Note F — The Legendary History of the Cross.
Reading edition
Alban Butler, in The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other Principal Saints, denies that St. Helena was an Innholder (Stabularia) in Bithynia, when Constantius married her, and says: “We are assured by the unanimous tradition of our English historians that this holy empress was a native of our island. William of Malmesbury, the principal historian of the ancient state of our country after Bede, and before him, the Saxon author of the life of St. Helen, in 970, quoted by Usher, expressly say that Constantine was a Briton by birth.” Leland, in his Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, says that St. Helena was the only daughter of King Coilus, the King Cöol who first built walls round Colchester, and the English Church has generally recognised her British origin. Her festival is kept on August 18.
When her husband, Constantine Chlorus, entered into an arrangement with Diocletian, by which he had the countries this side the Alps, namely, Gaul and Britain, he was obliged, as part of the bargain, to divorce St. Helena, and marry Theodora, the daughter-in-law of Maximinianus. According to Eusebius, she was not converted to Christianity at the same time as her son Constantine, who, when he came to the throne, paid her the greatest deference, and gave her the title of Augusta, or empress. After the Council of Nice, in 325, he wrote to Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, concerning the building of a splendid church upon Mount Calvary, and St. Helena, although she was then 79 years of age, undertook to see it carried out.
It was then that the reputed Invention of the Cross, together with the nails, took place, and she soon afterwards died, but the exact year is uncertain, some authorities giving A.D. 326, others 328.