Empire: World History - 135. Helena: Queen of the World and Finder of the One True Cross

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Born in poverty at a time when the Roman Empire was in danger of cracking up and disintegrating, Helena was set for a life of obscurity as a stable hand, bar maid, and, according to some, a prostitute. Yet, in the most improbable tale she rose through the social hierarchy to be proclaimed Empress, then later canonised, and declared by some as queen of the world. Not only was she mother and most trusted advisor to the Emperor Constantine, but she played a pivotal role in the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. Whilst on pilgrimage in the Middle-East she was said to have discovered the one true cross and helped to set a template for Christian pilgrimages that would last for centuries. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Peter Sarris to discuss St Helena and her unprecedented rise through Roman society to the position of supreme power. A key source for St Helena's life is Helena Augusta: Mother of the Empire, by Julia Hillner. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Once, very long ago, before even the flowers were named, which struggled and fluttered before the rain-swept walls. there sat at an upper window, a princess and a slave, reading a story which even then was old, or rather to be entirely prosaic,

on the wet afternoon of the Knowns of May in the year, as it was computed later, of our Lord 273, in the city of Colchester, Helena, red-haired, youngest daughter of Cole, paramount chief of the Trivavantes, gazed into the rain, while her tutor read the Iliad of Homer in a Latin paraphrase. Recessed there in the fortification, they might have seemed an incongruous couple.

The princess was taller and lighter than the general taste required. Her hair, sometimes golden in the sunlight, was more often dull copper in her cloudy home. Her eyes had a boyish melancholy, in the mood at once resentful, abstracted, and yet very remotely tinge with awe of British youth in contact with the classics. There would be decades in the coming 17th centuries when she would have been thought beautiful. Born too soon, she was here in Colchester, among her own people, dubbed the plain one.

Oh, see, you've returned to Jack and Orie. Look at that time. Not where I'm happy is. Very beautifully read, William. It was the quote from the opening lines of Evenin Wars only historical novel, Helena. It's the story ostensibly meant to be of St Helena, the eponymous mother of the emperor Constantine. It also suggests that she was the daughter of Old King Cole, the merry old soul of Colchester? Mary, also, not to be confused with that King Cole, the jazz musician.

No, and let me tell you that she was neither Nat King Cole's daughter nor Old King Cole's daughter. So we've started with something rather beautiful but completely bullshit on this episode. Not for the first time. Not for the first time. But luckily, thank goodness, we have a guest who can set all of this right. And we have a grown-up, exactly in the house. And a grown-up, yes, a grown-up. We are talking about Peter Saris, Professor of Late Antique Medieval and Byzantine Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Welcome to you. Thanks so much for taking the time. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you. We are here to talk about a woman and we're going to have to start with really very basic things because this is a name that is not familiar to most people listening to this podcast. I guarantee it. When people say St Helena, they will be thinking about something to do with Napoleon invariably, something that goes along with Elba. But we are talking about a woman,

also known as Helena Augusta, Helena of Constantinople, the mother of the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, revered as a saint in both the Eastern Orthodox and Western Christian tradition. So it's really, for Chutas, we're sort of recording this in the run-up to Holy Week. Should we just first of all deal with the war thing? What is wrong with the Evelyn War? What is wrong with Evelyn War? Well, I'm afraid it's completely bonkers, isn't it? I mean, it's beautifully written, of course, but I don't think any of it stands up. And of course, he's drawing on an enormous medieval literature, which mythologised the Empress Elena for all sort of reasons, I'm sure,

will discuss, a tradition that tries to claim every important Roman figure as British, a feature of English medieval, fantasising literature. But I'm afraid none of it holds up. Whilst we don't know exactly where she was born, she definitely wasn't born in Colchester. I think the idea comes from the fact that her husband, the Emperor Constantine's father, he dies in Britain, he dies in York. Which is rather extraordinary also. Yeah, but by the time he dies, he's already set her aside and got a different wife. So I'm afraid the British connection doesn't work. She almost certainly never set foot on the British Isles.

Well, I'm glad we started by debunking that beautiful reading immediately at the start. So where was she from? If she wasn't from, you know, Nat King's kingdom, where was she born and where does she hail from? Well, bizarrely for a woman who becomes such a major and foundational figure in the Byzantine and medieval imagination, it's not entirely clear where she comes from. Some sources claim she comes from the Roman Empire's eastern frontier. out towards Syria. Others have claimed she might come from the Balkans, because that's where she gives birth to the Emperor Constantine. Is Bithnia the place that they put their finger on occasionally?

That's one of them. Mesopotamia is another one, the Syrian frontier. Bithnia was where the best Byzantine cheese came from. It was kind of Stilton or the Camemberar of the Byzantine world. But the most likely option is she comes from quite close to where the future city of Constantinople will be, the pro pontiffs. So near the Dardanelles, the entry to the Bosphorus. The best evidence for this is a later Greek historian, Procopius, she's pretty well informed, points out that Constantine found a city there, Helenopolis, on the site of an earlier, smaller city. And the fact that he named that city after his mother suggested that's probably where she's born. So she's probably coming from the Greek-speaking

region around the Dardanelles. Peter, given that such a sort of basic fact of her life is in dispute, is she nonetheless a character that we can safely say is a crucial character in world history? I mean, this moment that the Roman Empire converts to Christianity obviously is one of the great sort of pivots of history. It changes so much of what happens. Is Helena genuinely part of that process? She's certainly a pivotal figure. We have an early 5th century historian, a guy called Rufinus puts it very nicely. I think he describes her as the queen of the world and the mother of empire.

