HELENA, St. the mother of the Emperor Constantine, was born of humble parents in Bithynia. The place of her birth was the little town of Drepanum which her son afterwards raised to the dignity of a city, under the name of Helenopolis. Reasons of state compelled her husband (Constantius Chlorus) to divorce her when he assumed the purple in A.D. 292; but she was amply compensated for this indignity by her son Constantine. After her conversion to the Christian faith, which seems to have been effected by her son, she made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where she is said to have discovered the Saviour's tomb, and the real wood of his cross. She exhibited so many virtues and so much Christian zeal and charity, that in due time after her death, which happened in A.D. 328, she was canonized by the church.