reatened all the Jewish inhabitants with
torture and death if they did not produce the holy cross from the place
where their ancestors had concealed it: and at last an old Jew named
Judas, who had been put into prison and was nearly famished, consented
to reveal the secret; he accordingly petitioned Heaven, whereupon the
earth trembled, and from the fissures in the ground a delicious aromatic
odour issued forth, and on the soil being removed the three crosses were
discovered; and near the crosses the superscription was also found, but
it was not known to which of the three it belonged. However, Macarius,
Bishop of Jerusalem, repairing with the Empress to the house of a noble
lady who was afflicted with an incurable disease, she was immediately
restored to health by touching the true cross; and the body of a young
man which was being carried out to burial was brought to life on being
laid upon the holy wood. At the sight of these miracles Judas the Jew
became a Christian, and was baptized by the name of Quiriacus, to the
great indignation of the devil, for, said he, "by the first Judas I
gained much profit, but by this one's conversion I shall lose many
souls."

It would be endless were I to give the history of all the authenticated
relics of the holy cross since those days; but of the three principal
pieces one is now, or lately was, at Etchmiazin, in Armenia, the monks
of which Church are accused of having stolen it from the Latins of
Jerusalem when they were imprisoned by Sultan Suleiman. The second piece
is still at Jerusalem, in the hands of the Greeks; and the third, which
was sent by the Empress Helena herself to the church of Santa Croce di
Gerusalemme at Rome, is now preserved in St. Peter's. There is indeed
little reason to doubt that the piece of wood exhibited at Rome is the
same that the Empress sent there in the year 326. The feast of the
"Invention of the Cross" continues to be celebrated every year on the
3rd of May by an appropriate mass.

Besides the objects which I have mentioned, there is within the church
an altar on the spot where Christ is said to have appeared to the Virgin
after the resurrection. This completes the list of all the sacred places
contained under the roof of the great church of the Holy Sepulchre.

I may remark that all the very ancient specimens of the relics of the
true cross are of the same wood, which has a very peculiar
half-petrified appearance. I have a relic of this kind;