At the same time, to complete the great gifts of His Holy Church, the Lord vouchsafed the most pious Mother Constantine to find in the earth that original Cross on which the Blood of our Divine Redeemer was shed. According to the testimony of Sozomen,76 this happened after the Council of Nicaea, which restored perfect truth in the Church of God, History and tradition tell us the following details about this event. In the year 326, the pious Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, went to Palestine to venerate the holy places, having at the same time the intention of finding, if possible, the Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. The fulfillment of her desire at the very beginning faced a great difficulty: the place where the Wood of the Cross of the Lord was hidden remained unknown to the Christians of that time and was a deep mystery of the enemies of Christ. It was necessary to expel this mystery by the power of royal power. On the advice of the patriarch, Helena gathered together the oldest Jews. To the question: where the crucifiers of the God-Man hid His Cross, the elders, forced by threats of cruel tortures, answered by pointing to a certain Judas, who, according to the tradition coming from the ancestors, could definitely know the place sought. The stubborn Jew did not want to reveal the secret he kept for a long time: only a six-day hunger at the bottom of a deep waterless spring forced him to confess. "On the north-eastern side of the mountain," said the exhausted Jew to the queen and the patriarch, "in the very place where the pagan temple of Venus is, you will find the Cross you are looking for." The pagan temple was razed – they began to dig the ground, and after long labors they finally found three crosses. It remained to find out which of them was the Cross of the Lord – a sign that the Cross of the Savior did not differ in its appearance from the crosses of the robbers. Titlo, which was on the Cross of the Lord, lay in a special place.77 According to the faith of the patriarch, the Lord revealed this through a miracle. While the three crosses were opened, the body of the dead man was carried for burial. Then the patriarch commands the bearers to stop and, in the undoubted hope that the weapon with which the Redeemer of the world crushed hell and death will now break the bonds of death, he places all the crosses on the lifeless body, one after the other. The first two crosses did not raise the dead from the grave; from the touch of the third the dead man suddenly came to life, and then everyone recognized in this cross the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord. St. Helen was the first to prostrate herself in reverence before the Venerable Tree and kissed it; her example was followed by the nobles who accompanied her. The fame of the miracles wrought by the power of the Cross of Christ quickly spread throughout the city and attracted to Golgotha such a great multitude of people that the crowd did not allow everyone to approach and kiss the venerable Tree, and many began to ask the patriarch that it be shown to them even from afar. Macarius, standing on an elevated place and erecting the Precious Cross, showed it to the distant people, and the people, seized with holy rapture and trembling, cried out: Lord, have mercy! From here the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Life-Creating Cross began in the Church, the foundation of which was laid from the very time of its discovery, i.e. from the year 326. The history of the discovery of the Holy Cross, as well as the institution on the occasion of this sacred feast with the well-known rites still observed, serve as the strongest confirmation for everyone that the appearance of the Holy Cross was precisely four-pointed. A priest or bishop, according to the rule, on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, makes four appeals, holding the cross on his forehead: first to the east, then to the west, then to the south, and finally to the north. When the first hundred times "Lord, have mercy" is sung, then the priest or bishop signs the people with the cross three times in the form of a cross, i.e. in the image of the four-pointed cross. The same happens when the next hundreds sing.

III. On the crosses made at the behest of Saint Constantine and erected in various places, also on the chased images of the cross on the coins of Constantine and the sovereigns who followed him in the fourth century, on the conventional sign of the peaceful episcopal letters of the fourth century, and on the baptismal vestments of Saints Gregory the Theologian and Epiphanius of Cyprus

a) About the three crosses erected by St. Constantine in memory of the three crosses he saw at different times in heaven, and about the origin of the cross with the inscription: IC.XC Nike.

