The Holy Rood or Holy Cross The Cross The Legend of the True Cross "Legend of the Holy Rood" or "Legend of the Wood of the Cross,” “Legend of the Rood/Tree”
The legend of the wood from the Garden of Eden becoming the Cross on which Yeshua Christ was crucified.
The Legend of the Holy Rood
In the beginning, when the Lord God had planted the Garden of Eden eastward in the land, and had set therein the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve dwelt in paradise. But they hearkened unto the voice of the serpent, and did eat of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, as it is written in the book of Genesis. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and the Lord God drove them forth from the garden, lest they put forth their hand and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live for ever. So He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the Tree of Life.
And Adam and Eve went forth into the Valley of Hebron, where they endured toil and sorrow, tilling the ground from whence Adam was taken, and bearing children in pain. And Adam lived nine hundred and thirty and two years, and as he drew nigh unto death, he remembered the promise of the Lord concerning the Oil of Mercy from the Tree of Life, which should ease his suffering and grant immortality to the faithful. Therefore, he called unto him his son Seth, and spake these words: "Go thou eastward unto the gates of Paradise, following the path of our footprints, where no grass hath grown since the day of our Fall, and beseech the Lord for the Oil of Mercy, that I may anoint my body and find rest."
And Seth arose and journeyed eastward, even unto the gates of Paradise, where the cherub stood guard with the flaming sword. And Seth fell upon his face and pleaded for the oil, saying, "O Lord God, have mercy upon my father Adam, who groaned in his infirmity." But the archangel Michael appeared unto him and said, "The Oil of Mercy shall not be given unto thee this day, for it cometh only after many millennia, with the advent of the Son of God, the Messiah and Savior of man, who shall redeem the world from sin." Yet Michael had compassion, and gave unto Seth three seeds from the Tree of Life, signifying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And he commanded, "Place these under thy father's tongue at his burial, and they shall bring forth life eternal in due season." Moreover, Michael blessed Seth, saying, "It is thy lineage that shall preserve the true teachings, and from thy line shall come the redemption of humanity."
And Seth returned, and behold, Adam was dead. So he buried him in the place called Golgotha, which is the place of a skull, and placed the seeds under his tongue as he was bidden. And from the grave sprang forth three saplings: one of cedar, one of cypress, and one of pine, which remained ever green and unchanging through the generations, a sign of the enduring mercy of God.
And the years passed, and wickedness increased upon the earth, until the Lord sent the great Flood to cleanse it. But the three trees, guided by the angels of the Lord, were not harmed by the waters; for they floated upon the ark of Noah, preserved by divine hand, and took root again in the earth after the deluge.
Centuries thereafter, in the time of the bondage in Egypt, Moses the servant of the Lord discovered the saplings in Adam's grave at Hebron, while fleeing from Pharaoh. And the Holy Spirit guided him, saying, "Take thou these trees, and fashion from them a staff, for it shall be a rod of power in thy hand." So Moses uprooted them and bound them into one staff, and with it he wrought mighty wonders: he parted the Red Sea that the children of Israel might pass through on dry ground; he healed the bites of fiery serpents in the wilderness; and he struck the rock at Horeb, whence flowed water for the thirsty people. And the staff's power convinced the Israelites of the favor of the Lord, for it shone with a heavenly light. Moses carried it forty years in the desert, until he ascended Mount Nebo to behold the promised land. And before his death, he planted the staff at Mount Tabor, prophesying, "This wood shall be reclaimed by a future king, and shall serve in the salvation of the nations."
After a thousand years, King David, the man after God's own heart, was inspired by a vision in a dream from the Lord. And the Lord spake unto him, saying, "Go thou to Mount Tabor and retrieve the sacred trees, for they shall be a sign of healing in Jerusalem." So David went and transplanted them near the city, by a pool where the waters were still. And under their branches he composed his Psalms, singing praises unto the Lord. The trees grew miraculously, and whosoever touched them in faith was healed of sickness, symbolizing the salvation to come. And David danced and sang with joy as he brought them into the city, even as he had danced before the ark of the covenant.
