Five Virgins of Caesarea
The Holy Five Virgin Martyrs Martha, Mary, Cyria, Valeria and Marcia of Caesarea in Palestine
Martyr · Virgin
Commemorated 6 June — Martyrdom at Caesarea in Palestine after refusing to sacrifice
Five women of Caesarea in Palestine — Martha, Mary, Cyria, Valeria and Marcia — were catechised by a devout Christian, baptised, and thereafter lived together in retirement, passing their lives in fasting, vigil and prayer for the strengthening of the Christian faith throughout the world. They were denounced to the governor; when they refused to sacrifice to the idols they were severely tortured, and each in turn gave up her life to Christ. Their names, their city and the manner of their end are all that the synaxarion transmits; neither the year nor the name of the governor is given.
Caesarea and its martyrs
Caesarea Maritima, the Roman capital of Palestine, was one of the great martyr-cities of the East. It was the seat of the governor before whom the Christians of the province were tried, and Eusebius, its bishop, wrote its Martyrs of Palestine from what he had seen there. The five virgins belong to this setting, and their notice — denunciation, an examination before the governor, the demand of sacrifice, torture, death — follows the pattern that Eusebius describes for the province a hundred times over.
Catechesis and baptism
The notice is careful about one point that most such notices omit: how they became Christians. They were not born to the faith. They were taught by a devout believer — an unnamed Christian who catechised them — and then baptised. Their martyrdom is therefore the fruit of a private catechesis, of the ordinary domestic transmission of the faith in a pagan city, and the notice preserves it as such.
The common life
After baptism they did not disperse. They lived together in retirement, and the notice gives their programme in three words which are the vocabulary of monasticism before there was monasticism: fasting, vigilance and prayer. It also gives their intention, and this is unusual and worth marking: they prayed not chiefly for themselves but for the strengthening of the Christian faith throughout the world. They were, in effect, a small house of ascetic women in a hostile city, praying for the whole Church — a form of life attested in third-century Syria and Palestine well before the monastic settlements.
Denunciation and martyrdom
They were betrayed to the local governor. The examination turned, as always, on the single act of sacrifice to the idols; they refused. They were grievously tormented, and each of the five surrendered her soul to Christ in the torments. The notice does not say that they were beheaded, and does not distinguish their deaths: the five are one company, and the calendars keep them as one.
Feast and commemoration
June 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil June 19). The five are commemorated in the Greek synaxaria of the day, usually first among the day's martyrs, before Gelasius and after the venerable fathers Hilarion the New of Dalmatia and Attalus. No proper office is appointed and no canon to them survives; the common of women martyrs is sung and their notice is read at the synaxarion.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of women martyrs)
Thy lambs, O Jesus, cry aloud with a great voice: We long for Thee, O our Bridegroom, and in seeking Thee we suffer; we are crucified and buried with Thee in Thy baptism, and we suffer for Thy sake that we may reign with Thee; accept us as spotless sacrifices offered unto Thee in love. At the prayers of Martha, Mary, Cyria, Valeria and Marcia, O merciful One, save our souls.
Iconography
No iconography proper to the five has developed, and no pre-1900 image of them has been identified for this collection. In the June leaf of a painted menologion they would stand as a rank of five young women martyrs, uniformly treated as such companies are: the long tunic and the maphorion, the head veiled, each holding the cross, sometimes with the palm of victory; the names written above the heads, which in these group commemorations is the only means of telling one figure from another. Their feast falls in June, so they are absent from the Menologion of Basil II, whose miniatures cover only September to February.
Disputed questions
- Date unknown. No year, emperor or governor is transmitted. The Caesarean setting and the procedure described suit the third century or the Diocletianic persecution, but nothing is asserted here and the company is indexed among the saints whose era the sources do not fix.
- The names. The Greek books give Μάρθα, Μαρία, Κυρία, Βαλερία, Μαρκία. The fourth name is very frequently printed Βαρέρια (Vareria) — a scribal corruption of Valeria, the Latin name, which is what it must be. Κυρία (Kyria) is sometimes anglicised Cyra or run together with the preceding name as "Mary Cyria," which reduces the company to four; the calendars that call them the five virgins are to be preferred, and the number five is in the title of the commemoration itself.
- Not to be confused with Marana and Cyra of Beroea (February 28), the Syrian recluses of Theodoret's History, whose names resemble two of these; nor with Martha the mother of Symeon of the Wonderful Mountain (July 4); nor with the Myrrhbearing Maries or the other Maries of the calendar. The five are known only as a company of this day. Above all, not to be confused with the Five Virgin-Martyrs of Persia — Thecla, Mariamne, Martha, Mary and Ennatha, beheaded near the village of Aza under Shapur II and kept three days later, on June 9: another company of five consecrated virgins, likewise containing a Martha and a Mary, in the same week of the calendar. The two groups are distinct, of different countries and different persecutions.
- Absent from the Slavonic calendars. They are kept on June 6 in the Greek books; the Russian calendars for the day give the Latin triad of Archelais, Thecla and Susanna and the Russian saints, and omit these five.
- Gelasius. Greek lists print Gelasius the Martyr in the same clause as the five virgins, and some modern calendars run the names together as though he suffered with them. The notices are distinct and describe different deaths; the association is calendrical only.