British Constantine

It had both secular and religious implications, Constantine having unified the Roman Empire of his time, and made Christianity a state religion.

The Christian interpretation is Messianic, an idea grafted onto Virgil's original praise of a coming Golden Age of empire.

It was bound up with completely unattested stories about the British origin of his mother, Helena of Constantinople, important in Christian tradition.

[8] In international relations, the British Constantine was deployed at the Council of Constance to argue assertively for separate English representation, as distinct from the "German nation" in which it had been traditionally included.

As a consequence Polydore Vergil was allowed to publish his Historia Anglicana in 1534, a work dismissive of the Arthurian matter, but supporting the British origins of Helena.

[12][13] James I in a medal struck for his 1603 accession to the English throne claimed by means of the Latin inscription to be "emperor of the whole island of Britain".

[15] John Gordon preached on Constantine's British birth: it was still widely believed that his mother Helena was a Briton.

[23] In fact there was ambivalence about the historical figure of Constantine, because his appeal in religious terms was to Erastianism (for example to John Foxe); while Puritans preferred to keep the state out of the church, and also might distance themselves from Rome in any form.

[24] Inigo Jones planned at Temple Bar a structure based on the Arch of Constantine, with an equestrian statue of Charles I on top.