By the middle of the third century AD, the Roman Empire had suffered through decades of financial decay and structural instability following the murder of the Emperors Caracalla, Elagabalus, and the chaotic reigns of the short-term Emperors who followed them. After 222, no less than 6 emperors had ruled in less than thirty years with constant coups d'etat, wars, and assassinations. Into this instability, including ever-increasing incursions of barbarian tribes like the Goths, Franks and Persians, Helena was born in approximately 249 AD. A woman raised in the last age of pagan Rome, she would be instrumental in assisting her son, Constantine the Great, to establish Christianity as the only religion of the Empire. Flavia Iulia Helena is unique in being not only a remarkable woman in her own right and mother of one of the most important Emperors but also is honored as a Christian saint, especially reverenced by the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. Her life must be disentangled from the inevitable propaganda associated with her saintly status and seen in the context of Rome struggling against the risks of dissolution and in the birth-throes of a new state religion.

The skimpy historical resources available in the late third and fourth centuries also hinder us in filling in the details of Helena's biography. Unlike earlier ages where a Livia or Julia Domna could be chronicled by Suetonius or Cassius Dio, there are few non-Christian sources to dependably outline Helena's life. Helena's life must be seen in the events of her son's. Her importance lay partly by defining a feminine icon for the new state religion in the last Roman century of Empire. In addition, her rags-to-Empress story has fascinated the ages.

Daughter of the Taverns

Helena was born in apparently poor-to-modest circumstances in Drepanon in Bithynia in the Roman province of Illyricum in the Balkans. This is suggested because her son Constantine, when he became Emperor, renamed the city Helenopolis after his mother. Legends that she was the daughter of a British king are entirely medieval and probably due to Constantius' eventual death in Britain decades later (as well as a natural desires to elevate Helena's obscure origins). There are statements either that Helena's father was an innkeeper or that she had to work as a servant in the tavern. This was a position compared to and almost as despised as prostitution, a position hinted at or glossed over by the early Christian Fathers. Ambrose (De obit. Theod.,42) calls her a stabularia and Eutropius (Brev. 10.2) mentions that she was born ex obscuriore matrimonio. Philostorgius (Hist. Eccl., 2.16) calls her `a common woman not different from strumpets' and there are similar hints in Zosimus.

Perhaps it was in the tavern that she gained the attention of a young Roman soldier, Flavius Valerius Constantius (his nickname, "Chlorus," was not contemporary) when she was in her late teens. Some sources (particularly Christian ones) insist that the ambitious young Roman soldier married his tavern-wench; others state that she was his mistress in a stable, long-term relationship fairly well well accepted in the period, her status similar to that of a common-law wife. It would be unlikely, although not impossible, for an ambitious soldier to marry a woman of such low birth. In any event, it is clear that she gave birth in either 272 or 274 to a son who would become Constantine the Great. Other children may have been born to the couple but their names have not come down to us.

Diocletian and a new Caesar

The relationship between Constantius and Helena apparently endured for nearly twenty years until its abrupt termination through the intervention of the remarkable Emperor Diocletian, who came to power in 284. A half-century of misgovernment led Diocletian to propose the revolutionary idea of splitting the Empire. Two co-emperors would rule the western and eastern halves of the Empire as colleagues, each with a successor-Caesar under him, hopefully to avoid the power-wars of the last half century. Diocletian chose Maximianus Herculius, who became the Roman Emperor in the west in the spring of 286, while Diocletian retained power in the east. It was envisioned that each man would choose a successor, a Caesar, who would govern as his subordinate for 20 years, when each man would voluntarily abdicate in favor of his experienced successor. In 292-3, Diocletian chose Galerius as his Caesar; Maximianus chose one of his loyal generals, Constantius Chlorus.

Upon becoming Caesar, Constantius abandoned Helena and married Theodora, the daughter or stepdaughter of the Emperor Maximianus. Again, those sources who insist Helena was married claim a divorce was required for this marriage of state, while others say that, as the long-term mistress, Helena was simply discarded. No more would be heard of her for 16 years. Eusebius states that her son, Constantine, received his education at the courts of both Diocletian and Galerius. During this period, Constantius (who had six children with his new wife) governed northern Italy and Gaul. In the years immediately prior to the abdication of the Emperors, the Empire also saw an increased persecution of Christians which would be significant for the future. This occurred concurrently with ferocious divisions of dogma within the struggling Church itself in the face of state-led repression.

In 305, both Emperors abdicated in favor of their respective Caesars. Constantius was en route to Britain on campaign against the Picts of northern Britain (now, Scotland). He invited his son, now also a general, to join him in the expedition. Apparently Galerius, who had become jealous of Constantine's popularity, was keeping the young man more or less as a hostage under house arrest; Constantine escaped the guard and joined his father in Britain. Soon after his arrival, however, Constantius sickened and died in York. Although a possibly illegitimate son and surrounded by half-siblings, in 306, Constantine persuaded the legions in Britain to proclaim him as Caesar. For the next years, Constantine would struggle, first to be acknowledged as Caesar, then to contest several other claimants for full imperial control, while administering and fighting Frankish armies in Gaul. In 307, Constantine married his wife, Fausta (daughter of the Emperor Maximianus). In 308, he settled the succession with Licinius. Constantine then sent for his mother.

From Obscurity to Empress Dowager

Although Helena and Constantius had been separated for nearly two decades, Constantine gave her an immediate position of honor in his peripatetic Court, based primarily in Trier and later in Rome. For the rest of his reign (especially after he became sole emperor after the defeat of Licinius in 324), she was an visible and respected member of the Imperial family, outshining even the Emperor's wife.

