Diatribe de Prodigiosis Crucibus

tor Julian would perish at an immature age, that the Christian Religion was heavenly, and that all things were to be marked with the figure of the holy Cross of Christ; events taught the truth of the prophecy.

In the year of Christ 353, on the very day of Pentecost, a most luminous sign of the Cross appeared on Mount Apparition

of the Cross
on Mount
Golgotha.

Golgotha, as Sozomen testifies, which illuminated the earth with such a brilliance of rays that it carried all men, who were flocking together from all parts of the world, into admiration, especially since it hung suspended in the highest region of the air, fifteen stadia distant from the earth. It was exhibited by GOD, the Best and Greatest, for this reason above all: because Constantius Caesar, about to wage war against the Catholic Church of GOD, had raised a standard of impiety; Christ, whose Divinity was most especially under attack, willed to demonstrate from heaven, with immense clarity, this divine sign above the holy Mount—the very one by which He might declare the total impiety of the impious—that which He had inculcated in His own during His mortal life, saying: Have confidence, I have overcome the world; a matter truly