In search of lost relics
- Daniel Oltean
- Aug 13
- 5 min read
Empress Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine I (306-337), died around 329 after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. According to the historian Eusebius of Caesarea (4th c.), Helena was buried “in the imperial city,” that is, in Rome. However, later Eastern writers transformed this “imperial city” into “New Rome,” that is, the city of Constantinople, to increase the prestige of the new capital. As a result of this change, several churches still consider themselves to be guardians of the empress’s relics, even though there is no evidence to support their pious claims.
Helena in Rome
In the Life of Constantine (CPG 3496), Eusebius of Caesarea states that Helena was buried “in the imperial city” (ἐπὶ τὴν βασιλεύουσαν πόλιν), in the “imperial tombs” (ἠρίοις βασιλικοῖς). [1] Since Constantinople was inaugurated only in 330, the city mentioned by Eusebius is Rome, the capital of the Empire, where Helena had also lived for several years. The burial place was the mausoleum located on the Via Labicana (today Via Casilina), near the catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter, as attested by a notice in the Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis) in the 6th century and several pilgrimage guides from the 7th century. [2]
According to a tradition of uncertain authenticity, later, in the 9th century, some of Helena’s relics were stolen and transported from Rome to Hautvillers, France (Marne department). [3] These bones are now in the church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles in Paris. In the 12th century, in Rome, Pope Innocent II (1130-1143) transferred what remained of Helena’s relics from her mausoleum to the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, on the Capitoline Hill. The porphyry sarcophagus that had probably held the saint’s body was used to deposit, for a specific period, the remains of Pope Anastasius IV (1153-1154). [4]
Helena in Constantinople
In contradiction to this Western tradition, several Eastern historians have considered that Helena’s tomb would have been in the Byzantine capital. The first of them was Socrates of Constantinople (5th c.). In his Ecclesiastical History, he used Eusebius’s text on this subject. Still, he changed “the imperial city” to “New Rome,” [5] since in his time, Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Mistake or conscious alteration? Impossible to say. [6]
Several later writers continued this clumsy alteration. They added that Helena was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles, [7] even though Constantine had built it to house only his tomb, surrounded by those of the apostles. Since no grave in this church was known to belong to the empress, they also thought that the remains of Constantine and Helena would have been deposited in the same sarcophagus. [8] Later, to reconcile the contradictory claims of Eusebius and Socrates, other authors imagined that Helena’s relics were transferred from Rome to Constantinople two years after Constantine’s death. [9] All these confusions and changes of opinion have fuelled doubts on this subject, as confirmed by the writer Nicholas Mesarites (ca. 1160-1216) towards the end of the 12th century. [10]
Empress Helena or Helena of Athyra?
Although the confusion created by the historian Socrates is evident, religious men who came from the West after the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 supported the idea that Helena’s relics were in the city at the time of their arrival. After the Byzantines, it was the Crusaders’ turn to boast of possessing the remains of the empress. In this context, Helena’s relics would have been transferred both to Venice, in 1212, to the monastery (now the church) of Sant’Elena, and Troyes, a town only 100 km south of Hautvillers, in 1220. [11] An ecclesiastical competition between these three cities on this subject is easy to imagine.
Nevertheless, the authenticity of the relics sent to the West in the 13th century remains uncertain. Most likely, the body shared on this occasion had not belonged to Empress Helena, but to a virgin Helena, whose veneration is attested in Athyra (today Büyükçekmece, ca. 50 km west of Istanbul), at the end of the 12th century. [12] The confusion was premeditated, to give more importance to the relics transferred to the West and to increase the prestige of the places where they were kept. [13] It seems that Helena of Athyra, an almost unknown saint, took the place of Empress Helena, whose relics, in any case, had arrived in Constantinople according only to the local religious imagination or propaganda.
[1] Eusèbe de Césarée, Vie de Constantin, §3.47, trans. M.‑J. Rondeau (Sources chrétiennes, 559), Paris, 2013, p. 410‑411. CPG refers to Clavis Patrum Graecorum.
[2] Liber Pontificalis, §34.26, trans. R. Davies, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715 (Translated Texts for Historians, 6), Liverpool, 2010, p. 22; Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae, ed. R. Valentini – G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, 2 (Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 88), Rome, 1942, p. 83; De locis sanctis martyrum, ed. Valentini – Zucchetti, Codice topografico, p. 113: ecclesia sanctae Elenae ubi ipsa corpore iacet. Likely, the monument was originally intended for Emperor Constantine himself; see M. J. Johnson, The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, 2009, p. 110‑118; J. W. Drijvers, Helena Augusta and the City of Rome, in M. Verhoeven et al. (ed.), Monuments & Memory: Christian Cult Buildings and Constructions of the Past: Essays in Honour of Sible de Blaauw, Turnhout, 2016, p. 147-153.
[3] Acta Sanctorum Aug., III, p. 601‑603 (Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina 3773). See C. Ménager, Doute sur les reliques et enquête d’authentification : l’exemple d’Hélène, in Questes, 23 (2012), p. 22‑31, https://journals.openedition.org/questes/917#quotation.
[4] Acta Sanctorum Aug., III, p. 606 (§30).
[5] Socrate de Constantinople, Histoire ecclésiastique, §1.17, trans. P. Périchon – P. Maraval (Sources chrétiennes, 477), Paris, 2004, p. 180-181.
[6] G. Dagron, Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium, Cambridge, 2003, p. 145, n. 64.
[7] Alexander of Cyprus (the Monk), Discourse on the Invention of the Holy Cross (CPG 7398), Patrologia Graeca, 87/3, 4016-4076, here 4068C; C. Mango – R. Scott (trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, Oxford, 1997, p. 42-43 (AM 5817).
[8] Constantin VII Porphyrogénète, Le livre des cérémonies, §2.42, ed. G. Dagron et al., Paris, 2020, vol. 3, p. 238-239 and n. 4. See G. Downey, The Tombs of the Byzantine Emperors at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 79 (1959), p. 27-51. Likely, it was a confusion between Helena and Fausta, the wife of Constantine I.
[9] Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos, Ecclesiastical History, §8.31, Patrologia Graeca, 146, col. 117-120.
[10] A. Heisenberg, Grabeskirche und Apostelkirche, zwei Basiliken Konstantins, 2, Die Apostelkirche in Konstantinopel, Leipzig, 1908, p. 82.9-10 (§39): “It is said that Helena ... is buried with her son” (λόγος δὲ καὶ Ἑλένην … τῷ ταύτης συντεθάφθαι υἱῷ), trans. G. Downey: Nikolaos Mesarites. Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 47.6 (1957) (n.s.), p. 855-924, here 891. See M. J. Johnson, Where were Constantius I and Helena Buried?, in Latomus, 51 (1992), p. 145‑150.
[11] Antoine de Novgorod, Le livre de pèlerin, trans. B. de Khitrowo, Itinéraires russes en Orient, 1.1, Geneva, 1889, p. 110. See R. Janin, La géographie ecclésiastique de l’Empire byzantin, 1.3, Les églises et les monastères, Paris, 1969, p. 110.
[12] X. Lequeux, Saints oubliés de Byzance (2). Hélène d’Athyra, in Analecta Bollandiana, 130 (2012), p. 351-353.
[13] P. J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, Ithaca (NY), 1994, p. 221-242; A. E. Lester, Translation and Appropriation: Greek Relics in the Latin West in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, dans S. Ditchfield et al. (ed.), Translating Christianity (Studies in Church History, 53), Cambridge, 2017, p. 88‑117.
