According to a body of historical and legendary traditions, Saint Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine I and an early convert to Christianity, was responsible for the miraculous discovery of the relic of the True Cross on Golgotha, in Jerusalem, between 326 and 328. She brought a portion of it back to the West, together with other instruments of Christ’s Passion, giving rise to the subsequent dissemination of fragments across many regions of the Christian world. The cult of the Holy Cross still commemorates, on 3 May, the so-called Invention of the Holy Cross (from the Latin inventio, “discovery”), a feast originally part of the liturgical calendar, later merged with that of 14 September (the Exaltation of the Holy Cross), yet deeply rooted in local devotional traditions. These continue to preserve ritual forms linked to the May festivities and to agricultural cycles, such as the protection of fields, crops and homes, alongside the veneration of relics.

In the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga area, documentation attests to the widespread practice — now largely discontinued — of preparing the so-called “little crosses” (crocette) up until the second half of the twentieth century. These were small hazelwood crosses made at home and carried in procession on the morning of 3 May, when they were placed near cultivated land. The inhabited space extended into the fields, essential for survival, and each plot was symbolically blessed by the presence of the crocette, understood as a simulacra of the True Cross of the Passion.

Luigi De Angelis, a shepherd of sheep and goats from San Giorgio di Crognaleto, has kept this “old tradition” alive and continues, year after year, to make dozens of crocette out of personal devotion, offering them to relatives, friends and acquaintances who request them, to protect homes and kitchen gardens. The making of the crosses follows a well-established artisanal and ceremonial process, learned from his father and grandfather, which Luigi carefully observes. After selecting hazelwood sticks of suitable diameter and length, he sharpens one end to facilitate their insertion into the ground. He then opens a split in the branch with the help of a billhook, prepares a horizontal slat from other hazelwood branches, and inserts it into the slit to form the arms of the cross. Once the actual making is complete, Luigi inserts a small olive branch, blessed during the Palm Sunday Mass, at the junction between the vertical stem and the horizontal crosspiece. He consecrates it by letting drops of wax from a Candlemas candle fall at five points (“Father”, “Son”, “Spirit”, “Holy”, “and so be it”), on both sides, so that the cross may offer protection in all directions.

Once made in this way, the crocette are ready for use: they are taken outside the doorway in the event of a hailstorm or placed in the fields to invoke the blessing and protection of kitchen gardens and crops. Within this ritual framework, they are believed to ward off evil and, in an anti-storm function, to repel clouds and adverse weather events.