Plate D shows Judas (called Julius in the label) Cyryacus (the Quyryache of the Golden Legend) being released, after having been forced, through imprisonment and starvation, into confessing where the holy Cross lay buried. In the upper part St. Helena is receiving the holy Cross, whilst labourers are uncovering the Tau Crosses of the two thieves.
The legend is mutilated, but enough remains to make its meaning clear: “Here Seynte helyne examy(neth) the I(ews for) ye Holy cros . . . . Iulius cyryacus (saith that he knew w)here hete was.”
E F
The legend in Plate E is nearly perfect, and accurately describes the painting, “Hyt was proved evidently by myrakel which was ye very cros that oure Savyour suffyred . . . . In resynge a made from deth to lyfe.”
Here all the Crosses are of the Tau type, and the scene is laid in a forest, where an old labourer, and a bill-man, and the deer nibbling the trees, give a rural aspect, instead of in the City of Jerusalem, as saith the Golden Legend.
Plate F evidently consists of two separate paintings—one, where St. Helena is reverently carrying the Cross into Jerusalem, whilst the angels in heaven are discoursing celestial music; and the other, its reception either in Jerusalem or Byzantium, whither St. Helena sent a portion as a present to her son. And this latter seems the more probable, if we imagine the King, who, with St. Helena, is adoring the Crucifix, to be the emperor Constantine, a fact which might have been settled had the label been legible.
The legend at the bottom is unfortunately mutilated, but that evidently relates to that portion of the Cross which remained at Jerusalem, because it speaks of Chosroes: “Here the hole cros was broughte solemly yn to the . . . in ye bysshops hands easily and (remaynyd) un to the tyme of (King Codsd)roe.
G H