other · 326 · Jerusalem
Helena was an innkeeper's daughter who became the consort of Constantius and the mother of Constantine, and about 326, close to eighty, she travelled through the eastern provinces to Palestine. What Eusebius reports is a progress of enormous imperial generosity: she gave to cities and to individuals and to soldiers, freed prisoners and exiles, and founded two churches, one over the cave at Bethlehem and one on the Mount of Olives. He describes all of it at length, and he says nothing about the cross. The finding is first told about seventy years later — by Ambrose in the funeral oration for Theodosius, then by Rufinus, Socrates and Sozomen, in versions that differ over where and how. Something was certainly found at Jerusalem in Constantine's reign: Cyril of Jerusalem, writing in the 340s, says pieces of the wood are distributed over the whole world, and that is close enough to the event to be evidence. What is doubtful is the attribution to Helena, and this dataset separates the two claims rather than telling them as one, which is why the event is graded traditional and named for the journey rather than for the discovery.
Did Helena find the True Cross?
Eusebius, who tells the story of her pilgrimage in detail and knew the people involved, does not say she did.