The pagan Roman Emperors tried to obliterate the holy places where our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and rose from the dead, so that they would be forgotten. Emperor Hadrian (117-138) ordered that Golgotha and the Lord's Sepulchre be buried, and that a temple in honor of the pagan "goddess" Venus and a statue of Jupiter be placed there.
Pagans gathered at this place and offered sacrifice to idols. Eventually after 300 years, by Divine Providence, the Christian holy places, the Sepulchre of the Lord, and the Life-giving Cross, were discovered and opened for veneration. This took place under Emperor Constantine the Great (306-337) after his victory over Maxentius (in 312), who ruled the Western part of the Roman Empire, and over Licinius, the ruler of its Eastern part.
In 313 Saint Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, by which Christianity was legalized and persecutions against Christians in the Western half of the Empire were stopped. In the year 323 Constantine became the sole ruler of the vast Roman Empire.
Three crosses were discovered in excavations by Constantine's mother St. Helena, and the one that performed miracles was known to be the cross of Christ.
The icon of the feast shows the moment when the patriarch of Jerusalem held up the cross to be seen by all. Today, only a fraction of the cross is preserved, and this is kept in pieces in various churches and monasteries throughout the world.
