What was the fate of the ‘True Cross’ in the Byzantine-Sassanid Wars?

Disir

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Then the Judge of truth, who desires not the death of the sinner, but that he may turn again and live, sent on us the evil Persian race, as a rod of chastisement and medicine of rebuke. And they advanced with a great force and numerous host. They seized all the land of Syria and they put the Greek to flight. And they reached Palestine and its borders, and they arrived at Caesarea […] Next they reached Judea ; and came to a large and famous city, a Christian city, which is Jerusalem, city of the Son of God. And they came on in wrath and mighty anger of soul; and the Lord surrendered it into their hands, and they fulfilled all in accordance with His will. And who can depict what took place within Jerusalem and in her streets? Who number the multitude of dead who lay stretched in Jerusalem?” ~ Antiochus Strategos, The Capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 AD

The capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in the spring of 614 was a tremendous shock to the Christian world, and the psychological impact of its conquest can, perhaps, only be compared to the sack of Rome in 410. The sack of Jerusalem forms part of the series of conflicts between the two superpowers of the Mediterranean in the early Middle Ages – Byzantium and Sassanian Persia, conflicts that revolved around issues of strategic control along the eastern frontier regions of Armenia and Mesopotamia that went as far back as the establishment of the Sassanian State in the third century.

A new war between Byzantium and Persia flared up in 602, and by the end of the decade the Sassanians had conquered Mesopotamia and the Caucasus. After achieving complete control over Armenia by the summer of 610, the Persian general Shahin burned the Cappadocian capital city of Caesarea in the summer of 612, while a Byzantine army led by Heraclius was heavily defeated at the hands of Shahin near Antioch in 613.

After the battle, Antioch, the third largest city of the Byzantine Empire, capitulated as Shahin and Shahrbaraz, another of the Shah Khusrow’s skilled generals, marched south along the Palestinian coastline. By the end of 613, the cities of Damascus, Apamea, and Emesa surrendered without resistance, giving the Persian generals the chance to strike further south into Palaestina Prima. Although the details of the conquest and sack of Jerusalem are murky and the (Christian) sources are, certainly, biased, one start date for the Persian assault is given as 15 April 614. Most of the sources point that the siege lasted about three weeks, with the Persian breakthrough coming between 17 and 20 May.

As the capture of Jerusalem was accompanied by the destruction of churches and the killing of Christians, perhaps the heaviest blow to Byzantine morale was the capture of the True Cross, the relics of which had been kept in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre since the 340s:

“On the 19th day [of the siege] […] ten days after Easter, the Persian army captured Jerusalem. For three days they put to the sword and slew all the populace of the city. And they stayed within the city for 21 days. Then they came out and camped outside the city and burnt the city. They added up the number of fallen corpses, and the total of those killed was 17,000 people; and the living whom they captured were 35,000 people. They also arrested the patriarch, whose name was Zak‘aria, and the custodian of the Cross. In their search for the Life-bearing Cross, they began to torture them; and many of the clergy they decapitated at that time. Then they showed them the place where it lay hidden, and they took it away into captivity.” ~ The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos, chapter 34

What was the fate of the 'True Cross' in the Byzantine-Sassanid Wars?

That is an interesting article.
 

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