Adam, on his death-bed, sent his son Seth to the Arcangel Michael imploring him to bring back the promised Oil of Mercy, in the
hope
of saving his life.Seth,
however, only managed to obtain a few
seeds of the Tree of Knowledge. On his return he found Adam already dead, so he
placed the seeds under his father’s tongue and from these grew a large tree.
Solomon had the tree, which was growing out of
Adam’s grave, cut down and tried to incorporate it in the temple he was
building, but in vain: As he could not use it for that purpose and wanted to get
rid of it, he had it placed as a bridge over the
river Siloe.
When
the Queen of Sheba, on a visit to Solomon, was warned by a divine omen that he
wood was sacred and did not dare to tread o
n it: she immediately
fell down on her knees
and worshipped the trunk.
When news of this reached Solomon, he was frightened
by the prophecy and had the trunk buried fearing the destruction of
the people of Israel. But the wood emerged from the ground and was then used by
the Jews for Christ’s Crucifixion.
300 years after the death of Christ,
on the eve of the battle of the Danube against M
assensius in which Constantine
was able to prevent the Barbarians from overrunning the whole of the west, the
king had a dream: the sign of the the cross appeared to him. Constantine, strengthened by the apparition,
faced the enemy at Milvio Bridge under the banner of the cross and emerged
triumphant from the
battlefield.
He converted to Christianity and then sent his mother, Queen Helen, to Jerusalem to find the Holy Cross.
Judas, the only person who knew exactly where
th
e Cross was hidden, refused to speak. The Queen had him thrown into a well
without food and after
seven days Judas broke his silence. But he did not say which of the three cross buried belonged to Christ: the True Cross had been buried under a temple
dedicated to the Goddess Venus.
The Cross was then identified (it was instrumental in the resurrection of a dead
man) and ta
ken
back to Jerusalem in Palestine.
Three centuries later in 615 A.D. Cosroe, king
of Persia, conquered those territories and gained possession of the cross.
He expected to be worshipped as God the Father with the True Cross (to represent
Christ) on one side and a cock (to represent the Holy Spirit) o
n the other. He
was defeated in battle and beheaded by Heraclius, who then restored the cross to
Jerusalem. While
he was going to enter the city, an angel barred his way, reminding him that
Christ had entered the city humbly. So he could only enter after taking off his shoes and royal
robes.
The figures in some scenes are portraits of various personages of the time.