From the Prologue of Ochrid
The parents of Constantine were Emperor Constantius Chlorus and Empress Helena. Chlorus had other children by another wife, but by Helena he had only this Constantine. Constantine had three great battles when he became emperor: one against Maxentius, the tyrant in Rome; another against the Scythians on the Danube; and a third against the Byzantines. Before the battle with Maxentius, when Constantine was in great anxiety and doubt of his success, there appeared to him during the day a radiant cross in the sky, all adorned with stars, and on the cross was written: In this sign conquer. The emperor, amazed, ordered that a large cross be forged, similar to the one that had appeared to him, and that it be carried before the army. By the power of the Cross, he won a glorious victory over the numerically superior enemy. Maxentius drowned in the River Tiber. Immediately afterward Constantine issued the famous Edict of Milan in the year 313, that the persecutions of Christians should cease. Having defeated the Byzantines, he built a splendid capital city on the Bosporus, which from then on was called Constantinople. But before this Constantine fell into a severe illness of leprosy. The pagan priests and physicians advised him to bathe in the blood of slaughtered children as a cure. But he refused. Then the Apostles Peter and Paul appeared to him and told him to seek out Bishop Sylvester, who would heal him of his terrible disease. The bishop instructed him in the Christian faith and baptized him, and the leprosy disappeared from the emperor's body. When discord arose in the Church because of the treacherous heretic Arius, the emperor convened the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in the year 325, where the heresy was condemned and Orthodoxy was upheld. Saint Helena, the pious mother of the emperor, was greatly zealous for the faith of Christ. She visited Jerusalem and found the Precious Cross of the Lord, and built the Church of the Resurrection on Golgotha and many other churches throughout the Holy Land. In her eightieth year this holy woman departed to the Lord in the year 327. Emperor Constantine outlived his mother by ten years and reposed in his sixty-fifth year in the city of Nicomedia. His body was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.
