Archaeologists: We Found Piece of Jesus' Cross

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

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Archaeologists working at an ancient church in Turkey think they've unearthed a piece of the world's most famous cross, the one used to crucify Jesus. They found a stone chest during excavation at a 1,350-year-old church, and the chest had a number of relics inside believed to be associated with the crucifixion, a historian at Turkey's Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts tells the Hurriyet Daily News. “We have found a holy thing in a chest," she says. "It is a piece of a cross," and they think it's from the cross. The entire chest is now undergoing lab tests, reports NBC News. Researchers aren't sure who owned the chest, but it was probably a religious person of some importance, and that person apparently believed the cross relic was the real deal. The lab tests should shed some light on the possibility, though NBC adds a little context courtesy of theologian John Calvin. He once joked that if all the supposed pieces of the cross in the world were collected in one place, "they would make a big shipload." (In other archaeological news, ancient "halls of the dead" have been unearthed in England.)