One Date, Two Historical Anchors Three Centuries Apart

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross falls on the fourteenth of September, the date this rule records, and it carries two distinct historical anchors rather than one. The earlier is the dedication, in the year three hundred thirty five, of the church complex Constantine built at the site of Christ's crucifixion and burial in Jerusalem, an event the feast originally commemorated directly. The later anchor, three centuries on, is the recovery of what was venerated as the relic of the True Cross by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in the year six hundred thirty, after the relic had been carried off by the Sassanid Persian Empire during its capture of Jerusalem, and its return to the city on this date gave the older dedication feast the added theme, and eventually the name, of the cross's exaltation.

The feast is kept by both the Eastern and Western churches on the identical date, unusual for a commemoration this specific, since it predates the calendar's later divergence between the Julian and Gregorian reckonings that separates so many other shared feasts by thirteen days today. In Orthodox practice the day is marked by a strict fast regardless of what day of the week it falls on, one of relatively few fixed date fasts on the calendar, reflecting the solemnity attached to the relic's history rather than to any seasonal penitential period.