Now when David slept with his fathers, his son Solomon, wise above all kings, was guided by the Spirit to take a branch from the trees and fashion it for the central beam of the Temple which he built unto the Lord. But behold, the beam shrank or grew as it would, fitting not the measure; therefore it was set aside and laid as a bridge over a stream without the city. And in those days, the Queen of Sheba came to prove Solomon with hard questions, and she beheld the wood. Recognizing its holy destiny, she refused to cross upon it, and prophesied, saying, "This wood shall bear the Messiah, heralding a new covenant of salvation for the children of God." Then Solomon, fearing the words, caused the wood to be buried in the Pool of Bethesda, where a guardian angel stirred the waters, and the first that stepped therein after the stirring was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
And it came to pass, as the days of the Passion of Christ drew near, that the wood floated up from the depths of Bethesda, revealed by divine providence. And the disciples of Yeshua took a piece thereof, and it became the board of the table whereon the Lord instituted the Last Supper, breaking bread and saying, "This is my body." But the Jews retrieved the greater part for the upright beam of the Cross, with the crossbar from cypress, the footrest from palm, and the inscription upon olive. Thus the wood from Eden, which was tied to the Fall of the old Adam, became the Rood of salvation, bearing the New Adam, even Christ, who through his death fulfilled the prophecies and linked mortality to eternal life, as it is written: "The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit."
After the Crucifixion, Mary Magdalene came unto the sepulchre to anoint the body of Yeshua with precious oils. And lo, on the morning of Easter, she discovered that the tomb was empty and the Cross had sprouted leaves anew. And she shared this wonder with the early disciples, who marveled at the glory of God and the signs of resurrection and life conquering death
Then Joseph of Arimathea, the beloved uncle and disciple of Yeshua secretly for fear of the Jewish authorities, took the Cross and the Holy Grail—which had caught the blood of Christ—and journeyed with the closest followers of the Lord unto France and the isle of Avalon. And there, in Glastonbury, they used a portion of the wood in constructing the first Gnostic Church, a sanctuary of hidden wisdom.
And there also a fragment of the Cross became a relic guarded by the Fisher King, whose grievous wound mirrored the sin of Adam, wasting the land until a pure knight should come.
In later days, the Templar knights, seekers of lost relics, excavated beneath the Temple at Jerusalem and rediscovered the buried horizontal bar of the Cross, which had absorbed the blood of Yeshua. And as they beheld it, leaves sprouted therefrom as on that first Easter morning, a token of resurrection. Then a Templar brother had a mystical vision, wherein a red rose bloomed from the center of the Cross, signifying divine love and mystery. And the Templars took a cutting from this rose bush and brought it unto Glastonbury, planting it near the Gnostic Church, where it flourished as a perpetual sign.
Now in the tales of the Grail, the wood for Solomon's Ship came from the same Edenic tree as the Rood. For Solomon, inspired by a divine vision, prepared a miraculously guided vessel, outfitted with a bed of wondrous craft and three spindles carved from a branch of the Tree of Life. And David's sword and Solomon's crown were laid therein, with a sapling of the Tree of Life growing upon its stern as a symbol of protection and eternity. The chosen knight, Galahad the pure, must lie upon the bed to complete the ship's enigma before sailing onward to Sarras.
And the city of Sarras, that mystical island and the Grail's final destination, represented a spiritual paradise akin to Eden restored. It symbolized the primordial state renewed, linking back to Adam's loss and the Rood's redemptive power. The followers of Joseph of Arimathea, even the knights of the Grail, brought the holy vessel thither via Solomon's Ship. There Galahad achieved the vision of the Grail and ascended in glory. And before he underwent the translation into heaven, Galahad planted the sapling of the Tree of Life at the center of the city, where it grew into a mighty tree, bearing fruit for the healing of the nations.
In the age of cathedrals, alchemists, seekers of the hidden light, heard tales of the mysteries of the Passion, the Cross, and the whispers that these held the key to the completion of the Great Work. Guided by cryptic Templar manuscripts, they sought the legends of the sacred wood and the Grail, preserved through Templar and Gnostic traditions. In that time, Frater CRC, a brother of the Rosy Cross, believed that the Cross's mysteries held the key to transmutation. He decoded ancient texts linking the wood of the Cross unto the Tree of Life, and undertook a pilgrimage to Glastonbury. There he meditated beside a rose bush, and behold, he had a vision of the Rose-Cross, and an inner knowing of the mysteries of the cross, the blood, the Grail, and the rose.
Thus, from the dual trees of Paradise—the Tree of Knowledge that birthed the Fall, and the Tree of Life that promised mercy—the sacred wood journeyed through the ages: seeded in Adam's grave to bridge mortality and eternity, wielded by prophets to part seas and heal nations, rejected by kings yet exalted in the Temple's shadow, and finally forged into the Rood that bore the New Adam's sacrifice.
