By Canon Ian Morter
Set on the highest point in the ancient town of Colchester in North East Essex is the baroque revival Town Hall with its Victoria Tower, built between 1898 and 1902 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria (1897).
Set on top of the commemorative tower there is the bronze statue of St Helena who looks out across the town of which she is the patron saint.
Two questions may have crossed your mind by now. Why is she talking about a town almost 300 miles away from Devon? And what is the significance of St. Helena?
In 1978 I was ordained as the assistant curate to serve for the following three and a half years in the Parish of St James the Great, Colcheter, in which the Town Hall was built.
Secondly, on Wednesday 21 May we celebrated St. Helena’s Feast Day. She was quite an extraordinary early fourth century saint that I believe has three claims to being held in honour. She was the mother of Constantine the Great, who brought about the adoption of Christianity to the Roman Empire. Secondly, she was ahead of her time, because Helena was perhaps the first to go on religious pilgrimages – places of Christian historic interest, including Syria, Palestine and Jerusalem. Finally, on her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, she found what she believed to be the remains of the Holy Cross on which Jesus was crucified. That is why in her iconography she is always depicted as holding the cross, as we see in this statue designed by John Belcher, where Helena’s gaze is set to south-east, towards Jerusalem.
To be accurate, Helena of Constantinople was born Flavia Julia Helena in about AD 246 and, although Colchester, the Veteran’s City of the Romans in England, had claimed to be her birthplace, there is no evidence for this. She was probably born into the Greek-speaking lower classes of Roman society in the City of Drepanon in Bithynia, Asia Minor, which, in AD 330, was renamed to Helenopolis in her honour.
It is thought that Helena met her future husband Constantius in Asia Minor in about AD 270 where he was serving in a military campaign. Their son, Constantine (later to be known as the Great), was born on 27 February, AD 272. Sadly, Helena was divorced by Constantius in about AD 289 so that he could marry a wife more fitting to his appointment as Caesar, the heir apparent of Augustus Maximian. Helena and her son Constantine were banished to the court at Nicomedia. Helena never remarried and lived for a time in obscurity. She remained close to her only son, who held her in high regard and who was becoming a member of the inner circle of Diocletian.
After Constantine the Great was appointed Emperor in AD 306, he brought his mother Helena back to court in Rome and later elevated her to the title Augusta in AD 324. The Church Historian Eusebius, the later bishop of Caesarea, writes that Helena undertook a pilgrimage between AD 326-238 in her old age, only two years before her death. It is recorded that she was responsible for the building, or perhaps beautification, of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The building of the Church on the Mount of Olives, the place of Jesus’ Ascension. There are also legends that associate Helena to the Construction of the Church of the Burning Bush in Egypt, the Chapel of St. Catherine’s Monastery which is often referred to as the Chapel of St. Helena.
But Helena is most famous for the discovery of the True Cross. According to tradition, while visiting Jerusalem, Helena ordered a temple to be torn down that was dedicated to Venus, and the site was excavated whereupon they recovered three different crosses. Helena refused to be swayed by anything short of solid proof that this was the place of the crucifixion of Jesus and so a test was performed. Possibly through Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem, she had a woman who was near death brought from the city. When the woman touched the first and second crosses, her condition did not change but, when she touched the third and final cross, she suddenly recovered, so Helena declared the cross through which the woman had been healed to be the True Cross. It was on the site of this discovery that her son, the Emperor Constantine, ordered the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
In the ‘Letter From Constantine to Macarius of Jerusalem’, as recorded in Bishop Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, it states: Such is our Saviour’s grace, that no power of language seems adequate to describe the wondrous circumstance to which I am about to refer. For, that the monument of Christ’s most holy Passion, so long ago buried beneath the ground, should have remained unknown for so long a series of years, until its reappearance to his servants now set free through the removal of him who was the common enemy of all, is a fact which truly surpasses all admiration. I have no greater care than how I may best adorn with a splendid structure that sacred spot, which, under Divine direction, I have disencumbered as it were of the heavy weight of foul idol worship [the Roman temple]; a spot which has been accounted holy from the beginning in God’s judgment, but which now appears holier still, since it has brought to light a clear assurance of our Saviour’s passion.
Helena died around AD 330 with her son at her side. She was buried in the Mausoleum of Helena, just outside of Rome.