Will I love Helena Augusta?

Dr. Hillner, Professor of Roman Imperial and Late Antiquity Studies at the Reinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn, has offered an ambitious biography of St. Helena, the mother of Rome’s first Christian Emperor Constantine the Great, who lived in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries.

Unlike the abundant literary and material sources available for her famous son, there are only a few scattered references to Helena in fourth century sources—primarily dealing with her relationship to Constantine’s father Emperor Constantius I, to her son Constantine I, and to her imperial relatives and descendants; and then many unreliable later legends about her life. Using… show more.