That's lovely. It's almost worthy of war, actually. Beautiful phrase. Well, exactly, but this time he's sort of right. In that I think that this encapsulates very nicely her role as a formative figure in terms of the emergence, particularly Byzantine civilization. And that functions both as her as an ideal and a role model within that civilization of pious, imperial womanhood, but also in terms of her formative role, her critical role in nurturing. the future Emperor Constantine, who was clearly devoted to her and who is the foundational figure of Byzantine civilization through his foundation of Constantinople and the shift in the center of gravity in the Roman world eastwards. Right. Okay. But can we sort of headline the poster with, you know, this is a woman who came from nothing and then came to wield enormous power and

helped to rule the Roman Empire? Can we go that far? Yeah. Well, I wouldn't say rule, but certainly, I mean, one thing that war's not completely wrong on is her probable date of birth. She's probably born around 250. Our earlier sources suggest that she's probably born into considerable poverty or certainly comes from a very low status background. Stabularum? Stabularia, yeah, that she may have worked in an inn. Bar-made? Would we say barmaid? Bar-made, or she's sort of, a later source suggests she's an innkeeper's daughter, but she's working as an inn. One source is a describes her as truly ignoble and indecent. Another source is no better than a prostitute. There's a sense that low-class women working in inns are potentially sexually available

to those members of the imperial government and the military who are passing through these establishments. And she would have been a dancing girl or running the stables? I think she might have been running the stables. She's probably serving drinks as well. It's interesting that this claim that she's very low status, that she comes from an inn, is actually made by a very pro-Christian and very pro-constantinian source, for example, in the late 4th century. We have the Bishop Ambrose who describes how she rose up from dust and dung. Now, we get this in anti-constantine sources as well, but the fact that both pro and anti-constantinian sources concur on her lowly background, seemingly in the ear, neither as an innkeeper's daughter

or working there, suggests that really is rooted in some sort of fact. Peter, give us a picture of the Roman world in the 250s. What's going on? The old world of Augustus and the grand old empire, we've just come from Cleopatra and Rome very much rising to its peak. That's all now crumbling, isn't it? Yes, essentially about 15 years before Helena is born, the Roman Empire enters into a very sustained period of crisis, which would dominate the first 40 years. years really of Helena's life. This is due to the emergence of simultaneous military threats across the empire's northern and eastern frontiers. To the east, we see the emergence in the early third century of the great new empire of Iran, run by the Sassanian empires of Persia, who pose a far more fundamental threat to Roman power in the east than their predecessors the Parthians ever had done. Crucially for the Romans, this coercedurely,

sides with the emergence of much more consolidated and aggressive barbarian forces along their northern frontiers, groups like the Goths in the Balkans and the Alemanni and Franks. But this, as it was, the first really major barbarian, aggressive barbarian threat the Romans have had to face along their northern frontiers. Before that, they've been engaging in policing activity largely. So what you have is a sudden emergence of aggressive foes to north, west and to east. And this is a military situation that the Roman imperial system really isn't suited for. You're used to having one emperor, residents in Rome. And the picks, you've left out the picks to the north. No, and the picks on Rome's northern frontier in Britain, very important. But you're having this

whole series of simultaneous threats, which lead to military crisis. And this will lead to rapid escalation of political tensions in Rome, such that in two, three, five, the reigning emperor Severex-Alexander is assassinated by his own troops and replaced by a soldier Maximus Lestracian. And this then sparks off a whole series of power struggles whereby different rival emperors are appointed by their troops or acclaimed by their troops or acclaimed by the Senate, and the Roman Empire faces potential fragmentation, caught between these internal coups and usurpations and these external military threats. So a bit like the Tory party at the moment. Well, yeah, only, I think perhaps with those engaged in the Cousines of patients motivated by a higher sense of the common good.

I mean, they are doing this really to try to extricate Rome from the crisis in which it finds itself, and they are motivated by a sense of genuine ideological commitment to the idea of empire. But it's a sign of the dislocation that, for example, from Augustus, where you were with Cleopatra, where you ended up with Cleopatra, between Augustus and Severus, who's killed in 235, you've had 26 emperors. Between 235 and 284, when the Emperor Diocletian brings this period of crisis to an effective halt, you have over 40 claimants to imperial power and over 20 emperors. So that's giving you a sense of how disrupted the world in which Helena was born is. Her year of birth, 250, witnesses, for example, major Roman defeats in the Balkans by the Goths,

major Roman defeats on the Rhine by the Alemanni, and also the following year, the arrival in the empire of a devastating plague, known as the plague of Cyprian, which we think is probably some sort of smallpox. So this is a world which for many will be seen to be falling apart. Peter, that's an excellent portrait of living in a pressure cooker, it feels like. But for women within the pressure cooker, what is the status of women? You've talked about Helena probably growing up either dung shoveling or, you know, trying to fend off Hansi Romans. But generally speaking in that era, what is it like to be a woman? So she's at the bottom of the social pyramid in terms of being poor, although she isn't a slave. So there are people below her. She probably isn't born a slave. But also women, of course, are regarded as inherently inferior to men. The medical author Galen has an image where the Romans in Galenic thought, think of a baby, for example. It's literally like a bun in the oven. Yeah. And the difference between the male fetus and the female fetus is the male fetus is fully cooked, whereas the female is slightly underdone.

