Image Source: https://www.greeknewsonline.com/st-helena-the-first-archaeologist/
By Alexander Colombos,
MA, MPS, MA (Ed)
Doctoral Student, PhD in Biblical Archaeology program, Newburgh Theological Seminary
Historian-archaeologist-art
historian (by undergraduate and graduate training specializing in the Late
Classical, Hellenistic, and Late Antiquity)
An article by Olga Kerziouk published on the
European Blog and found on the British Library website is titled “St Helena -
Imperial Archaeologist”. Also, William H.C. Frend, professor of Church
History at Cambridge and clergyman starts his book, “Archaeology of Early Christianity: a
History”, with a chapter titled “In the wake of Queen Helena”. Was St Helena just the mother of Constantine
the Great and an Augusta or Queen who promoted Christianity by building
Christian Churches in the Holy Land, searching for holy relics, and finally and
the Cross of Jesus Christ, or was she also way more: she was actually the first archaeologist and a
woman?
It was hard for a woman
to travel long distances, as St Helena did in the 4th century
AD. Actually, it would be hard for a woman to
travel so long distances even until modern times. Such were pilgrims
of the St James of Compostella pilgrim shrine in Span and many shrines in
Rome. Also, the Wife of Bath, a
character in the stories by medieval English writer Chaucer joined the
Canterbury Pilgrims on a trip to the Holy Land.
There were devoted women who would travel seasonally for religious
purposes, as more suitable for women in medieval times, even one thousand
years after St Helena or St Helen as she is usually known.
As early as in Ancient
Greece,
but also in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Rome, there were antiquarian interests in
discovering, preserving, and exhibiting artifacts. The first interest and tendency of systematically
collecting ancient artifacts in private collections and early forms of museums and
galleries and coming up with exhibitions were in the Renaissance and in the Age
of European Enlightenment and especially in the 18th century. The formation and official establishment of
archaeology as an academic discipline took place in the 19th
century, from German, French, and Italian biblical scholars, Catholic monks, and
clergymen without archaeological training to the Vatican’s most well-trained
Catholic archaeologists, monks /clergy, and laity alike as well other biblical
archaeologists all over the world, especially Israel, the rest of the Middle
East, Greece and the Balkans. A great biblical archaeologist was the late
Greek archaeologist Vasilios Tzaferis, the first and so far the only Greek to
become Director of the Israeli Service of Antiquities who discovered the
so-called “the Jesus Boat” and who also found nails from crucifixions, some of
them still inside bone fragments! However, St Helen could be considered the
first archaeologist and actually a woman archaeologist for not just collecting
old or religious items, but for leading an entire team of multiple workers and
excavating and finding the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Unlike what one may expect from an Augusta,
an Empress, and as a matter of fact the mother of Constantine the Great and the
one who found the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ, Helena was a Greek woman born in
AD 248 or
between 247 and 250,
probably in Drepanum, since Constantine the Great renamed the city Helenopolis
in honor of his mother
and it’s in Bithynia, Asia Minor. Helen was of humble origins, as Ambrosius Bishop
of Mediolanum (today’s Milan, Italy) calls her “stambularia” (“inn girl”), as
she worked at an inn/motel when
she was 23. Thus, she probably didn’t have any formal
education, but she was rather self-taught and relied on her own research, her
leadership skills, her determination and dedication, her faith, and a series of
miracles, which helped her, later on, to find the Holy Cross, as we will see
later on. In 270 Helen married
Constantius Chloros (de jure transl. from Greek: “pale”) (250-306), who never
married her and when he became Cesar of Galatia, he separated from her due to
the Roman law which prohibited marriages of high-ranked Roman military officers
with women of humble origins and lower classes and instead he married Theodora,
niece of Maximianus, Augustus of the Western Roman Empire and Helen, as a
result, left for the East, where she lived a humble life with her son’s
support. Constantine loved his mother so much that he
gave her the title of Augusta, minted coins with her image on, the so-called
Constantinian coins or flouria constantinata
in Greek, and as already mentioned, he named her possible birthplace of
Drepanium, a Greek city of Asia Minor, Helenopolis after her.
In 325, the year of the A’ Ecumenical
Council in Nicaea, Constantine,
in quick succession, having long envisioned the commemoration of the holy
places connected to the birth, crucifixion, and ascension of Christ, aimed to
Jerusalem to transform it to a Christian city and pilgrim attraction. Therefore, he started building churches, such
as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the site of Golgotha and churches in the
localities in the nativity at Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives where the
Savior’s Ascension took place. Eusebius, bishop of Caesaria and founder of
church history, viewed the holy places, such as Jerusalem, as connected with
Christ’s earthly life and wasn’t that much interested in studying and promoting
them, and besides he had the office of the Metropolitan of Palestine (Palestina Prima, including not only
Caesarea but also Jerusalem, and he didn’t want a powerful rivalry bishop of
Jerusalem in his territory. However, Eusebius eventually had to follow
Constantine’s line and described in detail and step-by-step all of Constantine’s
orders and how they were carried out.
