Saint Elen of Caernarfon
The twenty-second of May in the Orthodox Church is the feast of Saint Elen of Caernarfon, also called Elen ‘of the Hosts’ or Elen ‘of the Ways’. Because she shares a name, because her feast is the following day, because she also had a son named Constantine, because she was also an empress of Rome and because she is intimately linked with several holy sites in Britain, she is often confused with Saint Helena the mother of Emperor Constantine. However, they are two distinct people. Saint Elen lived and flourished about sixty years after Saint Helena; and she was also indisputably British, being the daughter of Eudaf Hen. Her husband was a Gallæcian general and emperor named Magnus Clemens Maximus Augustus, the Macsen Wledig of British folklore.
According to the version of the Dream of Macsen Wledig preserved in the Mabinogion, the tale of Saint Elen begins with Magnus Maximus taking a mid-day siesta under a makeshift tent of shields after a late summer hunt. As he napped, he began to dream. In his dream he went upstream on a river until he came to a high mountain with its peak in the clouds, and then crossed it into a fair countryside. He found a spring on the other side of the mountain and followed the river downstream until it spanned his whole field of vision from one bank to the other, and at last he came to the shoreline. On this a great city stood, bedecked with banners of every hue and pattern, and below it in the estuary docked a fleet of ships.
Magnus Maximus walked a wharf made from whalebone onto a gleaming ship that seemed to him wrought all from gold and silver. The ship touched off at great speed as he handled the rudder, and bore him as though of its own will over the seas, to an island more beautiful than any he’d ever seen waking. After the ship lay anchor, Maximus disembarked and began to explore its vales, its forests and leas, its moors and hills. He had never seen such a gorgeous isle. At last before him loomed a mighty fastening on the seaside, with its gates open. Within, he encountered two young men, playing chess on an ornate chessboard. When he turned he saw a golden hall, and seated on an ivory throne was an old man with a wild beard and a fierce gaze, who bore all the marks of kingship: a golden crown, a golden torc, and many rings upon his hands and arms. He was busy whittling chess pieces. And before that old man sat the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
This woman caught Maximus’s gaze, and beckoned him to her. She bade him sit with her, and of course he did so. She embraced him, and leaned her face toward him to be kissed, but then—
His servants and courtiers, who had left Magnus Maximus to doze on the ground the whole of the afternoon, began to be worried. They clashed their shields and set the hounds to baying, and bade him rise. They yarked Maximus out of his sweet dream, and it was in a bitter mood that he found none of it to have been real. They returned to the city, where Maximus began to brood, distracted from all affairs of his waking life. His mind was wholly bent on the woman he’d seen in his dream. At last his steward made bold to tell him that his servants were discontented and were seeking ways to find a new master. Magnus Maximus then told his steward about the dream, the island, the castle and the girl, and asked them how he might discover if they were real or not. The steward sent out messengers to all corners of the Empire, but for a year and a day they sought in vain. Magnus Maximus fell into a worse despair, and he took the steward back to where he had taken a nap on a hunt that day, and showed him the beginnings of where his dream began.
Acting on the advice of his steward, he sent out thirteen heralds along the route he had described in his dream. They followed it faithfully, and at last came to Britain, and the mountain of Yr Wyddfa, or Snowdon. Beneath Snowdon lay the castle as their master had described. The heralds were greeted in the name of Eudaf Hen, and when they asked to see the lady of the holding, to present to her Magnus’s suit, they were confronted by Eudaf’s daughter Elen.
Confronted is the right word. In her case, the stereotypes about Celtic women all held true. She abused these hapless Roman heralds to their faces, accusing them of mocking her, and demanded to see the man himself before she would consent to marry him. The heralds, tails between legs, went back to Magnus and told him all as it had fallen out with them.
What could Magnus Maximus do but go himself? He mustered his armies and went in force to Britain, and asked to be admitted to the castle beneath Snowdon. There he saw all as he remembered it from his dream. The two young men at play were there: Aeddan ap Eudaf and Cynan Meriadog. Cynan rose on seeing Magnus and tried to bar him bodily from entering the castle, but he was drawn away by Aeddan and allowed to enter. There too was the old man, Eudaf Hen. The instant he saw Elen verch Eudaf, he knew that he had found the right woman. He embraced her, proposed to her, and went to bed with her that night. The following day, Elen demanded of him as a morning-gift the whole island of Britain, to be ruled in her father’s name. She also asked him to build for her three fastenings: one at Caernarfon, one at Caerleon and one at Caerfyrddin. She also asked that roads be built between these three, so that troops could move between them the faster. (From this, she earned her epithet of ‘Luyddog’ – or ‘of the Hosts’.) Magnus agreed to all of this, and it was done just as she asked. He lived in Britain for seven years before his position in Rome was usurped by a rival, and he was forced to leave again to defend it. He is unable to prevail over his rivals until Elen and her cunning warrior kinsmen Aeddan and Cynan arrive from Britain and come to his aid.
There is much in the foregoing Mabinogion version of the tale that is fanciful. For one thing: there already was a Roman fortress and city at Caerleon by the fourth century, as well as roads leading from it to other strategic points on the island. However, what seems to be true is that Magnus Maximus was indeed married (though his wife’s name is not preserved in any primary documents), and that they had at least one son named Flavius Victor, and two daughters Severa and Maxima. Flavius Victor was executed by his father’s chief enemy Emperor Saint Theodosius after his Magnus Maximus surrendered and was killed at Aquileia. However, the mother and two daughters of Magnus Maximus were spared. His wife’s fate is unknown.
Magnus Maximus’s wife was, however, known to be deeply devout and orthodox in her faith. Her spiritual father was Saint Martin of Tours, with whom she often took counsel. She also seems to have urged her husband to defend Orthodoxy against hæresy where his sway held. Magnus Maximus rather ruthlessly put down, for example, the Priscillian Gnostics in his home province of Roman Gallæcia.
Based on the ease and readiness with which Magnus Maximus was able to call forth troops from Britain in the imperial intrigues of the 380s, he also seems to have had some family ties there, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that he married into them. He was stationed in Britain as a young officer; ambitious as he was, he could very well have married into the family of Eudaf Hen. This would also make sense chronologically, since his (and Saint Elen’s) son Flavius Victor was old enough to accompany him back to the Continent when he made his bid to keep the Western Empire. Elen’s name is also attested in toponyms: the Roman-era road Sarn Helen, leading out from Caernarfon, was named for her who ordered its construction. Several holy wells throughout Britain bear the name of Helen. However, those particularly in and around Yr Hen Ogledd are more likely named after the earlier Saint Helena, whose husband and son were both stationed at Eboracum.
Despite appearing to us only in these historical fragments and through the haze of half-christened Welsh legend, a picture of Saint Elen Luyddog does begin to emerge. The daughter of a Romano-British chieftain, self-assured and strong-willed, she was naturally drawn to an ambitious and somewhat reckless junior officer of the Roman Army who may have been stationed somewhere around Caernarfon. She was not content, as the wife of such a man, with mere domestic pursuits, but urged her rank-climbing husband to strengthen her native province’s fortifications and road networks. We may also surmise that she was a patroness of British churches, as attested by the numerous holy wells that bear her name. The Greek Orthodox Church is quite right to remember this feisty Briton the day after her more illustrious namesake from the East. Holy and righteous Elen of the Hosts, builder of roads and bastion of the faith, pray unto Christ our God for us sinners!
The Sarn Helen
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