Her Burial and the Honors Her Son Gave Her

Her body too was honored with special marks of respect. It was escorted on its way to the imperial city by a vast train of guards, and there laid in a royal tomb. Such were the last days of our emperor’s mother, a woman worthy of everlasting remembrance, both for her own devotion in practice and because she had given birth to so extraordinary and admirable a son. And his character may well be called blessed for his devotion to his mother, as well as on other grounds. Through his influence he made her so devout a worshiper of God, though she had not been one before, that she seemed to have been taught from the first by the Savior of mankind. Besides this, he had honored her so fully with imperial dignities that in every province, and in the very ranks of the army, she was spoken of by the titles Augusta and empress, and her likeness was stamped on gold coins. He had even given her authority over the imperial treasury, to use and distribute it as she wished and judged best in every case; for this enviable distinction too she received from her son. So among the qualities that make his memory shine we may rightly count his surpassing love for his mother, by which he fully obeyed the divine commands that children should give due honor to their parents. In this way, then, the emperor carried out in Palestine the noble works I have described above; and indeed in every province he raised new churches on a far grander scale than those that had stood before his time. [a]