Cross was displayed; according to tradition, it had also been discovered on a September 14 (the story of Saint Helena’s role in this “finding” belongs more to legend than to history). The events of 335, when the Cross was first honored with a liturgical feast, gave rise to later traditions and legends.
By the seventh century, the feast was being observed in the West, where the Greek term hypsosis was translated as “Exaltation.” In the Western tradition, this “exaltation” is linked to the recovery of the precious relic that the Persian king Chosroes had seized in 614 when he captured Jerusalem. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius recovered it on May 3, 628.
Later, the relic was carried into battle at Hattin in Galilee in 1187 by the bishop of Bethlehem, but it was definitively lost there—though not before fragments had already been dispersed throughout the Christian world.
