Helena, la luz de Roma

When an empire falters, legends are born While heroes and cowards alike died in the arenas of circuses and amphitheaters, in the imperial palaces, a handful of men decided the course of civilization. In the heart of that storm, a woman named Helena would write one of the most extraordinary pages in history. Centuries before being canonized, Saint Helena was the companion and mother of emperors, as well as the woman who achieved the impossible: that the symbol of the cross would triumph over the eagle of Rome. At the end of the third century, the Empire was crumbling in an unprecedented crisis. Rome unleashed its fury against the Christians, the legions fought against the barbarians, and Helena survived in a world plagued by conspiracies and betrayals with the sole certainty that her son Constantine was destined to change the course of history. On the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the author of The Olive Tree of the Claudius transports us to the epicenter of the most silent and powerful revolution of Antiquity. Together with Constantine and the wise Bishop Osio of Cordoba, Helena will make religious tolerance a reality after centuries of persecution. At the end of her days, as the culmination of an extraordinary life, Helena embarks on her last journey: a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she will discover the sacred places that will seal her legend forever. With the narrative pulse of the great masters of historical fiction, Mar Rodríguez Vacas masterfully recreates an era of epic transition in which millennial paganism gave way to the spiritual revolution of Christianity. A story of unshakeable faith, conjugal and maternal love, betrayals, threats, and feminine determination that changed the world forever.