Right. Okay. And so, for example, the male has a unique heat which informs his intellect, which a woman doesn't have. And so men have to make sure they don't lose their heat by losing their temper or by engaging in too much sexual activity and so on. So women are regarded as inherently inferior in an almost biological sense. They don't have the understanding of biology, but they do think there is something in terms of the constitution of women, which makes them inherently inferior. I mean, that's fascinating that Galen thought that sex should be refrained from, because that suggests that women are heat sponges and just sort of suck up what is masculine and... And it feeds into a very ancient Greek tradition that women are wild, hysterical, yeah? And that women are, women lack, traditionally lack the self-control of which the Roman or Greek elite male is the epitome. Would never happen on this podcast.

You know, inside, my internal voice is going, nothing's changed. Same as it ever was. Peter, tell us about the religious world of the 250s. Christianity is around but not established as the major religion. Mythraism. What are the religious options open to a citizen living where Helena did in the mid-third century? I think one important background, both. to what's happening to Helena's life and in terms of the religion of the empire, is that with

the military crisis of the third century, we see a rise to power of military men, typically from the Balkans. Now, with the rise to power of these military men from the Balkans, we start seeing the rise to prominence in Roman religion of types of religion and cult that have probably always been current there. And in particular in the Balkans, there seems to be a long-standing tradition of worship of a supreme sun god. One of the forms this will take in the Roman Empire is the cult of the unconquered sun, Solin Victus. But there are also other religions coming in from the east that are quite similar, such the cult of Mithras coming in from Persia. So what we're seeing within Roman religion, even irrespective of Christianity, is, as it were, the growing prominence

of forms of supreme god worship. So you have traditional Greco-Roman paganism, still is a real force. You have growing supreme God worship, often worshipping a supreme sun god. But you also have Christianity spreading an offshoot of the religion of the empire's Jewish subjects. And the third century era of crisis would see a quite rapid growth of Christianity in the cities of the empire, partly by virtue of the way in which the leaders of the Christian communities amid this era of plague and economic disruption and warfare provide charity to those in need, irrespective, of their religious or ethnic background. And this provision of charity by the church in the troubled years of the third century seems to be one of the major factors in sponsoring its growth in the urban

centres from which the empire is run. Most people live in the countryside, but this is an empire run from cities. But some quite severe persecutions coming along. Yes, this will spark off a nervous reaction by the emperor Diocletian. Now Diocletian comes to power in the year 284 and he is the person who restores order to the Roman world, who subduing his rival emperors, and imposing a new imperial order, taking warfare to the Persians and the northern barbarians more aggressively. Diocletian is a very innovatively figure when it comes to the Roman state,

but he's very conservative in matters of religion, and he regards Christianity as fundamentally threatening to the social order and the ability of the Roman Empire to achieve the divine favor required for success in its military and other activities. When you go around the Coptic monasteries in Egypt, there's an awful lot of talk of Diocletian's purges. Every monastery has a story about Diocletian arriving and killing the monks. Exactly. It's probably exaggerated, but in the year 303, he introduces a persecution of Christians, also a persecution of Manichaeans, who are followers of a sect that's been introduced from Persia,

which he regards as a dangerous alien influence. The problem for the Roman perspective of the Christians is that they refuse to sacrifice to the imperial cult, which is regarded as important for both demonstrating your loyalty to the imperial system and securing divine favour for the emperor in his cosmic endeavours. Okay, so I mean, these are edgy times, that is very clear. Women are getting it worse than men. At what point does Helena, and how do we know this, meet the man who is going to, for a while at least, transform her fortunes?

This is Constantius. So Constantius, he's a Roman officer. The point they meet, he's an officer in the palace guards. She probably meets him when she's working in the stable, and he forms a relationship with her. There seems to be different accounts of whether they were married or not. Yeah, very few sources use the standard Roman word for a fully legal wife with respect to her. They tend to describe her as Uxor, which means partner rather than conjuncts, who is a fully legal wife. Now, in the Roman Empire, you have the system of concubinage, whereby you could form a relationship with someone, you have children,

with them. Those children would have some legal rights, but it's not full-blown marriage. And it's generally used to form a relationship with a lower-classwoman, and you sort of say full-blown marriage for a poshia wife who's going to please your family rather more, as it were, or open your career prospects rather more. And that's probably what they're doing. So it seems to be he forms a sexual relationship with her. He forms a partnership with her while he's serving in the Balkans. And in the mid-270s probably, the date we're given is February with the 27th. She gives birth to the future Emperor Constantine at the city of Naissus in what's now southern Serbia, modern niche. So she's probably been his concubine as she becomes his partner.

But I'm really, I'm feeling, I'm feeling for a moment. You know, the Balkans is not a warm place to be. So she's been taken from, you know, a climate of warmth and heat and, you know, to a place that is freezing and cold. Do we have any kind of account of, you know, whether she's happy? I mean, does anyone bother about whether women are happy in the historical record? I don't think people are that bothered about whether women like Helena are happy. You know, as I say, she comes from a very impoverished background. And I think that, in a sense, I mean, there's no reason not to believe that Constantius loves her, but he certainly regards her as disposable. Now, he's clearly a very talented man. At the time they meet, he seems to be an officer in the

palace guards. And he is himself a Balkan guy. He's probably from quite lowly background himself. He's one of these Balkan soldiers who during this age of a soldier, Empress is able to rise very quickly through the imperial system on the basis of talent. So he's made it into the palace guards. He's then put in charge of a cavalry unit. He's then made at some point before 284 governor of Dalmatia, so a crucial Balkan province. And then crucially, the emperor Diocletian comes to power in 284. And he introduces a new system of more devolved imperial government to address this multiplicity of military challenges to both east and west.

