• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Corpus Christi Watershed

Pope Saint Paul VI (3 April 1969): “Although the text of the Roman Gradual—at least that which concerns the singing—has not been changed, the Entrance antiphons and Communions antiphons have been revised for Masses without singing.”

  • Donate
  • Our Team
    • Our Editorial Policy
    • Who We Are
    • How To Contact Us
    • Sainte Marie Bulletin Articles
    • Jeff’s Mom Joins Fundraiser
  • Pew Resources
    • Brébeuf Catholic Hymnal
    • Jogues Illuminated Missal
    • Repository • “Spanish Music”
    • KYRIALE • Saint Antoine Daniel
    • Campion Missal, 3rd Edition
  • MUSICAL WEBSITES
    • René Goupil Gregorian Chant
    • Noël Chabanel Psalms
    • Nova Organi Harmonia (2,279 pages)
    • Roman Missal, 3rd Edition
    • Catechism of Gregorian Rhythm
    • Father Enemond Massé Manuscripts
    • Lalemant Polyphonic
    • Feasts Website
  • Miscellaneous
    • Site Map
    • Secrets of the Conscientious Choirmaster
    • “Wedding March” for lazy organists
    • Emporium Kevin Allen
    • Saint Jean de Lalande Library
    • Sacred Music Symposium 2023
    • The Eight Gregorian Modes
    • Gradual by Pothier’s Protégé
    • Seven (7) Considerations
Views from the Choir Loft

Origins of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Fr. David Friel · September 14, 2017

HE LITURGICAL celebration of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is historically, euchologically, and scripturally rich. A unique feast in the sanctoral cycle, the present celebration of the feast is the result of a complex history, including origins in both the Christian East and West. The following is an introduction to some elements of that complex history.

There are actually three interrelated celebrations germane to the veneration of the Cross: the dedication of the churches of the Martyrium (site of the Crucifixion) and the Anastasis (site of the Holy Sepulcher), the finding of the relics of the true Cross, and the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The third occasion is dependent upon the first two for both its meaning and its date on the liturgical calendar.

The origins of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross are found in the Christian East, where the dedication of the Martyrium and Anastasis was recalled annually in a joint celebration that extended over a period of eight days. The Armenian Lectionary, which reflects Hagiopolite practices circa 415, attests that the festival commenced on September 13 in the church of the Anastasis; on the second day of the festival, September 14, the celebrations moved to the church of the Martyrium, whereupon the cross would be shown to the assembly for veneration. 1 As the earliest liturgical evidence for the precursor to the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Armenian Lectionary thus establishes the feast’s terminus post quem to be the early fifth century in Jerusalem. 2

The connection between the feast of the Exaltation and the discovery of the true Cross is corroborated by two early sources. The earliest is the Itinerarium of Egeria, which describes her experiences in Jerusalem during the late fourth century. Egeria explains that the dedications are celebrated jointly because their consecrations took place on the same day. 3 The relics of the true Cross, moreover, were also found on the very same day, although neither the date nor the years of these events are specified. 4 The second witness is Theodosius, who travelled to the Holy Land from North Africa in the early sixth century. He records similar details, specifying September 15 as the date on which Helena discovered the true Cross and describing seven days of accompanying celebrations. 5 Both Egeria and Theodosius, therefore, indicate that it was the finding of the true Cross that prompted its veneration during the extended celebration of the church dedications.

Some scholars, while acknowledging these historical events that gave rise to the celebration of the Holy Cross, have sought to explain the feast in relation to the octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (September 8), within which the Exaltation falls. 6 To do so, however, requires a spiritualized reinterpretation of the feast that separates it from its historical development. Others have argued that the feast of the Exaltation should be understood as a counterpart to Good Friday, similar to the relationship between the epiphany on Mt. Tabor (August 6) and the epiphany at the Jordan (January 6) or between the nativity of John the Baptist (June 24/25) and the nativity of Christ (December 25). 7

This contention, however, has received thorough critique from Van Tongeren. 8 In order for the Exaltation (September 14) to be understood as an accompanying feast of Good Friday (Nisan 14), one must date Easter according to the Quartodeciman system, which had been current in the second century but was no longer widely employed by the fourth century, during the development of the Exaltation feast. This account further ignores the connection between the Exaltation and the dedications of the Martyrium and the Anastasis, to which many ancient authors ascribe essential importance.

