Constantine the Great I (279 – 337) First Christian Emperor of Rome, Invoker of First Council of Nicaea, Roman Catholic Saint, Eponym of Constantinople

Saint Constantine the Great – Mosaic in the Hagia Sophia, section: Maria as patron saint of Constantinople, detail: donor portrait of Emperor Constantine I with a model of the city

Expansion of Christianity

The Fall of the Western Roman Empire, 480 AD

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Constantine’s mother, Saint Helena, was the daughter of Colius Coel II (219 – 262; 2nd great-grandson of Colius Coel, 1st King of Britons). She was also a descendant of Anna of Arimathea, daughter of Joseph of Arimathea, and a cousin of Lord Jesus. Her other pedigree states she was born in Bithynia, a daughter of an innkeeper, who gave birth to Constantine after making the acquaintance of a young military officer, Flavius Valerius Constantius I (242 – 306), and becoming his concubine.

Of the two pedigrees, Geoffrey’s is much more romantic, especially in considering Saint Helena as a descendant of Anna of Arimathea. Her father was the Roman governor of Cornwall in charge of tin mining and smelted ore exportation around the world, but mainly to Jerusalem. His nephew Jesus first sailed there with his uncle from Jerusalem when he was a boy. After the Crucifixion, Joseph returned with the Holy Grail to Cornwall where he spent the remainder of his life. The recovery of the lost holy relic is the primary source of the adventure of the Camelot King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table myth (?). King Arthur was also a descendant of Anna of Arimathea as well as Dareca verch Calpurnius (St. Patrick‘s sister).

In 306 Constantine succeeded his father as emperor of the Western Roman Empire after he died in Yorkshire, Britain of battlefield wounds. He and his son were engaged in a war to quell invading Picts. In defeating the Emperor of the East in a military campaign in 324, he became the sole emperor of both East and West. By 330 he moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople.

The First Council of Nicaea (325) was Constantine’s attempt to amalgamate the ragtag “Christian” religion into one that he and his successors would later absolutely control. The New Testament arose from the effort. It’s interesting to note that out of the 280 or so delegates who convened in Nicaea only 5 represented the West. He obliviously perceived, given his passion for Christian beliefs that he professed after his conversion to Christianity, that managing the hearts and souls of vassals of the Roman ruling state would succeed more if predicated on a religion that preferred spiritual salvation in return for the self-sacrifice of their mortality to its benefit. My Norse ancestors were late in adopting Christianity as a religious belief, maybe as late as the ninth century and beyond, but it was, perhaps to them who did, an alliance that served to further their territorial expansion ambitions, often as vassals, in effect, of the Roman Catholic Church. Chief among them was Ganger Hrólf “Rollo” (860 – 930) 1st Duke of Normandy, Count of Rouen.

The establishment of the Roman Catholic Church and the quick spread of Christianity thereafter later proved to be rather fortuitous for Rome, especially after the official fall of the Roman Empire when German chieftain Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus, in 476. (Odoacer was an agnatic descendant of Arminius “The Great” (17 BC – 21 AD) Prince of Teutons .) By the time of the Great Schism in 1054, the territory of the Roman Catholic Church encompassed as much if not more than the Roman Empire controlled at the height of its military might in 211 AD. Add the expansion of Catholicism as a result of the European conquest of the Americas and elsewhere, the church directly controlled the spiritual and secular lives of its parishioners way than the Roman Empire ever did, perhaps twice as many, putatively.

The succession of Popes, both before and after the fall of Rome, were mainly Italians (217 out of 266, 88 from Rome) of noble birth. Most were as politically powerful as Roman emperors, perhaps more so, especially during the zenith of the Holy Roman Empire. St Linus, Lleyn ap Caratacus ( – 76) Founder of the Roman Catholic Church was arguably the first Bishop of Rome.

Byzas of Megara (fl. 660 BC) was the eponymic founder of Byzantium, the city later known as Constantinople and Istanbul today. Seeking a new land to colonize he made a pilgrimage to the Temple of Apollo to seek spiritual guidance as to where he should he should go. The Oracle of Delphi responded, “Go to the land opposite the city of the blind.” He and his tribe spent the next forty years wandering through the wilderness before happening upon the western shores of the Bosphorus. The Chalcedon settlement on the opposite side was occupied by Megaran Greeks, his mortal rivals and cousins, so he planted his settlement on the more favorably hospitable land there. The fount of Wesrtern Civilization thereafter, it was a Greek-speaking culture until the Ottoman Turks took control of the city/state during the 15th century AD.

He’s ranked #21 in Hart’s Most Influential People in History – Top 500 List (125).

By Steven Wood Collins

I spent most of my life unaware of my ancestral heritage. Sure, I knew of the personal history of my more immediate relatives; but beyond that, I never had any inkling as to my ancestral heritage. Then one day many years ago my sister said to me, “I sometimes wonder about our family background.” And so my quest to discover our genealogical roots commenced.

I started building my family tree with the very basic relationships, going back in time from my grandparents, one ancestor at a time. That initial effort proved to be the hardest part of the pursuit, mainly due to my lack of expertise as a novice genealogical researcher. As I gained familiarity with the databases and how to efficiently mine them, my progress gained ever-increasing momentum. Today, The Patricians! tree (Ancestry.com) contains nearly 120,000 individuals, stretching over 135 generations, 5,800 of which are my direct ancestors in a genealogical sense.

During this trek back in time, I encountered fascinating figures in both history and obscurity. This blog contains many stories about their genealogical relationship to me (and many of you). By far and away, as a student of history, the historically obscure individuals are of particular interest to me. I cite Baron “Blue Beard” Montmorency-Laval de Rais (1405 – 1440) as an example of a historically maligned personage whose real contribution to history, as both a playwright and hero of France, has yet to be properly recognized. Another example is Earl Edward de Vere (1550 – 1604), who’s yet to gain widespread recognition as the actual author of the body of literary work wrongly ascribed to William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616).

My life-long interest in international economics and finance continues unabated. I primarily demonstrate this professional involvement as a contributor to the Long Room, the members-only international finance professionals' forum hosted by the Financial Times of London.

I'm an avid recreational scuba diver who enjoys traveling to exotic dive sites. My love of the sea and marine life gives me an unbounded appreciation and support of “green” issues, especially those devoted to the conservation of endangered species and coral reefs.

He continually posts results of his personal genealogical research to his Goodreads Authors Blog. Entitled The Patricians - The Ancestral Heritage of Steven Wood Collins, the work represents thousand of hours of his research efforts and related commentary.

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