Talk:Helena, mother of Constantine I

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Hi let's talk!

I removed the following links:

Who is Saint Helena?
This link is dead
A listing of King Coels of British Legend
This is about the King Coels. Even if Helena is related to them, they belong on the King Coel page, not the Helena page
A genealogical tree of her based on the legend
This is a highly speculative genealogy based on the King Coel legend.

In general, the King Coel connection seems completely legendary—see the Geoffrey of Monmouth page for discussion. --Macrakis 05:57, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ethnic Origins of Helena of Constantinople ???

I have a question for wikipedians in regards to Saint Helena's Ethnic background, I noticed it's not mentioned in the article and was wondering if anybody on this site knew or had any sources which could confirm what her ethnicity/s were? Thankyou in regards E-mail adress 13:14, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

St Helena was born in the city of Drepanum in Sicily, so she was a Greek. Though the definition of a Greek at the time was not what it used to be or what it is today. Everybody was Roman, either Pagan of Christian. Colossus 16:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Read the article, this is not so clear as we wish for. She was "probably" born in Drepanum for her son renamed that city to honour her. An single Roman historian writes that she was born there. But even if this were true (and far as we know, it probably is) this does not make her atomatically a Greek. Flamarande 13:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! The statement above is the worst English I've come across on Wikipedia yet!!

It's not Drepanum in Sicily, but Drepanum in Bithynia (which is also already in the article). As Flamarande said, only one author (Procopius, iirc, i.e. rather late) mentiones her birthplace; another hint may be that Constantine renamed the city as Helenopolis. This is all we know, and the article summarizes that very neatly. Varana 15:54, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Contradictory dates

The text says she lived between 248-329, but in the saint template it says 250-330. Which is it? Odedee 00:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Odedee,

Your point is valid. The first website in the external links section supports the dates in the text and the Catholic Encyclopedia supports the dates in the infobox (the year of death, at least). The Catholic Forum Saints Index explicitly states the years of death and birth as the ones in the infobox. More research needs to be done and a consensus reached. Hope this will happen soon. Thanks for pointing out this discrepancy.

Yours,

Savio mit electronics 13:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We have no primary source for what year she was born. The closest we get is when we see that she was "about 80" on her return from Palestine. We cannot use that to pin an exact year of birth on her. So I've modified the infobox and the inline text to reflect that looseness. And I've removed the Cat "Birth in 250" since she wasn't, or at least we don't have any evidence that she was. Wjhonson (talk) 23:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Journey Home from the Holy Land

Here in Cyprus it is widely told that Helen was shipwrecked on her journey home in Cyprus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.207.156.26 (talk) 12:48, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Faith, legends, facts

Some parts of this subject have been written with much objectivity, encyclopedic, like: "She is traditionally credited with finding the relics of the True Cross." IMHO such a statement doesn't even need a reference, the christian tradition is littered with such credits. Other parts of the text seem to be written by someone who seems to place his/her personal believes and the legends over facts:

when she touched the third and final cross she suddenly recovered

She also found the nails of the crucifixion.

part of Jesus Christ's tunic, pieces of the holy cross and the world's only pieces of the rope to which Jesus was tied with on the Cross.

Such sentences in christian subjects make it very hard to read for non-christians. Please keep that in mind when your adding/editing christian subjects. And please rewrite such phrases to meet with Wiki standards if you see them. I'm not very well capable of doing that myself because of my limited knowledge of the English language.Maggy Rond (talk) 11:55, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]