Titulus Crucis

A part of this sign, relic known as the "Title" or "Titulus Crucis", kept in the Cappella delle Reliquie in Rome, Italy. Saint Helena, Roman Empress and mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and reportedly discovered the True Cross and many other relics which were donated to the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme ("Holy Cross in Jerusalem") which she had built in Rome about AD 325. Gherardo Caccianemici dal Orso was made cardinal priest of the church in 1124 and, some time before he became Pope Lucius II in 1144, he renovated the church and had the relic deposited in a box that bears his seal as a cardinal. The box was apparently forgotten until 1 February 1492, when workers restoring a mosaic discovered it hidden behind a brick that was inscribed "Titulus Crucis". ==Other Jerusalem relics==

Some Christian pilgrims who visited Jerusalem in the centuries between Helena and Pope Lucius reported seeing Christ's titulus there: Egeria reported that in AD 383 "A silver-gilt casket is brought in which is the holy wood of the Cross. The casket is opened and (the wood) is taken out, and both the wood of the Cross and the title are placed upon the table." Antoninus of Piacenza in the 6th century described a of "nut" wood with the inscription ("Here is the king of the Jews"), corresponding to Luke 23:38. ==Authenticity==

In 1997, the German author and historian Michael Hesemann investigated the relic. Hesemann presented the inscription of the title to seven experts on Hebrew, Greek and Latin palaeography: Gabriel Barkay of the Israel Antiquities Authority; Hanan Eshel, Ester Eshel and Leah Di Segni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Roll and Benjamin Isaac of the University of Tel Aviv and Carsten Peter Thiede of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. According to Hesemann, none of the consulted experts found any indication of medieval or late antique forged writing. They all dated the scripts to a timeframe between the 1st and the 3rd–4th centuries AD, with a majority of experts preferring—and none of them excluding—the 1st century. Hesemann concluded that it is very well possible that the writing on the Titulus Crucis is indeed authentic. Joe Nickell refers to this argument as "trying to psychoanalyze the dead," saying that "Forgers—particularly of another era—may do something cleverer or dumber or simply different from what we would expect." ==See also==