Thus, it is more reasonable to assert that the Exaltation is an accompanying feast to the dedication of the Jerusalem basilicas than to Good Friday. Interestingly, over the course of time, the feast of the Exaltation rises in importance above the dedication, such that the celebration originally considered central becomes subordinate to the celebration originally considered concomitant. 9

HE INTRODUCTION of this feast in the West is a later development. The celebration of the Finding of the Holy Cross (Inventio Santae Crucis) with its own feast on May 3 appears to predate the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, since MSS representing the earliest Roman evangeliaries10 (c. 645) show that the Gospel pericope for the Exaltation is simply adopted from the Finding. 11 The first appearance of the Exaltation in a Western source is in the Liber pontificalis, which records how a relic of the true Cross found by Pope Sergius I (687-701) in the sacristy of St. Peter’s Basilica would be adored and kissed by the faithful on this feast. 12 Thus, the terminus ante quem for the Exaltation is circa 700 in Rome. 13 Chavasse argues that the feast reached Rome between 650 and 680 in a less elaborate form than what had been developed in the East. 14

In the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, what had been the second-class feast “In Exaltatione Sanctae Crucis” since the MR 157015 became a feast by the same name in the MR 1970. 16 It is one of the few feasts in the sanctoral cycle that, when falling upon a Sunday, takes precedence over the per annum celebration. At present, this feast is known in the Byzantine Rite as the “Universal Exaltation (or, in Greek churches, the Elevation) of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross,” and it celebrates both the finding of the true Cross in 326 and the recovery of the relics from the Persians in 628. 17 It entails fasting and abstinence and is considered one of the “Twelve Great Feasts” (Δωδεκάορτον) of the church year.

Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi, quia per sanctam Crucem tuam redemisti mundum!


NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   Athanase Renoux, Le codex arménien Jérusalem 121, Patrologia Orientalis 36, fasc. 2, no. 168, ed. F. Graffin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), LXVII-LXVIII.

2   Louis van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross: Toward the Origins of the Feast of the Cross and the Meaning of the Cross in Early Medieval Liturgy (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 17-18.

3   “Item dies enceniarum appellantur quando sancta ecclesia, quae in Golgotha est, quam Martyrium vocant, consecrate est Deo; sed et sancta ecclesia, quae est ad Anastase, id est in eo loco ubi Dominus resurrexit post passionem, ea die et ipsa consecrata est Deo.” Egeria, Journal de Voyage (Itinéraire) , ed. Pierre Maraval, SC 296 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2002), 48:1.

4   “Harum ergo ecclesiarum sanctarum encenia cum summo honore celebrantur, quoniam crux Domini inventa est ipsa die.” Egeria, 48:1.

5   “Inventio sanctae crucis, quando inventa est ab Helena matre Constantini XVII. Kal. Octobris, et per septem dies in Hierusalem ibi ad sepulchrum Domini missas celebrantur et ipsa crux ostenditur.” Theodosius, De situ terrae sanctae, ed. Paul Geyer, in Itineraria et alia geographica, CCL 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), 31.

6   E.g., Prosper Guéranger, L’année liturgique, vol. 5, part 2 (Paris: Desclée, 1952), 378-384.

7   See footnote 75 in Van Tongeren, 33.

8   Van Tongeren, 32-35.

9   Van Tongeren, 35.

10   Type π, as identified in Theodor Klauser, Das römische Capitulare evangeliorum: Texte und Untersuchungen zu seiner ältesten Geschichte, vol. 1, LQF 28 (Münster: Aschendorffschen, 1935), 1-12, especially 8.

11   “Et ipsa die exaltatio scae crucis si velis require evangl. ad legend. de sca cruce: Simile est regnum caelorum thesauro abscondito in agro.” Klauser, 38, footnote to §198. The appointed passage, which begins at Matthew 13:44, is the parable of the pearl of great price buried in a field, obviously appropriate for the Finding but not particularly so for the Exaltation. See also Van Tongeren, 115-118.

12   “Qui etiam ex die illo pro salute humani generis ab omni populo christiano, die Exaltationis sanctae Crucis, in basilicam Salvatoris que appellatur Constantiniana osculatur ac adoratur.” Le Liber Pontificalis: Texte, Introduction, et Commentaire, 2nd ed., vol. 1, ed. Louis Duchesne (Paris: Boccard, 1955), 374. Hereafter, cited as LP.

13   Roughly the same dating may be given for the introduction of the veneration of the Cross to the Good Friday liturgy. See Patrick Regan, “Veneration of the Cross,” in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year, ed. Maxwell E. Johnson (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 143.

14   Antoine Chavasse, Le sacramentaire gélasien (Vaticanus Reginensis 316): Sacramentaire presbytéral en usage dans les titres romains au VIIe siècle (Turnhout: Desclée, 1958), 361. Chavasse arrives at this dating by analyzing the pertinent Mass formularies in Roman sacramentaries.

15   Missale Romanum: editio princeps (1570) , ed. Manlio Sodi and Achille Maria Triacca, Monumenta Liturgica Concilii Tridentini (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998), 3210-3219.

