Monday, August 18

 


St. Helen, Discoverer of the True Cross, and More

Today is the feast of St. Helena, Empress, widow and discoverer of the True Cross. Relics of that holy wood can be seen at the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome, along with the crossbar of the Good Thief's own scaffold and the titulum or sign that stood over the cross of Christ. A new theory proposes that the titulum displayed there is authentic for the following reasons: the languages written on it are in a different order than in the gospels, something a forger would have never thought of, and even more interesting is that the inscriptions are actually written backwards, as it would have been done by a Hebrew working in Roman service, or intended for people for which Latin was a second (or third) language and were used to reading right-to-left.

Today we also remember St. Florus and St. Laurus, two brother-stonemasons, whose martyrdom in Illyria (with St. Proclus and St. Maximilus) seems a duplicate of that of the Four Crowned Martyrs of Rome; as well as Bl. Aimo Taparelli, O.P., noted as being one of the few Inquisitors-General of Lombardy and Liguria to live to a ripe and happy old age, unlike the more unfortunate St. Peter Martyr, another Lombard, and Aimo's own predecessor, Bl. Bartolomew Cervario. There's also the martyr St. Agapitus of Palestrina, catalogued in the Gelasian Sacramentary, and who has nothing to do with Renaissance polyphony. In Greece today, they remember the Thousand Martyrs of Armenia, two patriarchs of Constantinople, and Four Ascetics whose names are unknown to history.

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