INVENTION OF THE HOLY CROSS

A festival kept by the Church of Rome, in memory of the day on which they affirm our Saviour’s cro was found by the empre Helena, in the time of Const an tine the Great; concerning which the following story has been fabricated. That prince being at Jerusalem, was informed that the cro of our Saviour was buried in the sepulchre, upon which she ordered them to dig, when they found the cro and the nails, together with the cro es of the two thieves: but the wood on which the inscription was made being separated from the cro , they could not distinguish that of our Saviour from the others, till Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, found out the following expedient: he ordered a dying woman to be brought and laid upon the cro es, two of which gave her no manner of relief, but being set upon the third, she perfectly recovered from the first moment she touched it, whereby they plainly discovered that it was the same on which our Saviour suffered. The empre built a stately church in the place where the cro was found, where she left some part of the wood richly ornamented, carrying the rest with the nails to Constantinople. INVESTITURE. The act of conferring a bishopric, by delivering a pastoral staff or ring. Concerning the right of investiture, violent disputes arose in the middle ages, between the emperors and the popes, for an account of which the reader is referred to Mosheim, Cent. XI. part ii. chap. 2, the account being too long for insertion here.