Page 38 - AECA.org.uk ¦ Koinonia 63

Of course the tomb of Christ was the most greatly venerated tro-
phy of martyrdom, as being also the place of the resurrection. In fact it
became so popular as a place of pilgrimage and prayer that the emperor
Hadrian attempted to suppress it in 140 by piling a mound of earth over
it and building a pagan temple on top. Which happily served to mark
the site indisputably when the Empress St Helena came along to re-
cover it, after the conversion of her son the emperor Constantine. His
conversion was a turning point in the history of the church. Great
churches were built in the Holy Land at the sites associated with the
birth and death of Christ, and rich basilicas were built in Rome over the
tombs of the apostles and martyrs.

Rome remained very conservative and up to the time of Pope
Gregory the Great in the 6th century there was a marked reluctance to
dig up or move the remains of the martyrs. Instead churches were built
directly over the graves, leaving them intact, sometimes in very incon-
venient sites. The Basilica of St Peter, for example, was built on the side
of a hill by heaping up an enormous mound of earth to make a level site,
enclosing the earlier tropaion13.

But in the East it was a di?erent story. Constantine founded his
new capital, Constantinople, which had not been a place of importance
during the ages of persecution, so had no or few martyr’s graves. But
Constantine wanted it to be the equal of Rome, which meant splendid
churches and holy relics. So the relics had to be got from elsewhere.
And so the practice of translation began, taking relics out of their
tombs and carrying them to other places where they were needed. Con-
stantine acquired the relics of Saints Andrew, Luke and Timothy for his
new church of the Holy Apostles14, and at the same time more portable
relics, such as Holy Nails and fragments of the True Cross, started to be
spread throughout the Christian world.

The practice of translation also started to be seen in the West,
outside Rome itself. Milan became a centre of administration of the

13 Kirschbaum, op. cit., p 146
14 Charles Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust, Yale University Press, 2011, p 37

36