In the dawn of the Resurrection, the Cross bloomed anew, its fragments scattering like divine sparks—caught in the Grail's chalice, carried on Solomon's Ship to Sarras' restored Eden, and guarded by knights of hidden wisdom.
Yet the cycle endured beyond ancient shores; the Grail's vision, once achieved by Galahad in celestial ascent, remained veiled for those who seek. In this eternal mystery, the modern pilgrim may yet plant the seed within his own soul, build his own temple, carry his cross, climb the Tree of Life, and return unto Eden. Fulfilling the promise whispered unto Seth: the seeds given him by the angels have been the way to overcoming suffering, separation, and death. Thus the tree from which humanity Fell has become the ladder of his salvation. For upon the wood of the Cross the Master Yeshua demonstrated victory over all illusion the way to resurrection and eternal life in the Kingdom, and now are the gates of The Kingdom open, awaiting only the true of heart to return Home.
Adam dies and is buried at Golgotha(?). Seth plants seeds received from Paradise at his father’s grave. A tree (or three trees) grows and becomes a material thread through sacred history. The wood is cut for use in the Temple yet proves unsuitable, is set as a bridge, and is recognized by the Queen of Sheba, who prophesies its future role; Solomon, fearing the prophecy, hides the timber. I The same wood is the patriarchal rod that reaches Moses and later David. Centuries later, the wood emerges to become the Cross at Golgotha. Helena, mother of Constantine, identifies and exalts it, and relics of the Cross circulate. Eastern tradition further specifies a composite of cedar, pine, and cypress, preserved in Jerusalem memory at the Monastery of the Cross. In Grail literature, Solomon reserves timber from the primordial tree to fashion a ship with a bed and three spindles; Galahad resolves the ship’s mystery, proceeds to Sarras, and the Grail is withdrawn.
The story begins in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve's expulsion after eating from the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 3). Banished to the Valley of Hebron, they endure toil and sorrow. As Adam nears death at age 932, he recalls God's promise of the "Oil of Mercy" from the Tree of Life to ease his suffering and grant immortality. He sends his son Seth eastward to Paradise's gates, following the barren path of their footprints, which no grass has grown over since the Fall.
At the gate, guarded by a cherub with a flaming sword, Seth pleads for the oil. The archangel Michael denies it, saying it will come only after many millenia with the arrival of the Son of God, the Messiah and Savior of Man.
Instead, Seth receives three seeds (or a branch in variants) from the Tree of Life—symbolizing the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit)—with instructions to place them under Adam's tongue at burial. He is also given a blessing that it is his lineage and line that will preserve the true teachings and lineage that will one day redeem humanity. Seth returns to find Adam dead, buries him (at Golgotha in some versions, Hebron in others), and plants the seeds. From them sprout three saplings: cedar, cypress, and pine, which remain green and unchanging for generations.
Centuries pass, and guided by (the angels —- or the archangel(s) ——-) the three trees survive the Flood, being not harmed by the waters. During the Exodus, Moses discovers the saplings in Adam's grave at Hebron. Guided by the Holy Spirit, he uproots them, using the wood as his miraculous staff to part the Red Sea, heal serpent bites, and strike water from rocks (Exodus 14-17; Numbers 20-21). The staff's power convinces the Israelites of divine favor. Moses carries it for 40 years before his death on Mount Nebo. Before his death, he plants the staff at Mount Tabor with a prophecy that it will be reclaimed by a future king(Deuteronomy 34)
After 1,000 years, King David, inspired by a vision in a dream from God, retrieves the trees from Mount Tabor (or Lebanon in variants) and transplants them near Jerusalem, by a pool where he composes his Psalms under its branches. The trees grow miraculously, healing the sick and symbolizing salvation. David dances and sings as he brings it to the city (2 Samuel 6).
Upon David's death, Solomon is guided to cut one of the trees(?) for his Temple's central beam(or for the whole temple..?). (He takes a sapling from the tree and re-plants it….) Miraculously, the beam shrinks or grows to unfit, so it's set aside as a bridge over a stream. The Queen of Sheba (or Sibylla) visits, recognizes its destiny, refuses to cross it, and prophesies that the wood would bear the Messiah, heralding a new covenant of salvation for the children of God. Solomon buries it in the Pool of Bethesda, where its guardian angel stirs the waters for healings (John 5).
As Christ's Passion nears, the wood floats up from Bethesda. Christ’s Disciples take a piece of it and it becomes the board of the table of the Last Supper. And the Jews retrieve another piece for the Cross's upright beam (crossbar from cypress, footrest from palm, inscription on olive in variants). Thus, the wood from Eden—tied to the Fall—becomes the Rood of salvation, fulfilling prophecies and linking Adam (the "Old Adam") to Christ (the "New Adam," 1 Corinthians 15).
