St. Judas Cyriacus, Patron of Ancona

Who was St. Judas Cyriacus?

St. Judas Cyriacus is the saint whose story is joined to the most precious relic in Christendom. An ancient tradition says that when the Empress St. Helena came to Jerusalem in the 320s to search for the Cross of Christ, a learned Jewish man named Judas knew where it lay buried. He led her to the place, saw the Cross found and recognized by a miracle, and asked for baptism. He took the name Cyriacus, which means "belonging to the Lord" in Greek, became bishop of Jerusalem and, by the same tradition, died a martyr under the Emperor Julian the Apostate in 363.

His body has been venerated for many centuries in Ancona, the port city on Italy's Adriatic coast, where the cathedral bears his name and he is the city's patron. We keep his feast on May 4, the day after the old feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross.

The finding of the Cross

That the Cross was found in Jerusalem in Constantine's reign is early history. The emperor ordered the pagan temple built over Golgotha to be torn down, and in the excavations the wood was uncovered and honored. Soon a great basilica rose over the place, and pilgrims were venerating the relic there before the century was out. You can read the whole story on our page about the True Cross.

How the spot was known is another question. Writing in the fifth century, the historian Sozomen passed on a report that "some say that the facts were first disclosed by a Hebrew who dwelt in the East," who had learned the place from documents handed down in his family. Sozomen himself preferred to think that God revealed the place "by means of signs and dreams." This is the seed of the story of Judas.

The legend of Judas

Over the next centuries the report grew into a full narrative, told in Greek, Syriac and Latin and known as the Acts of Judas Cyriacus. In its best-known form, Helena gathers the learned men of Jerusalem and asks where Christ was crucified. Judas alone knows, from his father Simon, and at first will not tell. When at last he prays at Golgotha, the ground trembles and a sweet fragrance rises. The diggers find three crosses, and the true one is known when it raises a dead man to life. Judas believes, is baptized, and later finds the nails of the Passion as well. The legend even makes him a grandnephew of St. Stephen, the first martyr.

Some medieval retellings color this story with hostility toward the Jewish people. We set that aside. The heart of the tradition is a man of Israel who came to faith in Christ at the foot of the Cross.

The Church has always known that these Acts are legend. In the decree on books attributed to Pope Gelasius (late fifth century), the writing on the finding of the Cross is listed among works to be read with caution, and Sabine Baring-Gould in 1898 pointed out the plain problems of chronology. Yet the story entered the Western liturgy and the Golden Legend, and it shaped how painters showed the scene for a thousand years.

Bishop and martyr

The tradition continues with Cyriacus as bishop of Jerusalem. When the Emperor Julian tried to restore paganism in the 360s, he is said to have had the old bishop tortured and put to death in 363. The Orthodox Church honors him as the Hieromartyr Cyriacus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, on October 28. The lists of the bishops of Jerusalem do not name a bishop Cyriacus in that century, and Baring-Gould noted that the earlier martyrologies mixed him up with Judas, a second-century bishop of the city, and with other martyrs called Cyriacus or Quiriacus. What the details of his martyrdom were, we cannot say with certainty. That he has been honored as a martyr from very early times, we can.

The miracles of St. Judas Cyriacus

• The finding of the Cross (traditional): the trembling ground, the fragrance at Golgotha and the dead man raised by the touch of the true Cross belong to the legend of his conversion. Sozomen already mentions a dead person restored by the Cross, without naming Judas.
• The finding of the nails (traditional): the Acts say his prayer made the nails of the Passion shine out from the earth so they could be given to Helena.
• Protection of Ancona (traditional): the people of Ancona have turned to their patron for centuries in times of war, plague and danger at sea, and the archdiocese still asks him to defend the city "da ogni pericolo," from every danger.

Why St. Judas Cyriacus is the patron saint of Ancona

The archdiocese of Ancona-Osimo teaches that his relics were brought to the city in the fifth century through the Empress Galla Placidia, the daughter of Theodosius the Great. The town took him as its protector, and his body now rests in the crypt of the cathedral of San Ciriaco, the Romanesque church on the Guasco hill above the harbor. Ancona also kept a feast for the translation of his relics on August 8, and the old coins of the city show him in the vestments of a patriarch.

A second relic center grew up in France. Count Henry I of Champagne brought part of his skull from the East in the twelfth century to the town of Provins, where he built the collegiate church of Saint-Quiriace in his honor. A portion of the skull was still shown there when Baring-Gould wrote.

Symbols of St. Judas Cyriacus in art

In Western art St. Judas Cyriacus usually appears as an elderly bishop in miter and cope, with a crozier, as in Palma il Giovane's painting in Venice. Like other martyrs, he often holds a palm branch. Because his fame rests on the finding of the Cross, many images give him a cross, and some show him with a spade or point to the hole where the crosses were found. In scenes of Helena's discovery he is the man in Jewish dress who kneels, digs or holds up the Cross, as in the drawing from Vercelli. Ancona's old coins and seals show him in the robes of an Eastern patriarch, which helps you recognize him in the city.

Prayer to St. Judas Cyriacus

The Archdiocese of Ancona-Osimo prays a triduum before his feast each year with a prayer signed by its archbishop. It recalls that "Egli sapeva dove era nascosta la Croce di Cristo, ma ne ignorava la potenza salvifica" ("He knew where the Cross of Christ was hidden, but did not know its saving power"), and asks his intercession for spouses, families, children, the young, the old and the sick. Let us join the Church of Ancona in asking St. Cyriacus to pray for us, that like him we may come to know the saving power of the Cross. St. Judas Cyriacus, pray for us.