Today, according to the calendar, the following are celebrated:
Constantine, Costas, Costis, Constantine, Constantine, Constantina, Constantia, Constantina, Costoula, Dina, Nadia
Eleni, Elena, Eleanna, Eleana, Elina, Lena, Lenitsa, Lengo, Lenio, Eleonora, Eleonora, Nora, Marilena, Elenaki, Nitsa, Neli
Constantine the Great
According to the Synaxarist, both Tarsus in Cilicia and Drepano in Bithynia are mentioned as the birthplace of Constantine the Great. However, the prevailing view is that Constantine the Great was born in Naisos in Upper Moesia (present-day Niš in Serbia). The exact year of his birth is not known, but it is believed that he was born between 272-288 AD.
His father was Constantius, who was called Chlorus because of the paleness of his face, and was a relative of the emperor Claudius. His mother was Saint Helen, the daughter of an innkeeper from Drepano in Bithynia.
In 305 AD, Constantine was at the court of Emperor Diocletian in Nicomedia with the office of a thousand-arch. In the same year, the two Augusti, Diocletian and Maximian, resigned from their positions and retired. Constantius Chlorus was promoted to the supreme office of Augustus in the West and Galerius in the East. Constantius Chlorus died on 25 July 306 AD and the army proclaimed Constantine the Great Augustus, something that Galerius did not accept. After a series of various historical events, Constantine the Great clashed with Maxentius, son of Maximian, who had a strategic advantage because he had four times the army and Constantine's army was already exhausted.
For his part, Constantine the Great had every reason to feel restrained. He had no other choice but to invoke the power of God. He wanted to pray, to ask for help, but as the historian Eusebius relates, he did not know which God to turn to. Then he mentally brought to mind all those with whom he co-ruled the empire. All of them, except for his father, believed in many gods and all of them had a tragic end. So he began to pray to God, raising his right hand and begging Him to reveal Himself to him. While he was praying, an unprecedented divine sign appeared in the sky. Around noon, that is, at dusk, he saw in the sky the trophy of the Cross, which read “this victory.” And while he was trying to understand the meaning of this mysterious spectacle, night overtook him. Then the Lord appeared to him in his sleep with the symbol of the Cross and urged him to construct an imitation of it and use it as a talisman against further wars.
With the Christian banner as his flag, he begins to advance towards Rome, annihilating all resistance.
When he arrives in Rome, he is interested in the Christians of the city. However, his interest is not limited to them. Very soon he learns of the poor state of the Church of Africa and supports its ministry works from the public treasury.
In February 313 AD, in Milan, where the marriage of Licinius to Constantia, sister of Constantine the Great, took place, a historic agreement was reached between the two men that established the principle of religious tolerance.
The problems that Constantine the Great had to face were many. The heretical teaching of Arius, a presbyter of the Alexandrian Church, came to shake the unity of the Church. This teaching, called Arianism, essentially destroyed the doctrine of the Trinity of God.
As soon as Constantine the Great was informed of the sad events that were taking place in Alexandria, he sent a letter with his spiritual advisor Osios, Bishop of Cordoba in Spain, to the Bishop of Alexandria, Alexander (313 – 328 AD) and Arius. The attempt to resolve the issue was unsuccessful. Thus, it was decided to convene the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, Bithynia, in 325 AD.
The description of the opening ceremony by the historian Eusebius is admittedly interesting. All the delegates had gathered in the middle house of the palace. There was absolute silence and everyone was waiting for the entrance of the emperor, whom most of them would see for the first time. Constantine entered humbly, with modesty and gentleness. In his speech to the Council, he characterized the intra-ecclesiastical conflicts as the greatest evil even than wars. His speech was direct and clear. He wanted to deal only with issues related to the orthodoxy of the faith. His crucial phrase, “about the faith let us study,” is preserved by almost all historical writers.
After the end of the work of the Council, the emperor took initiatives to consolidate its decisions. He sent a circular letter to the Church of Egypt, Libya, Pentapolis, and Alexandria, in which he announced the decisions of the Council. He himself announced the condemnation of Arius throughout the empire and forbade the acquisition and concealment of his writings. His most impressive action, however, was his letter to Arius. He rebuked the heretic and severely condemned him for his heresies.
However, towards the end of 327 AD, Constantine the Great summoned Arius to the palace. The heretic, of course, did not miss the opportunity and submitted a confession full of elaborate theological inaccuracies, convincing Constantine the Great that it did not differ substantially from what the First Ecumenical Council had decided. Finally, the emperor convened a new Council in November 327 AD, which recalled Arius from exile and reinstated the exiled Bishops of Nicomedia, Eusebius, and Theognius, Theognius. The recall of Arius and the reinstatement of those concerned sparked new disputes within the Church. The Bishop of Alexandria, Alexander, and then his successor, Athanasius the Great, refused to accept Arius in Alexandria. Constantine the Great threatens to depose Athanasius the Great, while at a Council held in Antioch in 330 AD, Saint Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch (commemorated on February 21), is deposed and exiled by the heretics. The Council of Tyre in Syria, held in 335 AD, condemns Athanasius the Great in absentia with the penalty of deposition, who flees to meet Constantine the Great.