After the Crucifixion, Mary Magdalene anoints Yeshua’s body with oils, and discovers that the Cross has sprouted leaves on Easter morning, which she shares with early disciples. Then Joseph of Arimathea brings the cross along with the Holy Grail with him and Christ’s closest disciples to France and Avalon, and it is used in constructing the first Gnostic Church in Glastonbury.
A fragment of the Cross becomes a relic guarded by the Fisher King, it ties his wound to Adam’s sin symbolically, until a pure knight heals asks the question and attains the grail, healing the King and blooming the land anew.
Templar knights, seeking lost relics, excavate underneath the Temple at Jerusalem and rediscover the buried horizontal bar of the Cross, which immediately after the Crucifixion, absorbed Yeshua' blood, sprouting leaves on Easter morning as a sign of Resurrection. When the Templars find it they restore it to it’s proper place and glory and a Templar Brother has a mystical vision of the red rose blooming from the center of the Cross. The Templars bring a cutting from their rose bush to Glastonbury, where it’s planted near the Gnostic Church.
In Grail stories, the wood for Solomon's Ship comes from the same Edenic tree as the Rood. Built by Solomon (inspired by his wife or divine vision). Solomon prepares a miraculously guided ship outfitted with a bed and three spindles carved from a branch of the Tree of Life; David’s sword and Solomon’s crown are also associated. With the Tree of Life resting on its stern as a symbol of protection and eternity. The chosen knight (Galahad) must lie on the bed and complete the ship’s enigma before sailing on to Sarras, this echoes the Rood's journey through Solomon's Temple.
The City of Sarras, this mystical island, the Grail's final destination, represents a spiritual paradise akin to Eden. Sarras symbolizes the restored primordial state, linking back to Adam's loss of Eden and the Rood's redemptive role. Joseph of Arimathea's followers (or the knights) bring the Grail there via Solomon's Ship, where Galahad achieves the Grail vision and ascends. Before he undergoes the Translation into Heaven, Galahad plants the sapling of the Tree of Life that they brought with them at the center of the city.
In the age of cathedrals, alchemists, seekers of the hidden light, heard tales of the mysteries of the Passion and the Cross and whispers that this held the key to the completion of the Great Work. Guided by cryptic Templar manuscripts, they sought legends of the sacred wood and the Grail, whispered through Templar and Gnostic traditions. Frater CRC believed the Cross’s mysteries, hold the key to transmutation. Frater CRC decodes ancient texts linking the Cross’s wood to the Tree of Life. He undertakes a pilgrimage to Glastonbury, where he meditates next to a rose bush, seeking spiritual enlightenment rather than material gold. He has a vision of the Rose-Cross and an inner knowing of the mysteries of the cross, the blood, the grail, the rose.
Thus, from the dual trees of Paradise—the Knowledge that birthed the Fall and the Life that promised mercy—the sacred wood journeyed through the ages: seeded in Adam's grave to bridge mortality and eternity, wielded by prophets to part seas and heal nations, rejected by kings yet exalted in the Temple's shadow, and finally forged into the Rood that bore the New Adam's sacrifice. In the Resurrection's dawn, the Cross bloomed anew, its fragments scattering like divine sparks—caught in the Grail's chalice, carried on Solomon's Ship to Sarras' restored Eden, and guarded by knights of hidden wisdom. Yet the cycle endures beyond ancient shores; the Grail's vision, once achieved by Galahad in celestial ascent, remains veiled for those who seek. In this eternal mystery, the modern pilgrim may yet plant the seed within their own soul, build their own temple, carry their cross, climb the Tree of Life and return to Eden. Fulfilling the promise whispered to Seth: the seeds given to him by the Angels have been the way to overcoming suffering, separation, and death, and upon their cross Yeshua demonstrated the way to resurrection and Eternal Life in the Kingdom.
In the Latin-speaking traditions of Western Europe, the story of the True Cross was well established by the 13th century when, in 1260, it was recorded by Jacobus de Voragine, Bishop of Genoa, in the Golden Legend.
The Golden Legend contains several versions of the origin of the True Cross. In The Life of Adam, Voragine writes that the True Cross came from three trees which grew from three seeds from the "Tree of Mercy" which Seth collected and planted in the mouth of Adam's corpse.
