August 18th is the traditional feast of Saint Helena, a barmaid in Britain who caught the eye of the co-emperor Constantius Chlorus, who married her. Their son was Constantine the Great, who defeated the pagan Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge 312, and who legalized Christianity the following year by the Edict of Milan.
Constantine gave his mother – to whom he was always devoted, and whom he trusted without reserve – unlimited access to the imperial treasury. Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea claims that Helena was converted by her son, which is ironic, since Constantine did not officially become Catholic until his deathbed, and even then, he was baptized by another Eusebius, of Nicomedia, a die-hard Arian.
Helena used her funds and privilege to begin excavation of the site of Christ’s crucifixion, upon which the Emperor Hadrian in 130 had built a pagan temple, dedicated to Venus. Said temple was torn down, and underneath were found three crosses, along with many implements of the Passion. Only one of those crosses performed a miraculous healing, and hence taken to be the True Cross, whose relics are now dispersed throughout the earth. Many of them now reside in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Rome, not far from the Lateran. We celebrate this ‘invention’ – which is to say, finding, along with the Triumph – of the Holy Cross on September 14th.
Helena lived a pious, Catholic life, dying in 330 as an octogenarian, with her son at her side. Constantine built a mausoleum for his mother, which still stands southwest of the centre of Rome. Her sarcophagus is in the Vatican Museum, and her relics also all over the place, with her body, apparently, at the church of Sant’Elena, in Venice.
English novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote a fictional life of Helena, which has popularized the saint, adding to, or perhaps corroborating, the many legends surrounding her.
