Helena, Mother of the First Christian Emperor
Artist&squo;s imaginary representation of Helena.
ON THIS DAY, 18 August 328,* the Empress Helena died. Her son, emperor Constantine the Great, was at her side, holding her hands. Early church historian Eusebius, to whom we owe most of our knowledge of Helena, described the scene and added, “to those who rightly discerned the truth, the thrice blessed one seemed not to die, but to experience a real change and transition from an earthly to a heavenly existence, since her soul, remolded as it were into an incorruptible and angelic essence, was received up into her Savior’s presence.”
We know little about the young Helena. There is an unfounded British tradition that she was the daughter of the nursery-rhyme character, Old King Cole(King Coel of Colchester), but most scholars think she was born in Asia Minor, at the town that Constantine named Helenopolis, and grew up as an innkeeper’s daughter. Either way, it is unclear where Helena met Constantius, the father of Constantine.
After her son’s conversion to Christianity and rise to power, Eusebius says, “he rendered her through his influence so devout a worshiper of God (though she had not previously been such) that she seemed to have been instructed from the first by the Savior of mankind.”
Constantine honored her with the title of Augusta (“the great,” a title Roman emperors occasionally conferred on their female relatives) and issued coins with her image. Perhaps this was to compensate for Helena’s earlier disgrace. Constantius, Constantine’s father, had dumped her to marry Theodora, daughter of the emperor Maximian, in a move designed to advance his own career.
Helena is also remembered as the first Christian archaeologist. Although an old woman when Constantine united the empire, she traveled to the Holy Land, worshipped in Palestine’s churches, identified possible locations of Christ’s ministry, found pieces of the “true cross,” built churches, and clothed the naked. Her tour became a pattern for Christian pilgrims throughout the Middle Ages.
Helena was eighty-four when she died and was buried in the imperial vault of the Church of the Apostles, Constantinople. Her will left all her lands to her famous son and to her grandchildren.
—Dan Graves
* This date is not beyond dispute. Some scholars prefer 330, as our daily events indicate.
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Helena is among many women featured in Christian History #17: Women in the Early Church.
Christian History #27 Persecution in the Early Church has several articles about Helena's son, Constantine
For more on the "true cross" watch Quest For The True Cross
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