The author’s thesis and interpretation of Brač tradition — Slaven Vujić. From the author’s manuscript. Claims concerning Helena’s origins on Brač and interpretations of the cited sources express the author’s view, rather than an established historical consensus. This text was published without additional verification of its sources.
Legends and myths are more than imaginative stories about the past. The great Tolkien, a devoted Catholic and author of The Lord of the Rings, described Christianity as a true myth. He believed that legends and myths did not exclude truth and could sometimes be the best way of expressing reality.
So I venture to suggest that the familiar legend of St Helena’s origins on Brač may well be true. That is why I attach such importance to bringing St Helena back to her homeland — the island of Brač.
Three Theories about Helena’s Origins
St Helena was born a commoner around 248, most likely a shepherdess (stabularia, according to St Ambrose). Her exact birthplace is unknown, but three familiar theories address her origins.
The best-known theory places her homeland in Bithynia, a province of Asia Minor, specifically the town of Drepanum. The medieval chronicler Nikephoros draws his conclusion from one argument: Helena’s son, Emperor Constantine I the Great, renamed Drepanum Helenopolis. Nikephoros concludes that he must have done so because his mother came from there, yet overlooks the existence of several places called Helenopolis, including one in Palestine. At the very least, his argument seems weak to me, also because Drepanum was not an obscure town, whereas St Ambrose describes Helena as coming from humble, remote surroundings.
The second theory places Helena’s birth at a royal court in Britain. It even gives her royal ancestry, drawing on the service of her husband Constantius Chlorus, Constantine’s father, at Eboracum, modern York. He undoubtedly spent time there, but the claim that he met a noble-born Helena there is untenable.
Louis de Wohl’s popular novel The Living Wood, an engaging fictional account of St Helena, strengthened this theory. It is an impressive creative work, but Helena’s royal British origins remain fiction.
St Helena — A Woman from Brač
This brings us to the third, at first sight least likely, theory. A modest legend on Brač says that St Helena was born in Škrip, where a church is dedicated to her. A Roman empress, mother of Constantine the Great, the Christian saint who found Christ’s Cross on Calvary — a woman from Brač? Many will be sceptical, but I believe history is on our side.
In my view, this is the only theory grounded in tangible evidence and indisputable historical truth.
I believe the uncertainty surrounding Helena’s homeland stems from a small island known in Latin as Bretanida, whose inhabitants were called Brettiani. This led Nikephoros to identify it with Bithynia, where Drepanum–Helenopolis stood, while proponents of the British theory equated Brettiani with Britannia, the Latin name for Britain.
Bretanida, however, is a Latin name for Brač (from brenthos, deer), the island of wild deer. Hesychius, the fifth-century bishop of Salona, knew this well. In a life of Pope Clement, he records what I regard as the historical truth about Helena’s origins:
“… e Bretanide Dalmatie in mari Illyrico Insula ortam esse”
Translated: “she came from Bretanida, an island in the Illyrian Sea”.
Bretanida, Bithynia, Britannia. Brettiani.
We cannot blame anyone for not knowing a modest little island in the Illyrian Sea. But, on the basis of this great ecclesiastical authority from Salona, I believe we owe Helena a true account of her homeland.
Who Was Hesychius?
Hesychius was the eighth bishop of Salona (405–426) and the first metropolitan of the Roman province of Dalmatia. He succeeded his uncle Semferius; together they built a great basilica and episcopal complex in ancient Salona.
Hesychius chronicled his age, leaving a written legacy in a life of Pope Clement and numerous letters exchanged with prominent Christian figures, including St Augustine and St John Chrysostom. John Chrysostom appealed to him after his expulsion from Nicomedia, showing Hesychius’s standing. Even Pope Zosimus wrote to him with particular respect.
It is this Hesychius who writes of Helena’s origins on Brač, naming a modest island in the Illyrian Sea as her homeland. Salona was repeatedly plundered and partly burned, leaving little of his writing. Several copies of the life of Pope Clement survived, however, preserving the account of Helena’s origins on Brač.
Traces in Later Accounts
Numerous medieval authors referred to those origins, all drawing on Hesychius’s text.
The well-known Brač priest and historian Fr Andrija Cicareli made an important contribution to this question through his critical study. His work of 1813 is one of the principal sources for this article.
