ship. yet scripture says that just one man, jesus, was able to carry it on his shoulders. there were a lot of people who were speaking out about the devotion of relics as something which is absurd and disgusting. and that really thought that people had lost touch with the true faith. the true cross had the power to divide christianity. and the question remained, could the legend be real? high in the cantabrian mountains of spain. it s home to the largest and most revered piece of helena s discovery. dr. georges kazan is an archaeologist here to investigate the mystery of the true cross. what s at stake here is the truth about the origins of this
symbol of christianity, adorning vast cathedrals and houses of worship the world over. but in some churches, they have crosses said to be made out of the actual wood jesus died on. the true cross. the true cross is surely the most important object in christian history. to touch a piece of the true cross is the opportunity to reach across time and space in human history and grasp something that changed the world. to the chump churches that h them, fragments of the true cross are a miraculous link to the son of god. but could these relics possibly be real, and where do they come from? according to church tradition, 300 years after the execution of jesus of nazareth, the mother of
relic of the cross were exceptionally important for the spread of christianity. so the fact that this relic was created around that time goes to support how important that phenomenon was. for hundreds of years after the legend of helena s discovery, the true cross continued to play a central role in the story of christianity. and though this relic is only 1,000 years old, others may prove far older. this is the first step in a long journey to investigate morrellic imore relics of this type and see if any could go back as far as the time of helena or even the time of christ. at the church of the holy sepulcher in jerusalem, they continue to celebrate helena s discovery of the true cross. in a church she built, in a city she reclaimed.
true cross start appearing throughout the roman empire. our first evidence that fragments of the cross are being spread around the mediterranean is from the late 340s and 350s when we learn that people have taken pieces of the true cross over to the north african seaboard. if the tradition is correct, then that would only have been 20 years or so since its first finding that shows that physical particles of the true cross actually did spread out from jerusalem very, very early on. there must have been the discovery of wood by helena or someone for this trade in relics to have really boomed. this really becomes a new moment for christianity in which the cross becomes something that they are no longer afraid to talk about or to signify. before the cross is basically a symbol of defeat, a symbol of
relic. is it something that dates back from the time of christ? this relic is said to have been brought in the fifth century from jerusalem by a monk called taribia. and this relic is enormous bystanders of relics of the cross. there s not many relics that are anything like this size. there s a little window here where you can actually touch the wood itself. unfortunately, we can t open up this relic and take this wood with us or subject it to any sort of exampling. however, what i d really like to do is to get something like it into a proper laboratory environment where we can explore it further. to help him in his search, dr. kazan s starting point is a fascinating project by a 19th century french architect named