mountainman

In an earlier thread we asked
Was Flavia Iulia Helena the 1st christian pilgrim?.
Apparently, according to Pohlsander, in his The Emperor Constantine (or via: amazon.co.uk), 1996, there was an earlier pilgrim.... Constantine's mother-in-law, Eutropia.

The following extract p.58 is relevant to the occassion of the
change of the name in this forum, and deals with a very small
part of Abraham's Holy Land, as follows:

"Among the places visited by Eutropia was Mamre (nr Hebron),
a holy place to Jews and Christians because here, according to
Genesis 18, Abraham had hospitably entertained three divine
messengers in the shade of an oak tree or terebinth. The lady
found that this holy place was defiled by pagan rites as well as
by secular activities. She reported to Constantine, who at
once ordered the place to be purified and a church to be built there. The church was completed by 333. Remnants of
the outer walls exist to this day, and we know that the atrium
contained Abraham's altar, the well and the tree.
Remnants of that tree were still seen by St. Jerome.

Constantine's building activities in Palestine gave to that
country a central place in Christian sentiments which it had
never had before; they in fact made it the "Holy Land."

Like he dealt with the ancient Obelisk of Karnack, Constantine ripped the
ancient foundations out of the world, and established new
foundations for a new Roman (not Graeco-Egyptian) imperial
age.



Pete Brown
Authors of Antiquity