In another account contained in "Of the Invention of the Holy Cross", Voragine writes that the True Cross came from a tree that grew from part of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, "the tree that Adam ate of", that Seth planted on Adam's grave where it "endured there unto the time of Solomon".
Alternatively, it reached Solomon via Moses, who used it as the staff of Moses, and David, who planted it at Jerusalem. It was felled by Solomon to be a beam in his temple but not found suitable in the end.
After many centuries, the tree was cut down and the wood used to build a bridge over which the Queen of Sheba passed on her journey to meet Solomon. So struck was she by the portent contained in the timber of the bridge that she fell on her knees and revered it. On her visit to Solomon, she told him that a piece of wood from the bridge would bring about the replacement of God's covenant with the Jewish people by a new order. Solomon, fearing the eventual destruction of his people, had the timber buried.
After fourteen generations, the wood taken from the bridge was fashioned into the Cross used to crucify Yeshua Christ. Voragine then goes on to describe its rediscovery by Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine.
According to the sacred tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church the True Cross was made from three different types of wood: cedar, pine and cypress.[6] This is an allusion to Isaiah 60:13: "The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box [cypress] together to beautify the place of my sanctuary, and I will make the place of my feet glorious."
The link between this verse and the crucifixion lies in the words "the place of my feet", which is interpreted as referring to the footrest (Latin: suppedāneum) on which Yeshua' feet were nailed[citation needed] and which appears on the Orthodox cross. (Compare with the Jewish concepts of the Ark of the Covenant or the Jerusalem Temple as being God's footstool, and the prescribed Three Pilgrimage Festivals, in Hebrew aliya la-regel, lit. ascending to the foot).
A further tradition holds that these three trees from which the True Cross was constructed grew together in one spot. A traditional Orthodox icon in the Monastery of the Cross depicts Lot, the nephew of Abraham, watering the trees.[6][9] According to tradition, these trees were used to construct the Temple in Jerusalem ("to beautify the place of my sanctuary"). Later, during Herod's reconstruction of the Temple, the wood from these trees was removed from the Temple and discarded, eventually being used to construct the cross on which Yeshua was crucified ("and I will make the place of my feet glorious").
In the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, there was wide general acceptance of the account of the cross's history as presented by Voragine. This general acceptance is displayed in numerous artworks on the subject, culminating in one of the most famous fresco cycles of the Renaissance, the Legend of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca, which he painted on the walls of the chancel of the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo between 1452 and 1466, faithfully reproducing the episodes of The Golden Legend.
The main episodes depicted are:
- Death of Adam (390 x 747 cm). According to the legend, the tree from which the cross was made was planted, at the urging of angels, at the burial of Adam by his son, using a branch or a seed from the apple tree of the garden of Eden.
- The Queen of Sheba in Adoration of the Wood and The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (336 x 747 cm). According to the legend, the Queen of Sheba worshiped the beams made from the tree, and informed Solomon that the Saviour would hang from that tree, and thus dismember the realm of the Jews. This caused Solomon to hew it down and bury it, until it was found by the Romans.
- Constantine's Dream (329 x 190 cm) Emperor Constantine the Great, before the battle of Milvian Bridge, is awakened by an angel who shows him the cross in heaven. With the cross on his shield, he slew the enemy, and later converted to Christianity.
- Discovery and Proof of the True Cross (356 x 747 cm). Helena, Constantine's mother, finds the cross in Jerusalem. It was not easy to get information and "when the queen had called them and demanded them the place where our Lord Yeshua Christ had been crucified, they would never tell... her. Then commanded she to burn them all" or cast them into a dry pit for seven days and there torment them with hunger. The Jew is shown in one fresco being pulled from the pit by a rope, whereupon he confessed that Yeshua was his lord and where the cross was located. The proof of the cross was that it was used to resurrect a dead man.
- Battle between Heraclius and Khosrau (329 x 747 cm). The cross played a role in battles during the war between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire (early 7th century).
- Exaltation of the Cross (390 x 747 cm).
Piero diverged from his source material in a few important respects, including the story of King Solomon's meeting with the Queen of Sheba in a chronologically inaccurate place and giving greater emphasis to the two battles in which Christianity triumphs over paganism.
The cycle ends with a depiction of the Annunciation, not strictly part of the Legend of the True Cross but probably included by Piero for its universal meaning.
The Legend of the True Cross (Italian: Leggenda della Vera Croce) or The History of the True Cross (Storie della Vera Croce) is a sequence of frescoes painted by Piero della Francesca in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo.
