Helena Augusta: The image of the ideal Christian empress

Flavia Iulia Helena Augusta, one of the most important female figures of Late Antiquity, was the mother of the emperor Constantine I. However, little is known about the life of Helena, who is believed to have undertaken a very important mission in the history of Christianity by being associated with inventio crucis (the discovery of the holy cross) after her death. As a matter of fact, when the Late Antique literature is analysed, it is observed that the sources that provide information about Helena generally focus on the story of the search for the lignum crucis (the remains of the holy cross), which is estimated to date to the last years of augusta's life, and largely ignore other details of her life. The aim of our study is to create a biography of Flavia Iulia Helena Augusta by making use of philological sources, epigraphic and numismatic data, and thus to discuss the roles she played within the conditions of the period in which she lived, independent of her religious personality. In this direction, the temporal limitation of our study is the second half of the III. century and the first half of the IV. century, the spatial limitation of our study is the geography dominated by the Roman Empire during the period in question due to the distribution of epigraphic, numismatic and archaeological data associated with Helena.