THE QUEST FOR THE TRUE CROSS

Following the success of The Jesus Papyrus (a Sunday Times bestseller), in which the authors authenticated three fragments of St Matthew's Gospel kept in an Oxford college from the eyewitness period, Carsten Thiede and Matthew d'Ancona turn their attention to a fragment of inscribed wood, stored in a church in Rome for many hundreds of years, which they believe is part of the title board or Titulus from the cross on which Jesus died. Their claim flies in the face of the view held by many modern historians who dismiss the very notion of any part of the Cross's survival as superstitious and fanciful. However Thiede and d'Ancona have amassed evidence that this fragment is not only genuine, but that it was brought to Rome by Queen Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, who, according to legend, found the cross in Jerusalem in AD326 on the site where the Church of the Holy Sepulcre now stands. Thiede and d'Ancona base their claim on the writing that survives on the Roman Titulus. Deciphering this wording is where Thiede's specialism as a papyrologist comes in. He has also been involved in archaeological investigations at the site of the Church and will be the first to reveal the findings. D'Ancona, as the writer of the book, proposes to use Queen Helena's own quest as the starting point for the book, to show that much of what has previously been read as legend is actually fact.