After Constantine defeated the forces of his rival Maxentius at the famous battle at the Milvian Bridge in Rome in 312 (in which he allegedly saw a vision of the Christian cross and vowed to base the Empire in Christianity), Helena worked with him to build Christian churches in the city, including the original St. Peter's on the Vatican Hill and the basilica SS. Marcellino e Pietro. She was given a modest palace complex in Rome, the fundus Laurentus, with her own household and dignities. However, although some early Church sources like to suggest that it was at Helena's behest that Constantine embraced Christianity, it is possible that it was the other way around, as Eusebius suggests: that Constantine persuaded Helena to choose Christianity sometime after 312 AD. when the entire Imperial family accepted baptism. Sources agree that Helena fervently embraced the new creed. In any event, the challenge lying before Constantine - of subverting the ancient gods of Rome to an entirely new religion in the face of an overwhelming pagan majority in the Empire - was not only unbelievably challenging but political dynamite on a personal level. He needed all the help he could get, and Helena stepped into a leading role in the transition. One is irresistibly reminded of the aid Livia gave Augustus when, centuries earlier, he, too, wished to re-found Rome's moral values. The values attributed to Helena - piety, charity, kindness to the poor - are distinctly Christian virtues within a recognizably Roman tradition.

As Helena established a position of power and influence with her son and in his government, Constantine officially honored his mother in 324 with the title of "Augusta" (an honor originating with Augustus wife, Livia, but by no means given to every Empress) and "Nobilissima Femina" (most honored and noble woman), titles which begin appearing on coins of the Dowager Empress at this time.

The First Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 324 - 326 AD

In 326, in the midst of his efforts to reconcile the Christian faith to the Empire, Constantine inexplicably ordered the murder of his son, Crispus (by his first wife) and his queen, Fausta. Untrustworthy rumors suggest everything from intrigue against the Emperor to an incestuous relationship. Perhaps in that same year (some scholars say in 324), Helena departed on a legendary, lengthy tour of holy Christian sites in Palestine, the prototype for a thousand years of pilgrimage. She was probably at least 75 years old. It is possible her voyage was connected to the formal founding of Constantinople - which was designed as a Christian city - in 324. Other sources suggest that her extended journey may have been seen as an expiration of Constantine's family violence and the resulting scandal. A third politic reason may have been generated by Constantine's exasperation with the quarreling Fathers of the Church and his attempts to bring unity to the schismatic new state religion, mired in Arian, Donatist and other wars of doctrine. In 325, Constantine convened the first Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, which led to creation of the unifying Nicene Creed. Someone at the highest level needed to publicize the unifying sources from which all Christian belief had sprung. That woman was Helena, the most prominent woman in the Empire.

Detail, The Discovery of the True Cross,
Pierro Della Francesca, courtesy of The Web Museum.

Throughout her journey, Helena founded Christian churches, performed publicized works of Christian charity, and accepted the affection and praise of the provincials. When she arrived in the Holy Land she sought out all sites that were traditionally linked with the life and works of Jesus. She determined the site of the stable of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives and the site of Jesus' tomb (the Church of the Holy Sepulcher) in Jerusalem, arranging for mighty churches to rise on each site. She also explored the area where Jesus was supposedly crucified with the Bishop of Jerusalem where she is alleged to have conveniently discovered the true cross (including nails), miraculously uncorrupted after several hundred years, buried in the ground of Calvary. Interestingly, Eusebius does not mention these earthshaking discoveries, although St. Ambrose lists them three generations later, in 395.

With or without her extraordinary relics, Helena began her return to Rome. Some sources say she died in the town of Nicomedia in northwest Asia Minor, others that she completed her return and died in her son's presence. She was nearly 80 years old. She was first buried in Rome; her sarcophagus was later moved to Constantinople and, finally, to France in the 9th century.

The Secular Saint

In reading the story of Helena's life, it is difficult not to see the developing outlines of a new world and a new theocratic Rome, beginning to be more medieval and Byzantine than Roman. During her lifetime, born into a western Empire in chaos and before the founding of Constantinople, she lived through not only political turmoil but the establishment of an earthshaking new state religion. In every corner of the Empire, barbarian tribes pressured Roman borders. Diocletian's well-meant reforms and the creation of a tetrarchy would not endure; Constantine's extermination of all opponents prefigured the next century of single-emperor rule. Living amidst so much change and tumult, what does Helena symbolize for Roman women?

In many ways she followed the example of earlier, powerful Empresses, ruling by influence rather than by discrete political power. She was not the first empress to come from the lower classes, but certainly one of the most prominent until Theodora, centuries later. Her true significance probably lies in her embrace of Christianity and, as the female counterpart to Constantine (whose actions, to say the least, show the violence necessary to Imperial power), her embodiment of its pious values. In a world in which one man was establishing a radically new state religion, Helena's active involvement in building new temples to the new god and in showing him honor complimented her son's proclamations. Although living in the heart of a corrupt, secular court, she apparently influenced by example and not by intrigue. Her journey to the Holy Land exemplified the type of spiritual leadership prominent women would provide within the Christian faith for the next thousand years.

Sources:

Robert Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, Harper & Row, 1988. Biographies of other Emperors courtesy of the superb De Imperatoribus Romanis. See also The End of Paganism, Encyclopaedia Romana. Other than coinage, there are no contemporary images of Helena. Helena coin courtesy of Forum Ancient Coins. St. Helena is particularly reverenced in the art of the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. Icons courtesy of Liturgix and Orthodox Ministry Access.