Helena

Life

Helena is believed to have been born in the mid-third century. Her birthplace is widely held to be Drepanum in Bithynia, Asia Minor, and according to tradition Constantine later renamed the city Helenopolis in honor of his mother. The fourth-century church father Ambrose described Helena as a stabularia, or "inn servant," a remark often cited as evidence that she came from humble origins.

Helena lived with the general Constantius (later Emperor Constantius I) and gave birth to their son Constantine in the early 270s. Scholars differ on whether their relationship was a formal marriage. For political reasons, Constantius separated from Helena and married Theodora, the stepdaughter of Emperor Maximian. After her son became emperor in 306, Helena returned to the imperial court, and around 324 she received the title of Augusta. Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, wrote in his Life of Constantine that Helena became a Christian through her son's influence. She died around 330 and is believed to have been buried in Rome.

Ministry and Achievements

Around 326, shortly after the Council of Nicaea (325), Helena, by then advanced in years, made a pilgrimage to Palestine. Eusebius recorded that during this pilgrimage she sponsored the building of churches at the site of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem and at the site of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. He also reported that along the way she gave alms to the poor, to soldiers, and to prisoners.

According to Eusebius, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built in the area of Golgotha in Jerusalem, was a project led by Emperor Constantine and Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem. The story that Helena discovered the cross on which Jesus was crucified during this construction first appears in the late fourth century, in the writings of Ambrose, Rufinus, and others. Eusebius, her contemporary, does not mention it. For this reason, scholars generally regard the story as a later tradition.

Influence on the Korean Church

The Catholic Church commemorates Helena on August 18 and the Orthodox Church on May 21; the Orthodox Church honors her, together with her son, as "Equal to the Apostles." Because Korean Protestantism does not venerate saints, Helena is introduced mainly in church history lectures and pilgrimage guides. Her name frequently comes up in explanations of the origins of the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Korean Christians visit on pilgrimages to Israel.

Assessment

Helena is regarded as a leading example of imperial patronage of the church after the legalization of Christianity. Her pilgrimage is considered one of the events that helped establish the tradition of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

However, the tradition of the finding of the True Cross associated with her name, along with the veneration of fragments of the cross, later drew criticism from the Reformation side. In a 1543 treatise on relics (objects believed to be connected with the saints or with Jesus), John Calvin criticized the veneration of relics, remarking pointedly that if all the fragments of the cross scattered throughout the world were gathered together, they would fill a ship. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches hold that relics are memorials that awaken faith and are not themselves objects of worship.