You would end up with a dominant emperor, a superior emperor in the east. That's going to be Diocletian. He has a deputy called Galerius, known as his Caesar. To the west, he establishes a separate Western emperor, junior emperor called Maximian, and he makes Constantius his Caesar, his deputy, and assumed successor. Had this happened before, had the empire been split up like this? Not in so formal a way, but this is drawing upon the way in which during the military crisis in the third century, different rulers had come to a period. appreciate the merit of a more devolved form of leadership. Now, crucially, in order to facilitate

his own promotion probably through this new system, at some point in the late 280s, Constantius, before he's made Caesar in 293, before he's made deputy emperor in 293, in the late 28s, he sets Helena aside, and he instead fully marries a rather posher bride called Theodora, who seems to be related to the Emperor Maximian, whose deputy he will become. This must have been devastating for Helena, who's now middle-aged. She has no prospect of forming another marriage. Her son, Constantine, probably in his teens, early teens, is taken away from her and is kept by Constantius.

And then, as it were, we seem to lose track of her. There are stories that she ends up in Nicomedia, modern Ismit in Turkey, but she is set aside by Constantius probably in order to facilitate his own career progression. So she's kind of going home, is she going back to the sort of area she grew up in? That would make sense that she's going back to that sort of milieu when she originated. Yeah, but I mean, you know, sort of dejected and ejected from a life and her child. I mean, I would imagine. I'm just trying to get a better portrait of her in my head.

And William sometimes laughs at this. But, I mean, I like to sort of see who I'm thinking about. And there are many pictures that are all paintings that have been done. of her much, much later, I'm sort of talking about the 1400s, largely, but Conigliano, Veronesi, and they always sort of paint a very white woman with this kind of burnished hair that even the war talked about. Do we, I mean, the fact that war talks about it and they paint it and this span centuries, is there something that tells us, what does this woman look like? Or what was she actually like?

Oh, yes, we have quite a lot of images of Helena from when she is alive. And one very good sculpture, full of... And also many coins. Now, interestingly, here one needs to, in a sense, get a sense of what happens with her son, Constantine. So, as I say, Constantius has been made deputy emperor in the West. In the year 305, the reigning emperor Diocletian got something very unusual for Roman Emperor. He decides to retire, and he goes off to his palace in what's now split. So when you visit the modern city of Split, which is very grand.

Very grand. You're walking within Diocletian's palace. an amazing place. He then, as a result, Diocletian, makes his Western co-emperor, Maximian, retire. He says, okay, I'm retiring, you're retiring. And so their respective deputies become emperor. So Constantius becomes emperor in the West. Well, then he said that he goes to Britain, where there are problems with the Picts. There are always problems with the Picts. Oh, I mean, we ought to say who the Picts are. We have a lot of listeners from India and elsewhere, who will not be so familiar with the Celts and the Picts.

So, I mean, who wants to do a little pen portrait of our colourful tattooed friends? Tattooed proto-scots. They are the inhabitants of the territories to the north of the Roman province of Britannia. And we have a rather nice dice shaker, don't we, from Germany, which refers to the warrior qualities of my Pictish forebair. Absolutely, yeah. I think it's in the Roman Museum in Cologne. It's a very fine piece of work.

Now, so Constantius heads to Britain to take on the pretern. picked, and then he dies outside the city of York in 306. Now, he has his own deputy, he's now meant to become emperor, but instead, Constantius's army acclaims Constantine, who's now probably 30-ish as emperor in the West, and this leads to a new civil war that breaks out as different claimants from imperial power once again vie for the throne. And we should say, when you go to York today, there's a rather fine statue of Constantine, modern statue of Constantine, outside Yorkminster, where he got elected Emperor Rome. Yes.

Would he still have been in touch with his mother during this period, this 30 years? Exactly. And it looks like they have stayed in touch, because what Conantyne then does is he decides to eliminate all the other rivals to imperial power. This will be quite a long drawn-out process in 312, famously. He takes the city of Rome, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, that we may come back to him in discussing religion. Let's come back to that in a second, because I had an unusual education with a bunch of monks.

and for them, the Battle of the Milvean Bridge was one of the great turning points of world history. They would not have existed. And I remember to this day, Father Edward Corbold, OSB, sitting telling me aged 14 or 15 of the Battle of the Milvan Bridge. And what's the great sign the vision that they see inhock signo vincers? Yes, there are different accounts of it. So outside the city of Rome, prior to the battle, Constantine, supposedly sees a vision in the sky. are different versions of it, but the simplest version of it that there's a cross that appears in the sky. This story becomes elaborated over time and so on. In this sign, thou shalt conquer.

And this is clearly a crucial stepping stone in his adoption of Christianity because Christians in his entourage lead him to interpret that's whatever he sees in Christian turn. But just, I mean, what does he believe before he chrises with crosses? I mean, what is, what is, Constantin's religion at this time? So our Christian sources will try to present this as a sudden leap from paganism, from polytheism to Christianity. That's almost only what's not going on, as it were. Constantine's father seems to be one of these devotees of the supreme sun god, Solinvictus. Now, Christianity at this point is already characterized by very strong solar social associations, the idea of Christ as the light of the world and so on. Christianity and these

forms of solar henothaeism, solar supreme god worship, are mixing in very similar social milieu and are clearly interpolating, are feeding off one another. So Constantine is migrating towards a form of monotheism with strong solar associations from a background in supreme sun god worship. And that's much less dramatic a movement in contemporary terms. So 312, he has the West. By 3-2-4, he defeats his last Eastern rival, Licinius, and Constantine's in control of the empire as a whole.

