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INTRODUCTION This Book Is About Flavia Lulia Helena Augusta, Mother

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INTRODUCTION This Book Is About Flavia Lulia Helena Augusta, Mother INTRODUCTION This book is about Flavia lulia Helena Augusta, mother of Constantine the Great, discoverer of the Cross, foundress of churches, saint of the universal church, ideal Christian empress and even the heroine of a novel.1 Helena Augusta escaped anonymity for two principal reasons. Firstly, she was the mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor (306- 337). By tolerating and propagating Christianity, Constantine gave the first impetus to the christianization of the Roman Empire, which eventually led to a Christian Europe. Helena was involved in Constantine's policy of christianization und thus irrevocably connected with the christianization of the world, and for this reason she has remained known to posterity. Secondly, Helena became famous for her leading role in the popular legend of the finding of the True Cross. This legend relates how Helena travelled to Jerusalem to search for the Cross of Christ, and how she found three crosses, one of which was identified as that of Christ. The story of Helena's discovery of the Cross originated only some fifty years after her death and must therefore be regarded as historical fiction. However, in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages the legend was thought to represent historical reality, with the result that Helena became extremely popular. When, however, a historical figure becomes the principal figure of a legend, there is a great danger that the historical and unhistorical, the factual and the legendary, become intertwined. As a result, historical fact and historical fiction can no longer be distinguished. This is exactly what happened in the case of Helena. It was believed in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and even in modern times that Helena had indeed found the Cross of Christ,2 especially since the story was given the aura of historicity through its inclusion in the Historiae Ecclesiasticae of the fifth century. Edward Gibbon was one of the first historians who, because of the silence of contemporary sources like Eusebius and the Bordeaux pilgrim, regarded the finding of the Cross by Helena to be historical fiction.3 Although Gibbon's assessment is quite right, it 1 Evelyn Waugh, Helena, London 1950. 2 E.g. C. Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, Cologne 1609, vol. 3, 394ff.; Tillemont, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire Ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles, Brussels 1732 (2nd. ed.), VII, 291, Note II. 3 E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ed. by J.B. Bury (10th. ed.), vol. II, 455-456, 2 INTRODUCTION was still difficult for many to reject the legend as an unreliable historical source. The clergymen who published about Helena were particularly at fault here, never strictly separating historical data from legendary material.4 While clergymen may be excused for this since Helena was a saint of the Church, professional historians cannot escape such a serious charge. From these we expect a clear distinction between fact and fiction, but this is, unfortunately, not always what we find. In a book on Constantine by a famous ancient historian first published in 1969 and reprinted unaltered in 1987, there is a passage on Helena in which both fact and fiction are presented as of equal historical value: Wherever she passed she distributed gifts—to some, silver, to some, clothes. She amnestied convicts and exiles and worshipped in the churches; {she sought out the company of nuns to do them honor}, and the poor, to relieve their distress. But she was, beyond this, the first pilgrim. {She had been told in a dream to look for the site of the Holy Sepulcher, and succeeded in finding it, hidden under a mound of earth and a shrine of Aphrodite. With the discovery of the Holy Sepulcher, the True Cross was found also...}5 The parts which I have placed between brackets are derived from the legend of Helena's discovery of the Cross and have therefore no historical value at all, at least according to the strictest definition of historical fact. Most of the rest of the passage is derived from Helena's contemporary Eusebius, and although the historical value of his work is sometimes difficult to assess, the picture he presents of Helena probably comes closer to historical 'truth'. In general, the 'historical' picture of Helena presented in modern historiography is still confused by the unhistorical legend. This picture therefore needs the clarification afforded by a strict separation of historical and legendary material. That is the main aim of this book, which is consequently presented in two parts. In the first part an attempt is made to present something like a n.66: "The silence of Eusebius and the Bordeaux pilgrim, which satisfies those who think, perplexes those who believe." 4 Especially R. Couzard, 1911, has fact and fiction ingeniously intertwined, although the title Sainte Hélène d'après l'Histoire et Ici Tradition leads one to suspect otherwise. J. Maurice in the introduction of his Sainte Hélène (Paris 1930), which is about representations of Helena in art, also does not separate historical and legendary information properly. Much better in this respect is A.-M. Rouillon, 1908, although it is more about Constantine than about Helena. Rather superficial is H.H. Lauer, 1967. Very good is the second chapter of E.D. Hunt's book (1982), entitled: 'Helena — History and Legend'. 5 R. MacMullen, 19872, 187-188. .
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