Dark Age Women

In the January, 1992 issue of Working Women magazine, Gail Collins, the journalist who wrote

the endpiece enitled 'Outbox', commented on the fact that life would be a great deal more dismal

for women if the New Year they were facing was the year 1000 A.D. Though her piece was

humorous, there were some startling truths contained in it, and it is even true that, depending on

where you were at the time, 1000 A.D. was worse for women than 1000 B.C. During this, the

year 2002 of the calendar we use in the Christian world, women would do well to consider how

and why this happened, in order to make certain we never again fall into a religious dark age.

Helena (3rd century a.c.e.)

Mother of the Emperor Constantine, she was one of the first Christians to make a pilgrimage to

Israel. Daughter of King Coel of Colchester, it was likely she was raised as a Christian, since there

was a Christian church and bishop in Colchester at the time of her birth. A number of churches in

England are dedicated to her, in particular the church of St. Helena at Bishopgate.

Helena was married to Chlorus for nineteen years, but he divorced her in 293 a.d. and married

Theodora, the daughter of his patron, Maximian. It was then he was named Caesar and made ruler

of Gaul, Spain and Britain. When Chlorus died and Constantine became Emperor, he recalled his

mother to the court of Rome. When she was in her seventies, Helena superintended the building

of a church on Mount Calvary. She found what she thought to be the tomb of Christ, but a temple

to Venus had been erected on top of it. She had the temple destroyed and the tomb

excavated.

Helena was sainted by the Christian church for supposedly discovering the cross on which Christ

had been crucified. Her real contribution to history, however, lay in her talent for drawing people

to her cause, building churches to her religion, and working for the poor. She wasn't terrific at the

teaching of her son, however -- Constantine killed his eldest son Crispus and ordered his wife

Fausta to be suffocated in a heated bath.

Marcella, Melania and Paula (4th century a.c.e.)