And indeed then, when Constantine establishes himself in his new city of Constantin. he depicts himself on a statue after the manner of the sun god Helios Apollo. That's after his adopted Christian. But going back to Helena, what's interesting is that once he is established as the dominant emperor in the West, he suddenly brings his mother out. He rehabilitates her. Good.

So in year 317, he sends his mother to Rome and establishes her as his sort of delegate there in the Caesorian Palace, using her as a point of contact with the Roman census. and aristocracy. Here in Thessaloniki, where I'm sitting at the moment, the following year, in 318, he mined a series of coins. Some of those coins bear the image of his wife, his second wife, Fauster, but others bear the image of his mother, Helena. And that's where we start getting a clear sense of what she looks at. More coins will be issued bearing her image as his power extends east in 3-2-4, whereas there's a gold coin with her image. What's interesting is the later, she's already quite old at this point.

She's almost 70 when he sends her off to Rome to represent him. But what's interesting is as we get the later later images, her appearance becomes grander, the hair becomes grander, and there's a real sense of trying to build up the image and impression given by this woman whose lowly background has probably been the cause of considerable criticism and sneering against the emperor and his regime. Well, look, it's a really wonderful,

place to take a break here because we've now got Constantine as one of the most powerful men in the world and also established that he is a complete mummy's boy, which, you know, makes me happy as well. Join us after the break when we find out how this sort of newly elevated status for Helena plays out. Welcome back. We left the story with Peter Saris telling us that Helena had been sent by Constantine to Rome. Now, we know that Helena came from a very modest background, was maybe even just to have been a stable hand, or even in some sources, a prostitute. How is she going to get on with the old established Roman families?

Because presumably it's like sending her off to sort of Eden Square or the kind of centre of the poshest area of London. Well, I think Constantine's reasons for doing what he does with his mother in terms of sending her to Rome around 317 are twofold. I think one, which is easily understated, is simply filial devotion. He loves his mum. He loves his mum. She's been hard done by. She's been set aside. He also wants to sort of sideline his half-siblings and relatives, those born to his stepmother. He wants to sort of strengthen

his hold to power and diminish their authority by building up the figure of his mother. We don't really know what she does in terms of interaction with the aristocratic and factional politics of Rome. I like to think of more as a sort of icon of imperial power, an embodied representation of the emperor, whose presence in Rome is a sign of his ongoing commitment to the city and its Senate, as a time when his own interests are moving eastwards. And as I think also, emperors have moved around the empire a lot. You've then had a system of devolved rule with different emperors. You now have just one emperor with Constantine. I think he is using his mother as a sort of stopgap in place of having a deputy emperor. He uses her to represent the regime and as a symbol of

dynastic stability and continuity. In 326, for example, we have an inscription put up in Rome which describes her as the genitrix, the progenitor of the dynasty. She's embodying stability and authority. But if you give her that much respect, you're also giving yourself a great deal of status too, that you've come from such a saintly woman, therefore you must be a very great man. You know, the more you build her up, the better your image looks too. Yes, and not yet presenting her as a saintly woman, but they're presenting her, I think, as a model of the ideal Roman matron. Right. You know, you said she's in the Cessorian Palace. I mean, just what is life like? I mean, you say it's very grand, but I think it's sometimes interesting to know how

grand. I mean, how many people would have been waiting on her? How gold and guilt was this life? We have no detailed evidence really for that. So I'm afraid we have to simply suppose that she is combining her roles of formally receiving civil servants, members of the Senate, but also probably doing a lot of networking for the emperor in his regime through probably having swine. raised with the aristocratic women. I think there will be female networks of power, but she's in a position to manipulate on behalf of the regime as well. Peter, in the Capitlain Museum to this day, there is an almost mint statue of St. Helena sitting, lying back, very relaxed on a chair. She looks maybe in her 60s rather than her 70s in this image. She's got a rather sort of Victorian

haircut, quite a tight bob. She's wearing quite a sort of deaphanous robe. You can see the shape of her breasts very clearly. The sculptor specifically sculpted her nipple coming through the robe. So she's quite a sort of feminine figure in this. She's not an old lady or a grandie, and she's dressed in this very fine late Roman outfit of a sort of rap and a nice bodice on top. Once again, it's not only modern royalty that photoshopps, as it were. She's being conveyed as a model of aristocratic authoritative. elegance. And again, it's interesting that in the later images of her, their hair gets grander, the jewels get more emphasised as well. There's a lot of image building going on there on behalf of the regime.

But a crucial question, is she a Christian at this point? And is Constantine a Christian? Because we talked about the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. When the Senate erect a sort of triumphal arch, looking a bit like the Art of Triumpho, a wonderful arch in the middle of Rome, in the middle of the forum that still stands there, almost intact today, there's notherst not a single piece of Christian imagery on that arch. Yes, the arch is very careful to adopt a very neutral religious register, simply ascribing victory to divinity, where anyone can read what they want into that.

Now, as Constantine heads east, after his defeat of his eastern rival Licinius and 324 in particular, he's meeting larger and more confidence Christian communities. His own understanding of the religion is developing, particularly after the year 325, when he has to convene a council of the imperial church, which starts flashing out and defining imperial Christianity and theology in more concrete terms. And this is the Council of Nicaea, which develops the Nicene Creed. Exactly. And in 3-26, he returns to Rome to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his accession to power.