After Constantine the Great defeated
Licinius in 326, he became the “monocrator” or single ruler and Emperor of the
Roman Empire. That is the year
associated by most sources as the starting point of St Helena’s reappearance in
the public scene after 30 years of humble low-profile life in Asia Minor and
the beginning of her tour in the Holy Land building basilicas on the landmarks
associated with the life of Jesus Christ. St Helena, already long ago a Christian,
though Constantine became Christian only at his death bed, ad most sources
maintain, went to the Holy Land passing from and stopping by Limassol, Cyprus,
which she found deserted. In particular, Helena may have converted to
Christianity after the Edict of Milan in 313, where religious tolerance and
free practice of Christianity were allowed. St Helena’s miracles and her spiritual
presence are very evident in Cyprus and she is often associated with the
Monastery of Stavrovouni (Gr. Mone
Stavrovouniou). Then, she crossed to the Holy Land with the
escort of Constantine’s mother-in-law Eutropia and visited Jerusalem and the sites
associated with the sites roundabout. Helena brought gifts and offerings and
dedicated two churches, one on the Mount of Olives, associated with Christ’s
teaching and His Ascension, as mentioned in Acts (1:11), and the other in
Bethlehem. Eutropia visited the area of the oak of
Mamre, north of Hebron and she was sad to find the area flanked by pagan
superstition, an area that was sacred to both Jews and Pagans.
Helen was not just looking for the traces
of Jesus and the building of Christian churches but was doing good deeds of
philanthropy helping the poor and the needy and people with disabilities and
giving money, food, and clothing to those who needed it. After a few weeks, Helena reached
Jerusalem. There, Judas Cyriancus from an
adjacent town, a commoner, came and helped her.
Helena had many workers and, according to a legend, she even granted
them the jewelry she was wearing to continue digging! There was a corpus of workers digging and the dig was very deep. A miracle of sweet dust and a shining
flashing all of the sudden made Helen point to the exact point Judas Cyriancus
should dig. According to one legend, once Judas Cyriancus
excavated the three crosses, a leper, as instructed, touched all three crosses, and once he touched the third and final cross was healed. Another legend, more well known, says that and frequently says that the corpse of a man who
had just died was brought to each of the crosses, once reached Jesus’
cross, he was resurrected. Another legend says that it was a dead woman
whose copse was used to identify Jesus’ cross and it was resurrected after it
was put on the cross of Christ, the third and final cross. Bishop of Jerusalem was present offering a
great supplication This writer believes that those miracles may
have happened together, those of the leper, the dead man, and the dead woman,
as it is more likely and reasonable that Helen with her investigative spirit
tested multiple times the crosses.
St Helena, on her second trip to Cyprus,
had a vision in Vasilopotamos (“the royal river”) in Tochne in the Lαrnaca district, where the good thief, the one who believed in
Jesus and was crucified next to him, revealed her which of the crosses was his
and that his name was Olympas miraculously found in that place of Cyprus. Helena used the wood of the original crosses
of the two thieves she excavated to build two big crosses and built the
Monastery of Stavrovouni at the spot Olympas miraculously revealed her his
cross. Also, in Tochne, there was another miracle,
where the four small crosses that made up the footstool nailed on Jesus’ feet
miraculously appeared to Helena. Ever
since Tochne’s river was named Vasilopotamos.
There were many miracles attributed to St Helena and the Holy Cross in
Cyprus and in particular, in the Stavrovouni Monastery.
Where there is Jesus’ tomb, which Eusebius
describes as a cave, the Pagans had built a Temple of Venus, which Constantine
ordered to demolish to exonerate and cleanse the polluted earth from the
defilement of the prostitutes who served Aphrodite’s temple as priestesses. After demolishing the temple of Venus, the
excavators found a knoll of natural rock, which belonged to a quarry and was
eagerly accepted as Golgotha itself, which Frend calls “the successful result
of the first recorded excavation,” Eusebius mentions Helena’s pious conduct
while building the churches and her humble and gregarious mingling with the
worshipers, but doesn’t mention the process of the archaeological excavations
she performed that led to the discovery of the True Cross. Paulinus
of Nola, however, vividly describes Helen’s discoveries in a letter he sent to
the Gallic chronicler Sulpicius Severus in c.403, to whom Paulinus was sending
a sliver of the wood of the Holy Cross as a gift to his friend Sulpicius
Severus. This letter presents Helena as
following the footsteps of Jesus, removing pagan temples and statues which were
built purposely to cover Jesus’ reminiscence, and building basilicas on the sites
including the site of the Passion and Crucifixion, after consulting the locals
as well as the most learned and academically reputable Jews. Paulinus described also the miracle of the
dead body used to identify the True Cross. Other sources for St Helena’s discovery of
the Holy Cross and other discoveries in the footsteps of Jesus and about the
miracles of pieces of the wood of the Holy Cross were documented by Socrates,
Scholasticus (Christian historian and scholar), Sozomenos of Cyprus,
Theodoretos, Ambrosius of Milan, and the itinerary of St Sylvia which described
the building of the basilicas.
