About the same time Helena, the mother of Constantine, a woman incomparable in faith and in religion of soul, and of singular magnificence, by whose right Constantine both was and was believed to be her son, being admonished by divine visions, sought Jerusalem, and there inquired of the inhabitants for the place in which the sacrosanct body of Christ, fixed to the gibbet, had hung. This was difficult to find, because the ancient persecutors had fixed in it an image of Venus, so that if any of the Christians had wished to adore Christ in that place, he would seem to be adoring Venus. And on this account the place had become little-frequented and almost given over to oblivion.
But when (as we said above) the religious woman had hastened to the place pointed out to her by a heavenly token, casting down from it all that was profane and polluted, with the rubbish cleared to a depth, she found three crosses in disordered arrangement. But the indistinguishable likeness of each cross disturbed the joy of the gift she had found. There was present also that titulus (inscription) which had been written by Pilate in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew letters; but it too did not clearly enough disclose the signs of the Lord's gibbet. Hence now the uncertainty of human ambiguity demanded a divine testimony. It happened in that same city that a certain leading woman of that place, consumed by grave sickness, lay half-dead.
Macarius at that same time was bishop of that Church. When he saw the queen hesitating, and all alike who were present, he said: "Bring hither all the crosses that have been found, and which it is that bore the Lord, God will now reveal to us." And entering, together with the queen and the people, to her who lay sick, he bent his knees and poured forth to God a prayer of this kind.