There he is with his mother. And it's interesting that when he is in Rome, he does not do what is expected of emperors previously in Roman religion of sacrificing at the altar of the capitaline Jove. That's a sign. That is not his cult. From 312 onwards, something's going to be very important for the next phase of Helena's career. He's opened the coffers of the Roman state for the leaders of the Christian church to build magnificent churches and places of worship. He makes it clear that the Christ's cult, as he would probably have thought of it, is his favoured cult. And if you really want to advance your way through this new imperial system, you try to share the cult of the emperor. I mean, that's so fascinating. It's sort of Christianity on the down low to begin with, just to ease people into it.

And at what point does he give his mother the title Augusta? And how important is that? So he appears to first give her the title of Empress of Augusta in 324. So that's after he's defeated his final Eastern rival. So that's when I think he's feeling most secure and he can really build her up. Now, previous emperors have given the title of Empress to their mothers. But what is unique about Helena is she's the first emperor's mother to be given that title, despite the fact that she, He was never married to an emperor while he was emperor. Constantine had already set her aside. So I think that's partly, as it were, addressing O'Rong. But I say he is using her as a symbol of the dynasty, as he wants to see it going forward. And he's using her as part of him, I think, to establish his presence in places where he cannot be when he's fighting or politicking elsewhere.

Peter, when we go to Rome today, we see the catacombs and we see those very early churches. What are the churches that Constantine is building? The first St. Peter's, the Lateran, St. Paul's? We have a number of accounts ascribing a lot of the church building of this period in Rome to Helena as well. Now, these sources are quite murky. I think that both in terms of descriptions to Constantine and Helena, there's a measure of exaggeration. But the really grand basilica churches that you have cited, those are essentially the most important Constantinian foundations. What's important about those churches is the use of the architectural form of the basilica. So these really grand churches in Rome, such as St. Peter's, are modelled on the reception hall and the courtroom of the Roman Emperor. Basilica means imperial or royal.

And so that appropriation of that imperial architectural model for places of Christian worship is making a very clear political statement that this is the imperial religion in terms of the authority of the emperor himself. So just to describe it to someone who can't picture that, we're talking a building with a nice fancy pediment and pillars at the front, lines of pillars up the nave and maybe an absidal, an apse at the end? Yes, and largely sort of, I haven't done maths for so long, I can't remember what they're called. But it's a quadrilateral, yeah, it's not a square, it's quadrilateral. My mathematical colleagues in Trinity will be a preparing at a shooting party for when I return. Listen, they'll have to come through us first, Peter. We're not having that. I mean, this seems to be he's honouring his mother,

which I think very highly of him for this, and he's writing wrongs of the past. But if we're thinking this as a Brady Bunch family of joy and closeness, something happens in 3-2-6 that disabuses us of the fact that this is a happy, close family. What does Constantine do to his son and why? This is like the Brady Bunch suddenly re-scripted by David Lynch. Yes, right.

Or Quentin Territi. Quentin Tarantino, absolutely. So something very dark happens within the Constantinian dynasty in the year 3-26. There is some sort of terrible scandal, which is very murky. What we know is that in 3-26, Constantine, as the head of the family, the Patefimilias, puts his son, his first-born son, Crispus, on trial, and he is sentenced to death, and he is killed, he possibly is made to poison himself, outside the city of Polar, Pula in Istria in Croatia today, well worth visiting some great Roman and late antique monuments there. Very soon after death of Crispus, Constantine's wife Fauster is killed,

possibly suffocated in a bathhouse. And rumours will circulate eventually of some sort of murky interactions or relationship between them. There are stories that circulate that Crispus may have raped Fausta. Oh, Christmas and his mother, Edipal. is stepmother. Step, wow, okay, right. That he may have raped it, or then it becomes the accusations

of there having been an incestuous affair between them. We don't know exactly what happened, but it's something very shady. The emperor Julian, who attempts to revive paganism in the next generation, will write a work called The Caesars, where he attempts to present this as the context to Constantine's adoption of Christianity, that the moral stain on Constantine from the death of his wife and the murder of his son are so severe.

that he goes around all the gods begging for forgiveness and begging for them to take him on, and only the Christian God is so desperate for followers that he'll accept Constantine. Now, that's got the dating of Constantine's conversion wrong, but clearly this scandal leaves a deep impression on the political imagination. But it leaves Helena in a stronger position than ever. Well, she looks so pure. She looks so good. She's on her couch of, you know, glory.

She's not mucky at all. I think it's probably also having quite a devastating psychological effect on her, in that there are hints that she's actually very devoted to her grandson Crispus who's just been killed. This is a formative, a crucial moment in her career and her subsequent history, but I think it's probably quite a dark psychological period for her. With the regime potentially rocked by this scandal, Constantine now sends her away from Rome east, ultimately to the Holy Land. Is there any sense that that's an exile or is it an envoy?

It's much more than latter. Now, our later sources will particularly emphasize her going from the West to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem and to Bethlehem. But this is probably this trip eastwards is part of a much more general tour of the East with her trying to buttress the credibility of the regime by distributing largesse and gifts and donatives to political elites and military elites as she goes around the major cities of the East. So she goes from Nica Media into Syria to Antioch, the greatest city of the Roman East, reaching Jerusalem. So she heads off around the year 3-2-6. Yeah, yeah, but hold on. She's in her 80s doing this.

