According to Mant’s Prayer-book, this festival began to be kept about 615, on this wise: Cosroës, king of Persia, having plundered Jerusalem, took away a great piece of the cross which St. Helen bad left there, and in times of mirth made sport with it. The Emperor Heraclius fought and defeated him, and recovered the holy relic. He brought it back in triumph to Jerusalem, but found himself unable to enter the gate. He then acknowledged that it did not become him, a sinner, to enter the holy city on horseback and in pride and state, where the King of kings had entered meek and lowly, and riding on an ass. He wept for bis sins, and entered the city barefooted and carrying the holy wood reverently in bis bands; after which, the anniversary of the Exaltation, also called Holy Rood Day, was observed as a holy day.
Besides a nunnery in Jerusalem, a church at Bethlehem, one on the Mount of Olives, and several in Europe, St. Helen is said by immemorial tradition, and with every appearance of truth, to be the founder of certain extremely ancient and curious Coptic monasteries (still to be seen in Egypt), notably the Dair al Bakarab or Convent of the Pulley, and the Dair el Abiad or White Monastery at the foot of the Libyan Hills (Butler, Coptic Churches).
Helen died on Aug. 18, 320, either almost immediately after her return from Palestine or nearly two years later. She is generally said to have died at Rome; but it is also said that she died at Nicomedia or Constantinople, and was carried to Rome. She was laid in a porphyry urn—one of the largest and handsomest in the world—and placed in a great mausoleum, the ruins of which are now called Torre Pignattara, near the road from Rome to Palestrina.
Constantine had a statue of her and one of himself placed on either side of a large cross in the principal square of bis beautiful now city, Constantinople. He outlived his mother about ten years, and was baptized a few days before his death.
Next to the B. V. Mary, St. Helen has more dedications in England than any other saint. R. M. AA. SS. Tillemont. Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Robert of Gloucester gives some curious particulars of her supposed father, King Cole, and the history of Britain in his time, full of amusing anachronisms.
Elene, or the Finding of the Cross, is the subject of one of the poems of Cynewulf, a minstrel at the court of the Northumbrian kings in the 8th century.
St. Helen (4). Daughter of Kilian. (See Brigid (1).)
St. Helen (5) of Auxerre, May 22. 5th century. A holy V. famous for her virtues and miracles. One of many persons who, being in the church of Auxerre, May 1, 418, when the Bishop St. Amator died on bis pontifical throne, saw his soul, in the form of a dove, borne to heaven by a choir of saints singing hymns. Henschenius in AA. SS. Her name is in the R. M., and in the ancient calendar of Reichenau, which is reproduced in AA. SS., Præfatioties, vol. iii.
St. Helen (6), or Helan, Oct. 7. 5th or 7th century. One of the brothers or sisters of St. Tressan (Feb. 7) and St. Gibrian (May 8). Tressan was an illiterate but very good and religious man. He resolved to lead the life of a pilgrim, and taking with him his six brothers and three or four sisters, they came to Rheims during the episcopate of St. Remigius (in the 5th century), who ordained Tressan priest, after he had acquired the necessary amount of learning. Tressan spent the rest of his life in that country, and was buried at Avenay, in Champagne. Some say they lived in the 7th century. Fracla, Promptia, and Posenna are given as the names of the sisters. Compare with Helen (7), of Troyes, who is perhaps the same.
St. Helen (7), May 4. V. of Troyes, in Champagne. After the capture of Constantinople by the Latins, in 1204, the body of Helen was brought from Corinth to Troyes in a perfect state of preservation. Ferrarius makes her a martyr, but who she really was, when or where she lived, history does not inform us; and although there is an account of her given in an old breviary of the church at Troyes, it is styled in the Acta,
