Empress Helen and the Holy Cross

When Constantine the Great left his native Britain in AD 311 to fight and defeat the other two rivals to the Imperial throne of Rome, the British Princess Helen went with him.

When Licinius was defeated at the battle of the Milvian Bridge Constantine entered Rome and by AD 322 he was able to make Christianity a legally permitted religion in Rome.

Constantine then went to the ancient Byzantium to rebuild this key trading centre as his new capitol city of Constantinople. Julius Caesar had planned to relocate the centre of Roman power to this place at the crossroads of Europe and Asia.

The Widowed Empress Helen then went on a pilgrimage around Sinai accompanied by a large body of soldiers.

Helen then went north to Jerusalem where she demanded that the Holy Cross that had been used in the crucifixion of Jesus the Nazarene must be handed over to her.

After much prevarication that compelled Helen to use force and threats the precious piece of timber was handed to Helen, who immediately had it plastered with jewels and gold and placed into a silver casket.

She had the nails made into a bridle bit for her son's horse and then she sailed her fleet back to Britain.

There are twenty five various accounts of this event scattered across Europe and the Near East. The Exeter Book has a good account of this.

When Helen arrived back in Britain she clearly had the Cross paraded around Wales which was much large in those days before the constantly moving border drifted west.

The practice of ancient and royal and noble persons was never to leave their possessions at home and usually a train of Ox drawn carts lumbered along around 10 ten miles per day. The parade of the Cross can still be traced by place names like Ford of the Cross, the Field of the Cross, the Vale of the Cross, the Hill of the Cross and so on, all around eight to ten miles apart.

What is remarkable is that the place where the Cross was finally deposited is recorded in a manuscript first written around AD 920 and re-copied in circa AD 1100. Helen herself retired with it to Constantinople, but not the Constantinople in modern Turkey, but the Constantinople in West Wales.

Here there are significant place names like Castle of the Great Helen, Ridge of the Empress, River of the Empress, River of the Sanctuary, and Castle of the Sanctuary, and one old Welsh story gives dramatic traceable details.

The mass of detail allows for tracing of a tomb that is virtually certainly that of Helen. In 1282 King Edward I of England demanded that the Khumry should hand over the Iron Crown of Arthur and the Holy Cross to him.

He did not get them. With the mass of information that was available and lying ignored, Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett went in search of the Holy Cross assisted by Alan Hassell and his special metal detector.

A non ferrous metal object was located in a cave that had been forgotten about for years. Not satisfied with having got good strong readings from in front of this cave Alan then climbed on top of the cave where more readings were obtained from above the article in front of a camera crew who were videoing the event at the time. There is a legal difficulty that needs to be resolved before attempts can be made to recover the Cross.

Also because the Cross might contain traces of DNA that could identify the true father of Jesus this is one relic that the Roman Catholic Church would rather not exist, because it might prove something the Church of Rome does not want you to know. Dan Brown could write another best seller if he knew about this hehehe