3 August 326, etc.
2006.08.03
Constantine the Great left Rome 3 August 326 and never returned to Rome.
Within the week prior, Constantine had buried both his mother Helena and his wife Fausta.
There is one extant example of the damnatio memoriae of Fausta, CIL X 678, where the words FAUSTA and UXORI (wife) are replaced by HELENA and MATRI (mother). One of the several extant examples of the damnatio memoriae of Crispus also appears on this fragment of inscription.
The first person to break the law of silence regarding Helena and the True Cross was Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch. I found out yesterday that Eustathius is also a saint, and his feast day is 16 July.
St. Eustathius was a native of Side in Pamphylia, and confessed the faith of Christ before the persecutors, as St. Athanasius assures us. He was learned, eloquent and virtuous. Being made bishop of Beroea in Syria, he began to be highly considered in the Church; and in due course he was translated to the see of Antioch, in dignity the next to Alexandria, and then the third in the world. He at the same time was called on to assist at the general Council of Nicaea, where he was received with much honour and distinguished himself by his opposition to Arianism. Amidst his external work for the service of others he did not forget that charity must begin at home, and he labored in the first place to sanctify his own soul; but after watering his own garden he did not confine the stream there, but let it flow abroad to enrich the neighboring soil, and to dispense plenty and fruitfulness all around. He sent into other dioceses that were subject to his oversight men capable of instructing and encouraging the faithful, and was greatly alarmed to find that Eusebius, Bishop of Caesaria in Palestine, favored the new heresy (this same Eusebius is known and honoured as "the father of church history"). The distrust of Eusebius for the doctrine of this and other bishops, and his accusation that they altered the Nicene creed, provoked a storm against him among the Arians, who about the year 330 [sic] obtained his disposition.
The holy pastor assemblemed the people before his departure from Antioch, and exhorted them to remain steadfast in the true doctrine: which exhortations were of so great weight in preserving many in the orthodox faith that a body of "Eustathians" were formed, who refused to recognize bishops appointed over them by the Arians. But this loyal behaviour afterwards developed into a factious and troublesome sectarianism in the face of orthodox preletes. St. Eustathius was exiled with several priests and deacons to Trajanopolis in Thrace, but the place and date of his death are alike somewhat uncertain. Most of his copious writings have perished; his principal extant work is a disquisition against Origen, in which the powers of the pythoness of Endor (I Kings xxviii 7-23) are criticized. Sozomen commends these works both for their style and their matter--but nothing shows his virtue so well as the patience with which he sufferd first lying accusations in matters of weight, and then unjust disposition and banishment. St. Eustathius bore his exile with resignation and submission, greater under its disgrace and hardships than while his virtues shone with lustre on the episcopal chair. He is named in the canon of the Syrian and Maronite Mass.
--Butler's Lives of the Saints
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