Saint Helen – Handmade Hagiography – Mount Athos

Description

Handmade Hagiography On natural linden wood by the hands of the hagiographer, the saintly monk Father Vasileios, who is buried in the Holy Cell of Agios Anthony of the Holy Monastery of Philotheus.
An exceptional iconography depicting Saint Helen, crafted entirely by hand.

This specific iconography has been crafted by the Agiorite Father Vasilios, based on Byzantine iconography standards. The depiction of the Saint has been painted entirely by hand. Coating the hagiography with pure beeswax ensures that the colors of the image remain unchanged over time.

Flavia Julia Helen, also known as Saint Helen, Helen Augusta and Helen of Constantinople, was a Greek Asia Minor empress of the Roman Empire and mother of Constantine the Great. She came from a wealthy class in the Greek city of Drepano in Bithynia in Asia Minor and became the wife of the Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus.

Helen was born in 248 or 249 in Drepano, Bithynia, Asia Minor. Later, Constantine the Great renamed Drepanos Hellenopolis (or Helenoupolis), to honor his mother. We deduce the date of birth from the information provided by Eusebius of Caesarea that Helen died at the age of 80, combined with other historical data.

The great glory of Helen, among the foremost of the Christian populations, is due to the finding of the Holy Cross. Historians have some reservations about whether this tradition is a historical fact. Eusebius, although he gives detailed information about Helen’s works in Jerusalem, does not mention the discovery of the Holy Cross.

From the writings of Saint Cyril, Patriarch of Jerusalem, it is clear that a piece of the holy relic was in Jerusalem at the end of 340. The same Patriarch, after 351, writes to Emperor Constantius II, son of Constantine the Great, that the Cross was discovered in years of Constantine, but does not mention who found it.