On the return of Equal-to-the-Apostles Helen from Jerusalem, says Nicephorus,78 by order of Constantine three very large crosses were forged of brass, on each of which he inscribed separately the following words: on one cross – I?????, on another – ???????, on the third – ????. The cross with the name "Jesus" was all gilded and placed on the triumphal gate – in the square; another, bearing the name "Christ," the emperor, according to Nicephorus, placed on a Roman purple column, in a place called ???????????,, i.e., brotherly love. And the third, with the inscription ????, which Constantine called ?????,, i.e., victory, and Heraclius, ????????,, i.e., invincible, he set up on a high marble pillar, in a place that bore the name of ??????????,, i.e., the square of bread. Here is hidden the beginning of the four-pointed cross with the inscription: IS, which is still used in the Greek and our Churches almost exclusively for printing prosphoras. CHOLESTEROL. Nick.

It is not known from what time these three inscriptions were transferred from three separate crosses to one cross and began to be used for printing prosphoras. On the Constantinople column, which existed even after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks and which was attributed to the Emperor Theodosius, one four-pointed cross with the inscription is already visible on the base. In the X century, such a cross was already depicted on coins, as we will see below. In any case, our so-called Old Believers cannot but admit that the three crosses erected by St. Constantine in three different places in the capital were four-pointed, because they were made in the likeness and memory of those seen in heaven; and in heaven there was no sign of the eight-pointed cross.

b) Let us now speak about other crosses erected by Constantine and which also had a four-pointed appearance.

Kedrinus says79 that in the military square (?? ?? ?????????), in addition to other statues, Constantine the Great was represented in the form of a horseman with a cross. According to the testimony of the same Kedrinus, Constantine also ordered a cross to be erected in the main square, between the statues of Minerva, Lindia, and Amphitrides, and in Rome he ordered his statue to be erected also with a cross in his hand, as testified by Gelasius and Eusebius.80

In the book "On the Beginning of Constantinople" it is said, among other things: on the vault of the chamber of the forum there are two statues – Helena and Constantine, and in the middle (between them) there is a cross, above which there is an inscription: ??? ?????, ??? ??????, I????? ???????, ???, ????? ???? ??????, ???? 81.

Там же говорится, что на северной стороне форума стоял крест, подобный виденному самим Константином Великим на солнце, на оконечностях которого видны круглые яблоки, а на них представлены дети его, убранные в золотые уборы. Опять никто не может противоречить тому, что все эти кресты были четвероконечные: Константин Великий не знал другого креста, кроме показанного ему на небе. Кресты с яблоками на оконечностях перешли и к нам и доселе очень часто видны, особенно в церкви, – и эти кресты не восьмиконечные, а четвероконечные, как и у греков.

в) Об изображении победы (Виктории) с крестом82.

На монетах римских императоров с самых древних времен – до Константина, равно как и при нем, весьма часто изображалась, между прочим, Виктория в образе крылатой человеческой фигуры. Ее представляли большею частью с лавровым венком в руке, который она или подает изображаемому подле нее императору, или возлагает на его голову, или просто держит его в своей руке, когда изображается одна. Это, очевидно, обычай языческий, который свидетельствовал о вере римских императоров и римского народа в богиню войны. Константин Великий первый дал этой мнимой богине в руки крест, и ее с этого времени последующие римские императоры начали изображать чаще и уже не с лавровым венком, а с истинным знамением победы. Но Константин презирал самую богиню этого имени. На монетах последующих римских императоров, самых многочисленных и разнообразных, видна часто крылатая Виктория с крестом. Крест этот в руках победы, как видно из снимков монет, четвероконечный, – он состоит из длинной трости и небольшого поперечника. Константин первый ввел83 в обычай на монетах чеканить изображение креста и просто без победы.

г) О начале креста четвероконечного на державе, или императорском шаре, и диадеме.

Шар или мяч есть древнейший знак на державе императоров. Исидор84 начало и употребление его возводит ко времени Августа, который, как говорят, повелел означать на знаменах мяч для показания того, что ему подчинены народы на всем земном шаре. А мячи изображали фигуру шара. Серебряная монета императора Антонина (II век) имеет изображение шара с надписью: Rector orbis85.