Peter Eddington and Clay Thornton traveled to Trier today to see an exhibition on Constantine the Great.

Although unplanned, the UCG film team’s visit to Germany coincided with an important exhibition in Trier on Roman emperor Constantine the Great. The exhibit opened only ten days prior to our visit and will run through November. It is considered to be one of the most important exhibits ever on Constantine and has more original material on display from Constantine’s era than any previous exhibition. It was no surprise, then, that the exhibition took two years to prepare. As she had done for Berlin, Jesmina Allaoua arranged for us to tour the three museums in Trier that are being used to host the exhibit. Since we came as "members of the press" several days after the exhibition was officially opened – when many reporters and camera teams were in Trier for the event – we had one of the exhibition’s organizers all to ourselves for a three hour tour. 🙂

Trier was a special city for Constantine and his mother Helena. They both resided there at times, and Helena is said to have brought the bones of the apostle Matthew to Trier after her visit to Jerusalem. Constantine also made Trier an administrative capital for the westernmost part of the Roman empire. During his reign Roman currency was in use from today’s southern England all the way to Syria. In today’s European Union, the same situation exists, with the euro in use from the Atlantic coast of Europe all the way to Greece. At the third museum of the day, we had a guided tour by one of the museum’s directors, Dr. Schulte. She explained to us how both the church and secular rulers have used Constantine as a source of authenticity. For example, during Mussolini’s famous "march on Rome", he made it a point to march under the arch of Constantine, which he did not allow Adolf Hitler to do when Hitler was in Rome in 1938. After a long day of videotaping, we enjoyed a brief visit to scenic "Burg Eltz" on our two hour drive back to the Bonn area.