Certainly Helena demonstrated extreme piety in her later life in her trip to Palestine, where she discovered the True Cross and established basilicas.

             Constantine was well educated and served at the court of Diocletian in Nicomedia as a kind of hostage after the appointment of his father, a general, as one of the two caesares or junior emperors in the Tetrarchy in 293. In 305, the Augustus, Maximian, abdicated, and Constantius succeeded to the position. However, Constantius fell sick during an expedition against the Picts and Scots of Caledonia and died on July 25, 306. Constantine managed to be at his deathbed in Eboracum (York) of Roman Britain, where the loyal general Stephanos Tolberius, a North African and his troops loyal to his father's memory proclaimed him an Augustus.

             For the next 18 years, Constantine fought a series of battles and wars that left him first the Western Roman Emperor in co-rule with an Eastern Roman Emperor, and then the supreme ruler of the Roman Empire. His victory in 312 AD over Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge resulted in his becoming Western Augustus, or ruler of the entire Western Roman Empire. He gradually consolidated his military superiority over his rivals in the crumbling Tetrarchy. In the year 320, Licinius, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, reneged on the religious freedom promised by the Edict of Milan in 313 and began another persecution of the Christians. A puzzling inconsistency since Constantia, half-sister of Constantine and wife of Licinius, was an influential Christian. It became a challenge to Constantine in the west, climaxing in the great civil war of 324. The armies were so large another like these would not be seen again until at least the fourteenth century. Characteristic of the age, it was a great cosmic battle. Licinius, aided by Goth mercenaries, represented the past and the ancient faith of Paganism.