Saints Constantine and Helen, Equals-to-the-Apostles
Emperor and Empress, Equals-to-the-Apostles
- Feast day
- May 21
- Lived
- c. 272–337 and c. 248–330
- Patronage
- Rulers, converts, those seeking lost things (Saint Helen)
Saint Constantine ended three centuries of persecution and summoned the First Ecumenical Council; his mother Saint Helen found the True Cross in Jerusalem and built the churches over the holy places.
Constantine
Before the battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, Constantine saw the sign of the Cross in the sky with the words 'By this conquer' and ordered it placed on his soldiers' shields. The Edict of Milan the following year granted the Church legal freedom throughout the empire.
In 325 he convoked the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea to settle the Arian crisis, and in 330 dedicated the new capital of Constantinople. He was baptised on his deathbed, as was common at the time, and is honoured as Equal-to-the-Apostles for what his reign made possible.
Helen and the True Cross
Helen, born to a humble family in Bithynia, travelled to the Holy Land in her late seventies. Excavating beneath the temple of Venus that Hadrian had built over Golgotha, her workmen uncovered three crosses; the True Cross was identified when a dying woman was healed on touching it.
She founded the churches of the Holy Sepulchre, the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. The Exaltation of the Cross on September 14 commemorates the finding.