It is a fact that Constantine the Great did not seem to accept Athanasius the Great’s request for a hearing. He was, however, persuaded to listen to him when Athanasius the Great addressed him with the words: “Judge the Lord between me and you.” Constantine the Great understood the blatant injustice and the vile methods used against Athanasius the Great and accepted his request that all the councilors of Tyre be invited and that the proceedings take place before him.
Eusebius of Nicomedia ignored the imperial order. He took only a few of the council members and appeared before the emperor. He forgot all the other accusations and for the first time raised the issue of the alleged obstruction of the shipment of wheat to the capital. The emperor was enraged and exiled Athanasius the Great to Treviso, France. Despite this, he did not ratify the decision of the Council of Tyre to depose him nor did he order the replenishment of the episcopal throne of Alexandria.
The last period of Constantine the Great's life is the one that establishes him in the ecclesiastical consciousness and leads him to the peak of his spiritual journey. In April 337 AD, the Saint feels the first serious symptoms of an illness. The sources inform us that Constantine the Great took refuge in thermal baths. However, seeing his health deteriorating, he considered it appropriate to go to the city of Helenopolis in Bithynia, which had been named so because of his Holy Mother. There he remained in the church of the Martyrs, where he offered supplicatory prayers and litanies to God. Constantine the Great realizes that his earthly life is approaching its end. The memory of death is cultivated in his heart and leads him to the mystery of repentance and baptism. After this, he takes refuge in a suburb of Nicomedia, summons the Bishops and addresses them with the following speech: “This was the time that I had long awaited and thirsted for and wished to be worthy of salvation in God. The time has come for us to enjoy the immortal seal, the time has come for us to participate in the saving sealing, which I once desired to do in the mangers of the Jordan, where, as is narrated, our Savior received baptism in our own way. But God, who knows the interest, deserves us to receive baptism here. Let there be no doubt, then. For even if it is still the will of the Lord of life and death that our earthly life continue and that I coexist with the people of God, I will frame my life with all those rules that befit God.”
After baptism, Saint Constantine did not wear the imperial tunic again, but remained dressed in the white garment of baptism, until the day of his death in 337 AD. It was the day of the celebration of Pentecost, writes the historian Eusebius.
The way in which Eusebius describes the events that followed the Saint's death is characteristic. All the emperor's bodyguards, after tearing their clothes and falling to the ground, wept and shouted loudly, as if they were not losing their king, but their father. The brigadiers and captains wept for their benefactor. The demos were sad and every inhabitant of Constantinople mourned, as if they were losing the common good.
After the soldiers placed the Saint's relics in a golden urn, they transported them to Constantinople and placed them on a pedestal in the royal house. His sacred remains were buried in the church of the Holy Apostles.
History rightly called him Great and the Church Equal to the Apostles.
Saint Helen
Saint Helen was born in Drepano, Bithynia, Asia Minor around 247 AD. She appears to have been of humble origin. There is some controversy in historiography as to whether the mother of Saint Constantine was the wife or legal concubine of Constantine Chlorus.
Between the years 272 – 288 AD she gave birth to Constantine in Naisos in Moesia. When, five years later, Constantine Chlorus became Caesar by Diocletian, he was forced to remove her, in order to marry Theodora, stepdaughter of the emperor Maximian, and thus have that family bond, which would ensure the solidity of Diocletian's tetrarchy system. Despite this fact, Constantine the Great particularly honored his mother. He awarded her the title of Augusta, placed her image on coins and gave her name to a city in Bithynia.
The Saint showed her piety with many benefactions and the rebuilding of new Churches in Rome (Holy Cross), in Constantinople (Holy Apostles), in Bethlehem (Basilica of the Nativity) and on the Mount of Olives (Basilica of Gethsemane). Saint Helena went to Jerusalem in 326 AD, where “with great effort and much expense and intimidation she found the Holy Cross and the other two crosses of the robbers”, as the Cypriot Chronicler Leontios Machairas writes. Returning to Constantinople, a year after the finding of the Holy Cross of the Lord, Saint Helena also passed through Cyprus.
Saint Helen probably fell asleep in peace in 327 AD at the age of eighty. The historian Eusebius writes that the Saint had a premonition of her death and left her property to her son and grandchildren in a will.
Naturally, her son transported her holy remains to Constantinople and buried her in the Church of the Holy Apostles.
Their Synaxis was held in the Great Church, in the church of the Holy Apostles and in their holy temple at the cistern of Vonos.
The Byzantines particularly honored Constantine the Great and Saint Helen. Proof of this is the fact that during the Middle Ages, the depiction of the first Christian king with his mother, holding a Cross in the middle, was very popular among the Byzantines. This tradition is maintained to this day with the Constantinides.
Apolitikion
Ἦhos pl. d'.
Having beheld the type of Your Cross in heaven, and having received the call not from men, like Paul, in his reign, Your Apostle, O Lord, entrusted the reigning city into Your hand; which He preserved forever in peace, through the intercessions of the Theotokos, O only Philanthropist.
