ABSTRACT
As Christian tradition has it, the cross that Christ was crucified on was discovered in Jerusalem by Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century. In 614 the Persians carried it away as war booty when they captured the holy city. Emperor Heraclius, after his victory over the Persians, took it back in 630. Following the conquest of Jerusalem by the Arabs, the Holy Cross disappeared and it (more precisely, part of it) was rediscovered only in 1099, when the crusaders captured Jerusalem.1 The tradition of the division of the Saviour’s cross and the dispatch of these parts to different corners of the world is also very old; according to some reports it was Empress Helena who divided it into two equal parts: one for Jerusalem and one for Constantinople.2
