Saint Helen: On the Problem of British Origin

Abstract

This article considers the problem arising from the legend formed of St Helen’s British origin. The sources from Late Antiquity known to the early medieval Latin reader do not give an exact answer to the question of the saint’s motherland. Nevertheless, Aldhelm’s treatise Prosa de virginitate and the Old English translation of Bede from the eleventh century first mention her son Constantine the Great’s birth in Britain. Conspicuously, these testimonies became the basis on which the literary and mythological plot about St Helen began to develop. According to A. Harbus, the most likely source of the legend was the translation of Bede’s text mentioned above, which, in turn, went back to Eutropius. As a result of a misunderstanding, the phrase “Constantinus in Brittania creatus imperator” was translated as “Emperor Constantine, born in Britain”. According to our hypothesis, another possible source of the plot about Constantine was the reverse Latin translation of the Greek text that was used by Aldhelm. This text went back to the Greek version of Eutropius’ Breviary made by Paeanius in the fourth century AD. The legend of St Helen further developed relying on local folklore traditions, which received literary adaptation and reinterpretation. In Historia Anglorum by Henry of Huntingdon and Historia Britonum by Geoffrey of Monmouth, St Helen became the daughter of British King Coel. The Late Antiquity evidence of the saint’s low origin (stabularia) was ignored or forgotten. Welsh legendary-historical genealogies and folklore motifs reflected in The Mabinogion played an important role in the formation of the myth. It was the version of Geoffrey of Monmouth that became widespread and was used by English chroniclers until the fifteenth century. Interpreting the version of Geoffrey, Adam of Usk presents Britain as the ancestral home of the Roman emperors and the Greek Basileis. The stability of the myth of the British Helen is explained by its extraordinary attractiveness: it turned out to be an important link between Britain and the Roman Empire allowing the island’s “peripheral” history to be woven into the fabric of world history.