This is like proper miles that she's putting in. She's in her late 70s, yeah, at this point of. Okay, late 70s, okay. The journey from Nica Media to Jerusalem, at a push, you know, it's 1,600 kilometres. At a push, you could have done that in a month. She is stopping off a lot to try to buttress the regime's credibility. So it takes her about two years. She's in Antioch 327.

She's in Jerusalem, then in 328. Now, in the later sources, this is depicted as a sort of an expiatory pilgrimage, that as it were, the regime, the dynasty, is tainted by the blood of Crispus and whatever has been going on with Fauster. So this is represented sometimes as her going east to try to expiate that sin

by making this pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The idea of pilgrimage at this point isn't fully developed. And so historians often say that that model is deeply anachronistic. Actually, I still think it has something going for it. Because although she isn't just going to the Holy Land, though she is trying to build up broader political support for the regime, she does end up in the Holy Land. And I think her activities there are very significant and may well have within her own mind a moral and expiatory purpose. In the centuries to come, pilgrimage to the Holy Land would be a major Christian route. People will, for centuries, follow in footsteps and go and see the holy places as they become. But is there a sense in which she is the first

pilgrim? Is there anyone before this that are wandering around the Holy Land looking for the sites associated with Christ's life? There clearly have been. Constantine's decision to send his mother east is sometimes depicted. Again, I think there's still a lot to be said for this, as a sort of effort to monumentally re-appropriate the Holy Land of Palestine on behalf of God's new Roman chosen people. The landscape of Palestine at this time is bitterly contested between Jews, Samaritans, Christians, also large pagan communities in areas such as Gaza. We will see a monumental reappropriation and assertion of ownership over this terrain with the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,

the Church in the Nativity in Bethlehem and so on and so forth, and the later pilgrimage trade will be focused on those sites. Now, the later sources will try to give the impression that Helena does all of this in terms of she's there to have the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built. While she's there, the remains of the true cross are found, which is why on every Orthodox icon of Helena, you'll see her there with Constantine and the cross. The sign of that has clearly been pilgrimage before

is suggested by the fact that, in fact, the evidence we have would suggest that when she arrives in Jerusalem in 3-2-6, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is already substantially there. What's the evidence for that, Peter? I didn't know that. I thought there was a temple of Venus on the site, which she destroys. No, no, there had been a temple of Venus there, but if you look more closely at the more contemporary Greek sources, all they actually really say is that she is present in Jerusalem in order to see the basilica decorated. Likewise, the earliest accounts of the cross and its discovery don't mention her. Actually, we really need to talk about this, because as little as people,

know about St Helena. The one thing, if they do know about her, is this idea, and you tell me whether this is like the war, quote, bullshit, is that at this point when she's touring the Holy Lands, she has a vision, she has a dream, she's told by two angels, Helena, go to this place and you will find the one true cross. And then she acts upon it, she goes, she finds not one cross, but three crosses, so one assumes it is the two people crucified with Jesus and the plaque, which hangs above the crucifixion, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. My hero Stephen Rundsman has a very nice sentence about it. He says that her discoveries were made, this is the quote, with the miraculous aid seldom now vouchsafed to archaeologists.

One of my favourite stories about Rundsman is that a young man, he helped find a major site in Constantinople to the use of a Ouija board. He loved his Ouija board, didn't he? And he used to do tarot cards too. He may there have been actually rather naughtily comparing himself to the Dowager Empress. but he might have enjoyed that. So what is actually written because Eusebius, who's Helena's first biographer, he doesn't mention this vision

or the finding of the One Tree Cross or any of that, does he? The topic of the crucifixion, I think that this is complicated for two reasons. One is that the topic of the crucifixion is one that some Roman authors, well into the Christian period, continue to find very uncomfortable to discuss. Because for Jesus to be executed on the cross,

was such a humiliating and low-grade death, from an elite Roman perspective, that's the sort of death you really impose on a really skanky criminal. So they don't like discussing the crucifixion. So some Roman authors are more comfortable discussing it and certainly any imperial associations than others. So I think that the fact that some of our earlier sources

don't discuss Helena in the context of the cross could be partly to do with that discomfort. So the story is that the cross is supposedly discovered when the foundations for the church are being dug with all sorts of divine aid and that she's involved with that. Now, given that we know the church has been started before she gets there, that bit certainly doesn't work. The most likely option is that while she is in Jerusalem, she is presented with fragments of the cross which have been found, or what people believe to be fragments of the cross, which have been found, and that she then takes some with her for presentation to Constantine. We should say that this becomes, in the Middle Ages, the supreme relic, the greatest of all,

most powerful of all Christian relics. And there's a whole story about the true cross. I'm relatively convinced by arguments that she encounters fragments of the true crosses as it's believed to be and then takes them with her. So we know she doesn't build the church of the Holy Sepulchre in its entirety, but we know that she does build the church of the nativity in Bethlehem, and she does build the church of the ascension on the Mount of olives. So she does play a very important role in the creation of this Christian infrastructure in the Holy Land, which will then be the basis of the medieval pilgrimage trade. And she does become, as it were, a model of the high-status devout pilgrim. Peter, what we haven't

said, which I think is important, is that everyone knows that Jerusalem is the site of the Jewish temple and that the Jewish temple was destroyed, a generation after the death of Jesus Christ. What has happened to Jerusalem in the meantime between the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the arrival there of the Dowager Empress to start building fancy new buildings? In fact, there's a Constantine orders, quote, not only the finest basilica in the world, but one where everything shall be of such quality that all the most beautiful buildings in every city may be surpassed by this. I mean, this is a major change of status for Jerusalem.