Cyril of Alexandria describes the discovery of the Holy Cross without
mentioning Helena.
When Helen reported her discoveries to her
son, Constantine ordered Macarius the bishop of Jerusalem (314-333) to remove
all traces of paganism from the city and build the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. No expenses were supposed to be spared and money
was raised by the provincial governments.
Cyril of Alexandria in his Lectures describes the original Tomb of
Christ as a cave before the Savior’s Sepulchre, but the outer cave was cut away
by Constantine’s workmen in order to decorate it the church was built in its place
with what Cyril calls “splendid” adorations and make room for” rare columns”. The church was supposed to be magnificent in
rich and royal greatness, a huge church, indeed, as Eusebius informs us, in his
Praise of Constantine, oriented
east-west, approached through a rectangular courtyard or atrium paved with polished marble.
Τhe
Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine, says
that the center of the church was the cave known as the Martyrion, a second court was built incorporating the rocky outcrop
into the south-east corner and a baptistery was built and the entire basilica
was ready, as a pilgrim’s itinerary that of Bordeaux, witnessed the 333. According to Eusebius, the inauguration of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre took place in 336, precisely after 200 years
after the return of the Church from Pella.
After
the news of Helena finding the Cross of our Lord traveled all over the world,
a lot of people flanked the site and many tragic accidents happened. Therefore, the cross was placed in a church
that was built and was placed at a high point, so people cannot reach it and
touch it this way, both them and the cross can be protected and on the safe
side. A piece of the cross was left in Jerusalem
and the other was taken by Helena to Constantinople. It is said that miraculously the cross was
restored despite the many pieces pilgrims were taking with them and made
amulets and cross pendants and pieces were boxed as relics to be placed in the
altars of churches, and so on. The
Exaltation of the Holy Cross is celebrated by the Church every September 14. St Helena, after returning from Jerusalem,
lived in Constantinople until she died between 328 and 330, at the age of
around 80. He was buried in the Church
of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. However, after the sack of Constantinople in
1204, in the Fourth Crusade, by the Crusaders, her relics were taken to Venice. The relics came to Greece for the first time,
for temporary worship in 2017. In
particular, people worshipped them from May 14-June 15, 2017 at St Barbara’s
Church in Egaleo, Athens, and St Helena’s memory is commemorated together with
her son’s memory on St Constantine and Helen’s Day on every May 21.
In conclusion, St Helena, as church
historian William Frend
and Olga Kerziouk of the European Studies Blog
support, is the first archaeologist and actually, she was a woman archaeologist,
in times when it was dangerous for women to travel such long distances. Although of humble origins and limited formal
education, if any, she was self-taught and displayed an erudite, investigative,
and methodological spirit as well as leadership skills managing effectively a
large corpse of male workers, obviously untrained in archaeology tough
construction workers and was able to produce great results in her deep
excavations. However, it’s not just the methodology as
much as is profoundly and mostly her virtues, her faith, her charities, and her
love to serve people
and not to just find the cross for her vanity or to just build magnificent and
lavish churches to show off her imperial prestige and riches or to get
compensated, so to speak, for the years she had to live a humble and quiet life
in Asia Minor before Constantine the great, her son, gave her the title of the
Augusta and all the other honors. St Helena was guided by the Holy Spirit and
our Lord Jesus Christ as well as St Olympas
the good thief crucified next to our Lord who believe in him and was the first
to enter Paradise,
as Jesus promised to him on the cross.
But also great credit should go to her son Constantine the Great, who is
truly called “Great” for saving all the monuments of Christianity and
establishing Christianity as an official organized religion and building all
these great Byzantine monuments, and is the creator of the Byzantine
Empire and the founder of our Byzantine culture. Therefore, St Constantine and St Helena are
the cornerstone of Byzantine and Orthodox Christianity and Byzantine
Civilization and St Helena is no doubt the first female archaeologist and the
first archaeologist in general!
Bibliography
A.
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Χάρης Κ.
Σκαρλακίδης, Άγιον Φως, Το Θαύμα του
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Εθνικό
Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, «2.6.1 Ιστορική διαδρομή», Πρόγραμμα εξ αποστάσεως στην
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και Αρχείων του Εθνικού Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου
Αθηνών, τελευταία τροποποίηση Μάϊος 2021, https://rea.elke.uoa.gr/rea/attendLesson?session_id=F2CB1E6CB522EA8E69166217BCC1141C&lessonID=0157847A-4810-4A36-A857-5B166B22CDFE®istrationID=3869832&lgid=3129AD8DF0274B07A849B60532533A9F Even from the Neolithic Greece, there are
pieces of vases reconstructed and glued together! Also, Pausanias in his Heliaka (Ch 24, 11,
19-11) describes the efforts of the
ancient Greeks to take care of Zeus Statue in Olympia and the statue of Athena
in Acropolis, Athens.
“St. Helena, the Legend of the True Cross, and the Holy Sepulcher”,
Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, last modified February 21st, 2019.
