Saint Helena

Saint Helena (248?-328?), concubine and possibly wife of the Roman emperor Constantius I, and mother of Constantine the Great, emperor of Rome. She was probably born in Drepanum, later called Helenopolis in her honor, in the ancient Roman province of Bithynia. When Constantius was named Caesar, or successor to the throne of the Roman Empire, in 293, he abandoned her to marry the stepdaughter of Maximian. She devoted the rest of her life to religious pilgrimages, visiting Jerusalem about 325 and founding there the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity. According to later legends, in Palestine she discovered the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Her feast day is August 18.