Orthodox Icon Saints Constantine and Helen

Orthodox Icon Saints Constantine and Helen

The Orthodox Icon of Saints Constantine and Helen is lovingly crafted in natural poplar wood. Its technique is lithography, while the wood is carved with a wavy outline that gives a modern touch to the icon.

Its embossed representation makes it a unique piece which requires high craftsmanship to be made. Its special design manages to combine traditional and modern elements, making it the most loved icon design in the customers preferences!

It is manufactured in Greece by experienced craftsmen and is produced in 4 dimensions in order to cover every need. Finally, it is worth noting that it has been specially treated and varnished to have maximum resistance to time and damage.

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Constantine the Great and Saint Helen

Constantine the Great and Isapostolos was born in 272 according to the prevailing opinion in Naiso in Upper Moesia (present-day Nis in Serbia) although both Tarsus in Cilicia and Drepano in Bithynia are mentioned. He was Roman emperor from 306 to 337. He was the son of Flavius ​​Valerius Constantius, an officer in the Roman army, and his wife, Helen. His father became caesar, deputy emperor in the west, in 293. Constantine was sent east, where he rose through the ranks to become a military official under the emperors Diocletian and Galerius. In 305 he rose to the rank of Augustus and was recalled west to campaign under his father in Britain.

After his father's death in 306, he was recognized as emperor by the army at Ev'oracus and emerged victorious in a series of internal wars within the empire against the emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become the sole ruler of the West and East from 324.

As emperor, Constantine instituted many administrative, economic, social, and military reforms to strengthen the empire. He became known for three world-historical decisions:

• •He signed the decree of Milan in 313 AD. which established the principle of secularism. Thus, for the first time, Christianity was under the protection of the emperor. With this decree, Constantine the Great stopped the persecution of Christians and legitimized Christianity as a "permitted religion", whose followers had to pray to God for the happiness of the state.
• •He moved the capital of his empire from Rome to Constantinople.
• • He convened the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the most decisive for the subsequent development of the worldwide Christian Church.

Saint Helen was born in Drepano, Bithynia, Asia Minor, around 247 AD. she seems to have been of humble origin. Saint Helen gave birth to Constantine in the year 272 AD. in Naiso, Moesia (present-day Nis, Serbia). When, five years later, Constantine Chloros was made Caesar by Diocletian, he was forced to remove her in order to marry Theodora, stepdaughter of the emperor Maximian.

Despite this fact, Constantine the Great honored his mother in particular. He awarded her the title of Augustus, put her image on coins and gave her name to a city in Bithynia (Helenopolis). Saint Helen went in 326 AD. in Jerusalem, where "with great effort and much expense and intimidation they saw the holy cross and the other two crosses of the robbers", as the Cypriot Chronographer Leontios Macheiras writes.

Returning to Constantinople, a year after finding the Holy Cross of the Lord, Saint Helen also passed through Cyprus. Saint Helen slept in peace probably in 327 AD. at the age of eighty.

As was natural, her son took her holy remains to Constantinople and buried her in the church of the Holy Apostles.

Orthodox Church celebrates their memory on May 21

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Orthodox Icon Saints Constantine and Helen