16   Missale Romanum ex decreto sacrosancti oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum, auctoritate Pauli Pp. VI promulgatum, editio typica (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1970). Known in The Roman Missal Revised by Decree of the Second Vatican Council and Published by Authority of Pope Paul VI, The Sacramentary, Approved for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1974) as “Triumph of the Cross,” the feast was renamed “The Exaltation of the Holy Cross” in the 2011 English translation of the MR 2008.

17   Joseph Hallit, “La croix dans le rite byzantine: Histoire et théologie,” Parole de l’Orient 3, no. 2 (1972): 290-293.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles, Featured Last Updated: December 6, 2020

Subscribe

It greatly helps us if you subscribe to our mailing list!

* indicates required

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

Primary Sidebar

Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    PDF Download • “Offertory” for this Sunday
    This coming Sunday, 12 October 2025, is the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C). Its OFFERTORY ANTIPHON (PDF) is gorgeous, and comes from the book of Esther, as did the ENTRANCE CHANT last Sunday. Depending on a variety of factors, various hand-missals (all with Imprimatur) translate this passage differently. For instance, “príncipis” can be rendered: King; Prince; Lion; or Fierce lord. None is “more correct” than another. It depends on what each translator wants to emphasize and which source text is chosen. All these pieces of plainsong are conveniently stored at the blue-ribbon feasts website.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Why A “Fugue” Here?
    I believe I know why this plainsong harmonizer created a tiny fugue as the INTRODUCTION to his accompaniment. Take a look (PDF example) and tell me your thoughts about what he did on the feast of the Flight of Our Lord Jesus Christ into Egypt (17 February). And now I must go because “tempus fugit” as they say!
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Reminder” — Month of October (2025)
    Those who don’t sign up for our free EMAIL NEWSLETTER miss important notifications. Last week, for example, I sent a message about this job opening for a music director paying $65,000 per year plus benefits (plus weddings & funerals). Notice the job description says: “our vision for sacred music is to move from singing at Mass to truly singing the Mass wherein … especially the propers, ordinaries, and dialogues are given their proper place.” Signing up couldn’t be easier: simply scroll to the bottom of any blog article and enter your email address.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    New Bulletin Article • “12 October 2025”
    My pastor requested that I write short articles each week for our parish bulletin. Those responsible for preparing similar write-ups may find a bit of inspiration in these brief columns. The latest article (dated 12 October 2025) talks about an ‘irony’ or ‘paradox’ regarding the 1960s switch to a wider use (amplior locus) of vernacular in the liturgy.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “American Catholic Hymnal” (1991)
    The American Catholic Hymnal, with IMPRIMATUR granted (25 April 1991) by the Archdiocese of Chicago, is like a compendium of every horrible idea from the 1980s. Imagine being forced to stand all through Communion (even afterwards) when those self-same ‘enlightened’ liturgists moved the SEQUENCE before the Alleluia to make sure congregations wouldn’t have to stand during it. (Even worse, everything about the SEQUENCE—including its name—means it should follow the Alleluia.) And imagine endlessly repeating “Alleluia” during Holy Communion at every single Mass. It was all part of an effort to convince people that Holy Communion was historically a procession (which it wasn’t).
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Canonic” • Ralph Vaughan Williams
    Fifty years ago, Dr. Theodore Marier made available this clever arrangement (PDF) of “Come down, O love divine” by P. R. Dietterich. The melody was composed in 1906 by Ralph Vaughan Williams (d. 1958) and named in honor of of his birthplace: DOWN AMPNEY. The arrangement isn’t a strict canon, but it does remind one of a canon since the pipe organ employs “points of imitation.” The melody and text are #709 in the Brébeuf Catholic Hymnal.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“Thus, by the celebration of a single Mass (in which he offers Jesus Christ in sacrifice), a priest gives greater honor to the Lord than if all men by dying for God offered to him the sacrifice of their lives. By a single Mass, he gives greater honor to God than all the angels and saints—along with the Blessed Virgin Mary—have given or shall give to him; for their worship cannot be of infinite value, like that which the priest celebrating on the altar offers to God.”

— Saint Alphonsus Liguori

Recent Posts

  • Every Diocesan Music Commission Should Do This
  • Exclusive Interview • “Púeri Cantóres” President
  • PDF Download • “Offertory” for this Sunday
  • The Real Miracle of Gregorian Chant
  • Why A “Fugue” Here?

Subscribe

Subscribe

* indicates required

Copyright © 2025 Corpus Christi Watershed · Isaac Jogues on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Corpus Christi Watershed is a 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to exploring and embodying as our calling the relationship of religion, culture, and the arts. This non-profit organization employs the creative media in service of theology, the Church, and Christian culture for the enrichment and enjoyment of the public.