Constantine's parents were Emperor Constantius Florus and Empress Jelena. Flor had more children from another wife, but from Jelena she only had this Konstantin. Constantine had three great battles when he became emperor: one against Maxentius, the tyrant in Rome, the second against the Scythians on the Danube and the third against the Byzantines. Before the fight with Maxentius, when Constantine was in great worry and doubts about his success, a brilliant cross appeared to him in the sky, all decorated with stars, and on the cross it was written: win with this. The emperor, amazed, ordered a large cross to be made, similar to what appeared to him, and to be carried in front of the army. By the power of the cross, he won a glorious victory over a numerically superior enemy. Maxentius drowned in the Tiber River. Immediately afterwards, Constantine issued the famous Edict in Milan in 313 to stop the persecution of Christians. Having defeated the Byzantines, he built a wonderful capital city on the Bosphorus, which has since been called Constantinople. But before that, Constantine fell into a severe disease called leprosy. Priests and doctors advised him to bathe in the blood of slaughtered children as a remedy. But he refused. Then the apostles Peter and Paul appeared to him and told him to look for Bishop Sylvester, who would cure him of a terrible illness. The bishop taught him the Christian faith and baptized him, and the denunciation disappeared from the emperor's body. When a rift arose in the church due to the disruptive heretic Arius, the emperor convened the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325, where heresy was condemned and Orthodoxy was established. Saint Jelena, the pious mother of the emperors, was very zealous for the faith of Christ. She visited Jerusalem and found the Holy Cross of the Lord, and built the Church of the Resurrection on Calvary and many other churches in the Holy Land. In her eightieth year, this holy woman presented herself to the Lord in 327. And Emperor Constantine outlived his mother by ten years and died at the age of sixty-five in the city of Nicomedia. His body was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.

Venerable Jelena Dečanska.