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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gavin Richardson, post: 2712963, member: 83956&quot;]I too am a fan of Helena. But early medieval traditions depict her as every bit as persistent and ruthless as her son. She doesn’t trip over the cross in the Holy Land; she “aggressively interrogates” Judas Cyriac to find the whereabouts of the cross. Here’s the major outline of the medieval tradition:</p><p><br /></p><p>1. Constantine sends Helena to the Holy Land to find the cross of the Crucifixion.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. The Jewish population fear that if Helena finds the cross, the Christians will be further strengthened and Jews will forever lose cultural power in the region. (In some traditions, Satan even appears to help unite Jews against the Christian investigators.)</p><p><br /></p><p>3. Helena tortures the Jewish leader Judas Cyriac (Quiriacus) by throwing him in a well without food or water for 6 days; on the 7th, Judas agrees to help find the cross.</p><p><br /></p><p>4. Judas leads Helena to a place to dig, but they find three crosses. One cross is used to bring a dead man back to life, and this miracle-working cross is deemed to be Jesus’s cross.</p><p><br /></p><p>5. Judas converts to Christianity and becomes a bishop.</p><p><br /></p><p>6. The end.</p><p><br /></p><p>Below are excerpts from a 12th c. version of the legend. This hagiography is not to be relied upon as history, and it is predictably and spectacularly anti-Semitic. The Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf wrote a long epic poem in the 9th century on the subject, entitled Elene. It’s not quite <i>Beowulf</i>, but it’s a pretty stirring read.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]613052[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]613053[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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