Greatmartyr Anastasia and Companions

Saints commemorated

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  Greatmartyr Anastasia and Companions

• Anastasia the Deliverer-from-Bonds

  Anastasia the Deliverer-from-Bonds (†c. 304) is one of the great virgin-martyrs of the Church, a noble Roman woman of the persecution of Diocletian who gave her wealth and her freedom to the service of the confessors filling the prisons of the empire. Disguised as a beggar, she went from city to city feeding, tending, ransoming and burying imprisoned Christians, and was herself at last seized, starved, and burned alive. Because her intercession heals the effects of poisons, potions and every noxious thing, the Greek Church surnames her Pharmakolytria, "deliverer from potions"; the Slavs, remembering her ministry to prisoners, call her Uzoreshitelnitsa, "loosener of bonds." Her relics were translated to Constantinople in the fifth century. She is commemorated on December 22, within the forefeast of the Nativity.

• Chrysogonus of Aquileia

  Chrysogonus (†c. 304) was a learned and devout Roman Christian, the teacher and lifelong spiritual guide of the great-martyr Anastasia the Deliverer-from-Bonds, who sustained her by his counsel through the persecution of Diocletian. Himself imprisoned for the faith, he was brought before the emperor at Aquileia, refused to sacrifice, and was beheaded, his body cast into the sea and recovered by the presbyter Zoilus. He is commemorated on December 22, together with Anastasia, whose passion is bound up with his own.

• Theodota of Bithynia

  Theodota (†c. 304) was a young Christian widow of Nicaea in Bithynia, a friend and helper of the great-martyr Anastasia the Deliverer-from-Bonds, who with her three small sons suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian. Refusing a pagan official who sought to marry her and preserving her purity, she was sent for judgment to Bithynia; her eldest son Evodus confessed Christ boldly under beating, and mother and children together were cast into a burning furnace. She is commemorated on July 29 and, with Anastasia and her companions, on December 22.

• Zoilus of Aquileia

  Zoilus (†c. 304) was a Christian presbyter near Aquileia who reverently recovered from the sea the body and severed head of the martyr Chrysogonus and hid the relics in his house. Granted a vision in which Chrysogonus foretold the martyrdom of three holy sisters and the presbyter's own approaching repose, Zoilus fell asleep in the Lord nine days later, as had been foretold. He is numbered among the martyrs commemorated with the great-martyr Anastasia the Deliverer-from-Bonds on December 22.

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