The Orthodox Church celebrates the sanctification of the Basilica of the Resurrection in 335 on this day. The Evangelist Luke mentions that Christ preached about Jerusalem: “they will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (19:45). As a result of the Roman siege in 70 AD, most of the city was razed to the ground, including the Second Temple, the holiest place in Judaism. Under Emperor Adrian in 129–130, the former location of Jerusalem became the center of the colony of Aelia Capitolina. A temple of Venus was erected on Golgotha, and one for Jupiter on the site of Christ’s burial. Following Bar Kokhba’s revolt in 132–136, Jerusalem was heavily depopulated, and the former province of Judea received the name of Syria Palaestina. When Emperors Constantine I and Licinius met in 313 in Mediolanum (today’s Milan), they promulgated an edict reversing the non-benevolent attitude toward the Christians. Gradually, the relationship progressed to embracing the Christian faith. In 325, Emperor Constantine, acting in his capacity of Pontifex Maximus (great chief), gathered and presided at the first “All-Imperial” (Oecumenical) Council in Nicaea. Soon after that, the True Cross of Christ was discovered. The next thing Emperor Constantine commissioned was the most beautiful church in the world on the sites of Calvary and the Lord’s Resurrection. Initially, the celebration of the True Cross’s manifestation (stavrofaneia) took place in 334 and was part of the sanctification of this new basilica (the church of the Resurrection). In 5th–6thcentury Old Georgian hymn-books from Jerusalem, the hymnography and verbal symbolism of the two feasts are intimately intertwined. Then, unlike now, this commemoration of the Consecration, or Encaenia, of the Church of the Resurrection (the Holy Sepulcher) at Jerusalem (335) was a major celebration, while the Exaltation of the Cross was the lesser of the two events. Today’s feast of the Exaltation became one of the major solemnities in the Jerusalem Church, along with Pascha and Theophany, only after the liberation of Jerusalem from the Persian Shah Khosrow II in 629. Emperor Heraklios emphasized the recovery of the True Cross in a solemn ceremony, and thus the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross received additional significance. Sources:
Deacon Mikhail Zheltov, A.A.Lukashevich,
“Vozdvizhenie chestnogo i zhivotvoriashchego kresta,” [“The Extaltation of the Precious and Lifegiving Cross”] Pravoslavnaia entsiklopedia [Orthodox Entsiklopedia] https://www.pravenc.ru/text/155081.html. Deacon Vitaly Permiakov, “Obnovlenie khrama Voskresneia Khristova v Ierusalime” [“Consecration of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ (the Holy Sepulcher) in Jerusalem”] Pravoslavnaia entsiklopedia [Orthodox Entsiklopedia] https://www.pravenc.ru/text/2578063.html. |
