The Reliquary of the True Cross @ Louvre Abu Dhabi

 

Cover image: Reliquary cross containing a fragment of the True Cross / France, Limousin (Pic: Byron Dias) 

Today, on the 3rd of May, due to the nationwide lockdown, masses and prayers will not be offered in white-washed chapels across villages and towns of Goa to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross on which Jesus was crucified. One Konkani hymn, however, will be on everyone’s lips and hearts: O bhagevontu, Santa Cruzu / tujie kurpen nivar amkam / dusmanatule. (Oh blessed, Holy Cross / through your grace, protect us / from our enemies.)

About a hundred days after Louvre Abu Dhabi opened on November 11, 2017, I was finally inside the ‘universal museum’. Byron, my son-in-law, was there too. During an earlier visit to Abu Dhabi, a dense fog which refused to lift had unsettled my plans and I had to be content watching a multi-sensory exhibition on Vincent van Gogh in the afternoon and the Konkani movie, Sophiya in the evening.

Located in the Saadiyat Island Cultural District, Louvre Abu Dhabi is an architectural delight with a low-slung dome covering a large part of the museum complex. Consisting of layers of geometric templates of aluminium stars repeated in different sizes and angles, the intricate design of the dome appears like interwoven palm fronds, with rays of sunlight piercing through its ‘foliage’.

Once inside the museum, we began to marvel at carefully acquired objects and artefacts of historic, cultural and sociological interest from around the globe as well as paintings and sculptures by celebrated artists. From the sarcophagus of Princess Henuttawy and the sacred texts of the Holy Quran and the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, to the statute of the dancing Shiva, the famous painting, Whistler’s Mother and a pair of folding screens showing the arrival of the Portuguese merchants in Japan, Louvre Abu Dhabi was one amazing experience.

The Good Samaritan / Jacob Jordaens

Christ Driving the Merchants from the Temple / Luca Giordano

Two days earlier, we had observed Ash Wednesday and therefore some of the paintings like The Good Samaritan and Christ Driving the Merchants from the Temple at once struck a chord and reminded us of the period of penance that had just begun. One particular object, however, caught our attention and became the subject of much discussion long after we had reached our dwelling in Dubai: The Reliquary of the True Cross. The two of us spent a few minutes in amazement as we admired the reliquary studded with semiprecious stones and bowed our heads to get a closer look at the fragment of wood that it contained and which was once a part of the cross that Jesus carried and upon which he was nailed to death!

St. Helena is often depicted holding a cross because tradition maintains that she found the True Cross in Jerusalem. The Emperor Constantine, who seized power in 312, legalized Christianity the following year with the Edict of Milan. About this time, Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, converted to Christianity and motivated by true Christian zeal, she went to Palestine in search of the sacred sites about the year 324.The earlier Roman Emperor Hadrian (reign A.D. 117-138), in an attempt to eradicate the influence of Christianity, had levelled the top of Mount Calvary and the hillside where Jesus’ tomb stood and had built temples instead.

Around the year 326, the temple of Venus was demolished as was the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. During excavations, three crosses and the titulus were found in a rock-cistern from the site of the temple of Venus, while the remains of the tomb of Jesus were discovered from the other site. According to Theodoret of Cyrus, an influential theologian of the School of Antioch, it is believed that after the True Cross was identified through a miracle, St. Helena “had part of the cross of our Saviour conveyed to the palace” and “the rest was enclosed in a covering of silver, and committed to the care of the bishop of the city, whom she exhorted to preserve it carefully, in order that it might be transmitted uninjured to posterity.”

Egeria, who is widely regarded as the author of Itinerarium Egeriae, a detailed account of her pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the earliest of its kind, writes about the ritual surrounding the relic, “…and a silver-gilt casket is brought in which is the holy wood of the Cross. The casket is opened and [the wood] is taken out, and both the wood of the Cross and the title are placed upon the table. Now… the bishop, as he sits, holds the extremities of the sacred wood firmly in his hands, while the deacons who stand around guard it. It is guarded thus because the custom is that the people, both faithful and catechumens, come one by one and, bowing down at the table, kiss the sacred wood and pass through.”

During the wars and crusades that followed the discovery of the True Cross, the sacred relic became a prized possession of kings and rulers. Changing hands, it was at times hidden to keep it safe and the priests who were in its possession tortured to reveal its location. When the Fourth Crusade captured the city of Constantinople, it is said that “a part of the cross of the Lord, which Helena transferred from Jerusalem…was carved up by the present bishops and was divided with other very precious relics among the knights; later, after their return to the homeland, it was donated to churches and monasteries.”

By the end of the Middle Ages with so many churches claiming to possess a piece of the True Cross, John Calvin, the Protestant reformer, remarked, “In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it.” Stung by such criticism, Charles Rohault de Fleury, the French architect, drew up a catalogue of all known relics of the True Cross and concluded that “the fragments of the Cross brought together again would not reach one-third that of a cross…three or four metres in height, with transverse branch of two metres wide.”

Today, on the 3rd of May, due to the nationwide lockdown, masses and prayers will not be offered in white-washed chapels across villages and towns of Goa to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross on which Jesus was crucified. One Konkani hymn, however, will be on everyone’s lips and hearts: O bhagevontu, Santa Cruzu / tuje kurpen nivar amkam / dusmanatule. (Oh blessed, Holy Cross / through your grace, protect us / from our enemies.)

 

We visited Louvre Abu Dhabi on February 16, 2018. For more pics, kindly check this link:

https://waltermenezes.magicauthor.com/2020/04/louvre-abu-dhabi-one-amazing-experience.html