Evelyn Waugh’s historical novel Helena tells the story of the saintly mother of Constantine the Great, who is honored for journeying to Jerusalem in the fourth century AD and recovering the True Cross, on which Jesus died.
Helena has the form of a historical novel, but the language, dialogue, and sensibility are that of the post-Edwardian upper-class British society of the author’s youth. Helena has often been neglected by fans of Waugh, yet it was the author’s favorite novel of all his works. He wrote, “Technically, this is the most ambitious work of a writer who is devoted to the niceties of his craft.” His daughter Harriet says that Helena was “the only one of his books that he ever cared to read aloud to the whole family.”
Waugh probably made fourth-century Romans speak like twentieth-century Londoners because he aimed the book directly at the spiritual malaise of his times. Helena is Waugh’s most intentional statement about the truth of Christianity. Two questions lie at the heart of the story: What is true religion, and how does one become a saint?
These are the concerns that drive Helena on her epic journey from the household of a British chieftain to an honored place in the imperial court of Byzantium. Helena is an exuberant, “horse-mad” young woman who is married to Constantius, a Roman officer who rises to become co-regent of the empire in the west. Constantius divorces Helena for a more politically advantageous marriage, but not before she gives birth to a son, the future Constantine the Great. When Constantine succeeds his father as emperor, he recalls his mother from exile and installs her at court.
All along, Helena is determined to find the truth of things. She converts to a Christian faith that is firmly rooted in the teachings of the apostles and the facts of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Her faith is contrasted with the hollow gnosticism of her husband and her son. The arrogant Constantine strikes a modern utopian tone when he scornfully takes leave of Pope Sylvester before departing for his new capital: “You can have your old Rome, Holy Father, with its Peter and Paul and its tunnels full of martyrs. We start with no unpleasant associations ….”
Helena is drawn precisely to these “tunnels full of martyrs.” For her, and for Waugh, Christianity rests on the tangible historical reality of Jesus and what he did. She journeys to Jerusalem to find the actual cross of Christ. Its location is revealed to her in a vision, and its authenticity is verified by a miraculous healing. This visible, physical construction of wood testifies to the truth. Without it, Christianity is just an appealing idea; with it, a window opens on the supernatural. God does not save us by delivering us from our humanity, as the gnostics say. Rather, he saves us by entering our world and embracing it.
This lifelong quest for the truth makes Helena a saint. |