From Humble Origins to the Throne
Helena’s life was not filled only with blessings. Her humble origins prevented her elevation as the imperial consort of Constantius Chlorus, whose brilliant military career laid the foundations for his rise to the Roman throne. Diocletian’s scheme divided the empire into four parts, ruled by two senior emperors, the Augusti — Diocletian and his friend Maximian — and two Caesars: Galerius under Diocletian and Constantius under Maximian.
Constantius’s advancement required marriage to Theodora, Maximian’s daughter, making Maximian both his father-in-law and, according to Roman custom, his adoptive father.
There was consequently no place for the humble shepherdess Helena, who was left alone and rejected in the penultimate decade of the third century. She spent almost twenty years in the shadows, until the disintegration of the tetrarchy and her son Constantine’s rise began in 306.
During those two decades, Helena watched the love of her life rule beside a new lawful wife, surrounded by children. This may explain why the Catholic Church regards her as a patron saint of divorced people and troubled marriages.
To avoid making Constantius the villain of this account, fairness requires noting that he was the mildest persecutor of Christians among the four tetrarchs, although personally a worshipper of Mithras.
When Constantius died at York in 306, his army immediately proclaimed Constantine Augustus. Constantine continued fighting for sole rule over the Roman Empire until 324.
It is believed that Constantine then showered his mother with honours and elevated her to the imperial dignity of Augusta.
This opened the imperial treasury to Helena, who used its wealth to build churches, help the poor and care for the sick.
Her discovery of Christ’s Cross at the age of seventy-six earned her the Croatian epithet Križarica, referring to the finding of the Cross. Soon after her death, she was recognised as a saint for her contribution to Christianity and exceptionally virtuous life.
She is venerated by both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, with a special place in Christian traditions.
She is a patron saint of converts, divorced people, troubled marriages and archaeologists. Her feast day, 18 August, commemorates her death.
Many churches worldwide are dedicated to St Helena. In Croatia, she is patron of churches and parishes in Zabok, Šenkovec, Vrtlinska, Kastav, Rakovica and Škrip.
Helena’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem
The discovery of the Holy Cross on Calvary in 326 is the most significant event associated with her life. According to tradition, Helena travelled to Jerusalem and, after the demolition of a pagan temple of Venus, found three similarly sized crosses beneath layers of the city’s turbulent past. The Cross matched her visions, beautifully depicted by the Italian painter Paolo Veronese in works of 1570 and 1580.
One of the three crosses displayed supernatural power, healing a sick person brought beside it. Macarius, then bishop of Jerusalem, who accompanied Helena in her investigations in the Holy Land, wrote an account of these events.
St Macarius witnessed the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the churches of the Nativity and Annunciation in Bethlehem, and many other churches on holy sites, commissioned by Constantine at his mother’s wish.
Helena’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem around 326 also represents the first major archaeological investigation of relics of Jesus Christ, ordered by Constantine in his search for tangible evidence of Christ’s life. Finding the Holy Cross further strengthened Christianity, which became the official religion towards the end of the Roman Empire, while the cross gradually replaced or supplemented earlier Christian symbols.
Constantine the Great — The First Christian Emperor
Although some Roman emperors may already have been sympathetic to Christianity, history recognises Constantine the Great, Helena’s son, as the first Christian emperor. Enjoying Diocletian’s favour, he witnessed the fierce persecution that intensified in 303 in Diocletian’s capital, Nicomedia.
The event that set Constantine’s conversion in motion was the Battle of the Milvian Bridge against Maxentius in 312, in their struggle for Roman supremacy. According to biographical accounts, Constantine saw a luminous cross in the sky in the form of Christ’s monogram, and heard in a dream the words “In this sign you will conquer”. The next morning he ordered the symbol placed on his soldiers’ shields, and under that sign he won.
The following year, Constantine entered history as a liberator of Christianity: the Edict of Milan in 313 ended persecution and permitted Christian worship throughout the empire.
Although we lack official evidence of Constantine’s baptism, it is held to have taken place in his final moments. Whatever the case, he played an important role in Christianity’s development, building churches and hosting major gatherings, including the First Council of Nicaea in 325.
Although we cannot state with certainty how strongly his devout mother influenced him, we cannot ignore the words of St Paulinus of Nola:
“Constantine, foremost among Christian rulers, owed that distinction less to his own faith than to the faith of his mother Helena.”
Rome in the Footsteps of St Helena
Alongside this research, read my pilgrimage essay Rome in the Footsteps of St Helena – Santa Croce, the Holy Stairs and the Lateran, illustrated with photographs of our visits to Roman shrines associated with Helena and Constantine.