According to ancient historians, mass crucifixions occurred multiple times around the world, but by far the most famous crucifixion in the history of mankind took place in 1st century Judea, when Jesus Christ, a Nazarene, carried the heavy pinewood up to Golgotha, was nailed upon the cross, and then lifted, to lift humanity out of eternal damnation.

As Catholics, we know what happens next. What you may not know, is what happened to that empty, bloodstained cross.

The Roman Emperor Hadrian, who reigned A.D. 117-138, abolished the name Judea and renamed the area “Syria Palaestina” after a Jewish insurrection around the year 132. Hadrian forbade Jews from entering the area, and demolished any remaining temples, deciding instead to erect temples to pagan gods and goddesses on the top of Mount Calvary.

It was this destruction and ensuing construction of new buildings on the landscape that ensured the preservation of the holy and sacred sites of Jesus’ crucifixion, deep below the ground.

More than 40 Roman Emperors later, Constantine the Great seized control of Rome in 312. It was not a smooth transition of power though, and one of the emperors, Maxentius, declared war and marched into battle with an army twice the size of Constantine’s.

When Maxentius and his forces arrived on the battlefield, they were greeted by an unfamiliar symbol facing them: a cross. Most historians tell of Constantine reportedly praying before the battle that the true God might “reveal to him who he is and stretch forth his right hand to save him.” Then, marching at midday, he suddenly looked up at the noonday sky to see a bright cross of light flash among the heavens, with an inscription upon it: “In Hoc Signo Vinces” or “In this Sign Conquer.”

Constantine, bolstered with the assurance that the True God had indeed heard him, inscribed the cross on their shields before advancing on Maxentius, who held a much better position for the battle near the Milvian Bridge in Rome. Maxentius’ troops were broken before the first charge had completed and he was among those who were pushed into the Tiber River and drowned.

After the battle, Constantine didn’t forget who helped earn him the victory. In 313, the Edict of Milan was created as an agreement among the Roman Empire to treat Christians benevolently. This was a monumental shift, since for almost 250 years, the persecution of Christians was the norm for Roman emperors. All that changed by Constantine issuing an order that not only should the Christian Church be tolerated just as other religions are, but he went so far as to build places of worship for Christians and be baptized himself.

Around the same time of Constantine’s conversion, his mother Helena also became a Christian, and she traveled to Palestine in the year 324 to search for sacred sites and relics to be reverenced.

Details regarding the discovery the True Cross are lacking and often contradictory among many ancient writers, but the basis of the story is generally accepted as this:

Around 326, Helena was traveling the area when an aged Jewish man who had inherited traditional knowledge of the location of the True Cross heard of Helena’s searching. He guided her to a cistern that the Cross had purportedly been thrown into. But oddly enough, after a brief excavation, laying before Helena were three crosses.

But which one had held Christ? Theodoret, a biblical commentator and Christian Bishop of Cyrrhus in the 400’s, wrote a detailed account of how it was determined which was the True Cross:

A woman who was either close to death or who had long been suffering an affliction of sorts was brought from the city. She touched each cross in earnest prayer, attempting to “discern the virtue residing in that of the Savior.” Nothing happened upon touching the first and second cross, but as she touched the third and final cross, she was immediately healed. It was determined that this was the True Cross of Jesus Christ, upon which His precious Blood had spilled. According to tradition, this discovery took place on May 3, 326 A.D.

The Wood of the True Cross would change hands multiple times over the centuries, with the last officially recorded mention of its location in 1219, when the True Cross was offered to the Knights Templar by the Sultan of Egypt, in exchange for a siege on the city of Damietta being lifted.

However, the True Cross was never delivered; the Sultan did not actually have it. Last seen in the city of Damascus, the wood upon which Jesus had hung disappeared from historical records.

Luckily, many relics of the True Cross remain in the world today. In those early years following the discovery of the True Cross, fragments had been divided and distributed widely among churches. “The whole earth is full of the relics of the Cross of Christ,” wrote Cyril of Jerusalem. By the Middle Ages, there were so many churches that claimed to possess a piece of the True Cross, that John Calvin famously quipped “if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load.”

While indeed forged relics were a common occurrence around the 11th century, a study conducted by Charles Rohault de Fleury, a French architect, compared the supposed weight of the cross carried by Jesus compared to the combined volume of all known relics. He concluded that the remaining fragments together again wouldn’t reach even one-third of the size of the original Cross.

His calculations placed the original volume of the True Cross at 178 million cubic millimeters. However, the combined volume of all known relics of the True Cross amount to just about 4 million cubic millimeters, meaning that almost 98% of the True Cross is lost, destroyed, or otherwise unaccounted for.

Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14, the anniversary of when the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated by Constantine. On Good Friday, Catholics around the world venerate the cross, the symbol of their salvation.