1. The mother of Constantine the Great, was unquestionably of low origin, perhaps the daughter of an innkeeper, but the report chronicled by Zosimus, and not rejected by Orosius, that she was not joined in lawful wedlock to Chlorus seems to be no less destitute of foundation than the monkish legend which represents her father as a British or Caledonian king. When her husband was elevated to the dignity of Caesar by Diocletian, in A. D. 292, he was compelled to repudiate his wife, to make way for Theodora, the step-child of Maximianus Herculius : but the necessity of such a divorce is in itself a sufficient proof that the existing marriage was regarded as regular and legal. Subsequently, when her son succeeded to the purple, Helena was
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in some degree compensated for her suffering, for she was treated during the remainder of her career with the most marked distinction, received the title of Augusta, and after her death, at an advanced age, about A. D. 328, her memoory was kept alive by the names of Helenopolis and Helenopontus, bestowed respectively upon a city of Syria, a city of Bithynia, and a district bordering on the Euxine. The virtues of this holy lady, her attachment to the Christian faith, which she appears to have embraced at the instance of Constantine, her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where she was believed to have discovered the sepulchre of our Lord, together with the wood of the true cross, and her zealous patronage of the faithful, have afforded a copious theme to Eusebius, Sozomenus, Theodoretus, and ecclesiastical historians, and, at a later period, procured for her the glory of canonisation. (Gruter, C.I. cclxxxiv. 1; Eutrop. 10.2; Aurel. Vict. Epit. 39, 40; Zosim. 2.8; Oros. 7.25 ; Euseb. Vit. Const. 3.46, 47; Sozomen. 2.1 ; Theodoret. 1.18. On the legitimacy of St. Helena's marriage, see Tillemont, Histoire des Empereurs, vol. iv., Notes sur l'Empereur Constantin, not. i., and on the period of her death, not. lvii.)