Settle your quarrel first, the emperor's letter said

JERUSALEM, Roman Palestine, September 13, 335 AD — Marianus, the Emperor Constantine’s shorthand notary, walked into a meeting of bishops at Tyre, in Phoenicia. He handed over a letter. The bishops had been called there to settle a quarrel among the churches of Egypt. The letter told them to leave for Jerusalem at once and consecrate a church.

It also told them to sort their own quarrel out before they went. Constantine wanted every argument settled and all the bad feeling cleared away. Men who were fighting each other had no business bringing a gift to God.

One of the churches stands at Golgotha, the little hill where the Lord was crucified. The people of Jerusalem call it the Great Martyrium. The other stands about a stone’s throw away. It is built over the crypt where the Lord’s body was laid, and from which he rose on the third day. That one is called the Anastasis, and the word means the Resurrection.

The temple built on top of the tomb

St. Helena, the emperor’s mother, came to Palestine in 326 AD. She was nearly eighty. She found the old city deserted. The tomb of Christ lay buried under a mound of earth, with a temple of Venus standing on top of it. Enemies of the faith had put the temple there so that people would stop honouring the tomb.

St. Helena ordered the temple pulled down and the earth carried away. The tomb was there underneath. According to longstanding Catholic tradition, three crosses were found buried near it. Everyone there held it as certain that one of them was the Cross of the Lord, and the other two the crosses of the thieves crucified with him. She died in 330 AD, before the buildings were finished.

Her son had ordered them built on a scale to match the place. Writing to St. Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, Constantine said the church must be “incomparably superior to the most beautiful structures in every city throughout the world.” The Great Martyrium was finished in about the thirtieth year of Constantine’s reign. There was a festival that year for those thirty years, and he picked it as the right moment to have the church consecrated.

Bishops from Persia to Libya

Bishops travelled from Persia, from Thrace, from Cappadocia, from Egypt and from Libya. Monks came from the Thebaid, and crowds from every province followed them. An escort from the emperor went with them, and officers sent from the palace had orders to make the festival grander still. Constantine paid for it. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who came for the day, called it the biggest gathering he knew of after the council at Nicaea ten years ago.

Constantine did not come to Jerusalem. Marianus welcomed the bishops in his place. He gave them somewhere to stay and fed them at banquets. He handed out money and clothing to people who had nothing, and food to men and women who had been going without. The emperor sent costly ornaments and gifts of his own into the church.

Today the two churches were consecrated to God, and the feast runs on through tomorrow. It was done with prayers and sermons. Some of the bishops spoke about the emperor’s love for the Saviour, and about how grand his building was. Others explained passages of Scripture.

The day was chosen to fall on the day the Cross of the Lord had been found. According to longstanding Catholic tradition, it was found in the digging St. Helena ordered on this same ground nine years ago.

These days became a feast at Jerusalem, kept for eight days. People were baptised during them, and others came from every region under the sun to visit the holy places. The Church keeps September 14, the second of the two days, as the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.