Euthasia
The Holy Virgin Martyr Euthasia
Martyr · Virgin · d. c. 305
Commemorated 12 January — Martyrdom by the sword
Euthasia (died c. 305) was a virgin-martyr commemorated on January 12, of whom the synaxaria preserve only the fact of her consecrated virginity and her death by the sword. The Greek books group her among the martyrs of the Diocletianic age, about the year 305.
Of Euthasia almost nothing is transmitted. The synaxaria and the service-books remember her as a virgin who was martyred by the sword — beheaded for the confession of Christ — and the Greek tradition places her death about the year 305, in the persecution under Diocletian, commemorating her on January 12 alongside the soldier-martyr Mertius. Neither the place of her suffering nor the circumstances of her passion are preserved; hers is one of the many names the Church has kept in honour when the acts behind the name were lost.
Feast and commemoration
Euthasia is commemorated on January 12 (church date; Old Calendar civil January 25), within the afterfeast of the Theophany, on the day of Tatiana of Rome.
Disputed questions
- Her designation. Some modern listings attach to her the epithet "of Nicomedia," but the older synaxaria and menaia style her simply "the virgin-martyr Euthasia, by the sword," without a place; the geographic epithet is not securely attested and is not adopted here.
- Not to be confused with two saints of similar name and season: Euphrasia of Nicomedia, a virgin-martyr kept on January 19; and Eupraxia (Euphrasia) of Tabenna in Egypt, the venerable nun (†c. 393) also commemorated on January 12 — a monastic ascetic, not a martyr, and a wholly distinct saint. The rendering of Euthasia's name as a form of "Eupraxia" in some calendars has caused the two January-12 saints to be conflated; the Greek books keep them separate — Εὐθασία the martyr and Εὐπραξία the venerable.