Absolutely. It's become something of an imperial backwater in that era between the destruction of the temple and then, as I say, this era of massive investment under Constantine and his successes. Interestingly, the Emperor Julian, who attempts to revive paganism, he tries to refute Christianity by having the Jewish temple rebuilt. That goes wrong and never quite gets there. I never knew that. Both our Christian and our pagan sources refer to this. What they also both agree on is that this is confirmed. founded by all sorts of, what's probably sabotage. Supposedly, fireballs appear and miraculously destroy the attempt to rebuild the temple, one suspected some local Christian saboteurs at work. And what is the Jewish population in that region at this time? It's going to still be predominantly Jewish with a very large Samaritan population as well. And a relatively small Palestinian Christian population?

A growing Christian population, but also, as I say, significant pagan elements as well, along the Mediterranean coastline in places such as Gaza. So interesting. So do we know how, you know, she's done these extraordinary things. She's found these relics. She will be forever venerated. Or she's presented with them. Oh, presenting.

She's presented as the person who finds them. What is the state of her when she passes away, when she dies, and how is she treated on her death? Where does she die? How does she die? Well, she heads back from Jerusalem to her son, and she may well be in his company when she dies. Three, two, eight to nine.

We don't know exactly where it might be in Sardica, modern Sophia, or it might be in Trier. These are the two most likely options, but she is buried in Rome. And Constantine's decision to bury her in Rome is, again, of huge symbolic significance in terms of implanting her memory there and implanting a physical representation of the dynasty there.

and her funeral was clearly a magnificent event. The body would have been escorted from her palace to her mausoleum, some four kilometers, by a huge military guard. In her palace prior to the funeral, she probably lay in state. If we take the model of Constantine's own later funeral, she probably would have been lying in state for a few days, wrapped in a linen cloth stuffed with herbs and spices, although I think that makes it sound a bit like a sort of a late antique Kentucky Fried

chicken, so it has to be a bit careful how one imagines that. But then she would have been buried with a funeraleration, fragments of which may survive in later speeches. She's buried in a vast mausoleum in a very splendid sarcophagus made from red porphyry, which could only be mined from the deserts of Egypt. Is that the same sarcophagus you see today in Santa Costanza, which was built by Constantine for his daughter? Her tomb is eventually moved to Santa Constanza by a later empress. Which amazingly is still intact. That whole church is beautifully... Yeah, her mausoleum is now owned by the Vatican Museum, if that is hers, but it probably is. The original mausoleum no longer stands, but it was clearly vast. It was 26 metres high, 20

meters round. We know the Constantine devoted a huge silver altar to it, vast numbers of golden silver, candelabra, and also endowed it with an annual supply of incense and oil so that prayers could be perpetually said for the mother who clearly meant so much to him and to whom he was clearly so devoted. It's one of my favourite places in Rome, and it's a place where you can really connect with this extraordinary transformation, which is taking place in the world, that suddenly this pagan Roman world has become Christian.

It's got a Christian architecture. Christian art is developing to develop this new religion in this new form, and it sits there still with this wonderful round tower and the very classical brick facade next to, Is it St. Tanesi, Fully the Mora? But also remember how discomforting this would still have seemed to many members of the great old families of the Roman Senate, many of whom don't really seem to throw their lot in with Christianity until the empire is finally really falling apart in the West at the very end of the fourth and the beginning of the Fifth Central.

A hundred years later. Exactly, but the barbarians are literally at the gates, as it were. Right. And just as far as legacy is concerned, I mean, what you've painted a picture of is somebody who has, you know, from the ashes and has a really important place, particularly in her sansard. One of the great comebacks of history. Yeah, a huge comeback. But to the point where St. Ambrose, for example, writing at the end of the fourth century, says Helena was nothing less than the founder of the Christian Roman Empire. I mean, when does she suddenly get that elevation as being, you know, it's actually not Constantine so much as Helena? I think already this idea of her as the

genotrix, the progenital of the dynasty that were getting as early as 3-2-6 in the inscriptions in Rome is the foundation of that. I think that the heritage be built up after the foundation of Constantinople, which Constantine formally inaugurates after her death in 330. Now, Constantinople, where imperial power will stabilize, will be a place where there will be a series of very powerful empresses who have an interest in building up the figure of Helena as sort of a justification for their own authority and power. You also have developing the concept of Constantinople as being a city under the patronage of the Virgin Mary as the divine patron of empire. And I think, as it were, that the development of that idea and the development

of Helena as this foundational figure sort of go hand in hand. But even without that mythologise, that relative mythologising, I think we can see from the more contemporary sources that she plays a crucial role in stabilising the Constantinian regime, especially post the crisis of three to six, and she comes quite early on to popularise and embody the idea of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and crucially she becomes an icon, not just literally, but figuratively, an icon of the ideal and devoted mother and the pious empress. It is such a joy to hear you talk about this. I can't tell you. Wonderful, Peter.

It was something I knew barely anything about. Also, it's my great regret that this is not a visual medium because Peter Cyrus is the person who speaks with his hands as much as he speaks with his mouth. Never met somebody who's so expressive with their hands on this podcast. Really lovely to have you. Thank you so much for joining us. That's it from us on Empire. Until the next time. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Drupal.