The Chapel of the Tree of the Cross

As late as the 15th century, pilgrims who came to the Monastery of the Cross testified that behind the altar of the main church they could see in the ground the remains of the tree that was said to have furnished the wood for the cross of Jesus. A shrine still marks where the tree was seen, in a small crypt chapel at the end of a passage from the north aisle of the church (see diagram, above).

An ancient Christian legend linking the Tree of the Cross to Abraham and his nephew, Lot, is recounted in a sequence of painted panels lining the walls of the chapel (below). At the left end of the north wall, Abraham dines with three angels, who announce that Abraham’s wife Sarah will bear him a son (Genesis 18). According to the legend, when the angels moved on to Sodom to visit Lot, they left with Abraham their three staffs.

The panel to the right of this one shows Lot fleeing the destruction of Sodom with his two daughters; his wife, in the background, has turned into a pillar of salt, her punishment for looking back at the burning city. In the next panel, Lot confesses to his uncle that his daughters had seduced him. Abraham offers Lot the three staffs of the angels and tells him to seek divine forgiveness by planting the staffs and watering them with water brought from the Jordan River.