Kyriake, Kaleria and Mary of Caesarea

June 7 (church date; New Calendar civil June 7; Old Calendar civil June 20). The notice is a bare synaxarion commemoration with no appointed office; where it is sung, the common of women martyrs serves. The three share the day with the martyr Theodotus of Ancyra, with Daniel of Sketis, with the Roman popes and martyrs Marcellinus, Marcellus and Sisinius and Cyriacus with their company, and with two other women martyrs of the same persecution, Zenais of Caesarea — of their own city — and Potamiaena of Alexandria. June 7 is thus, in the Byzantine year, one of the days that gathers the victims of Diocletian's edicts from opposite ends of the empire.

The three would be painted by the common formula for women martyrs: standing frontally in a close group, in the long chiton and the maphorion covering the head and shoulders, haloed, each holding in her right hand the small cross of witness and often extending the left palm outward in prayer, with the names lettered beside the heads — since nothing but the inscription distinguishes them. Because their sole recorded act is intercession, the scene that would properly belong to them is not a torment but the three of them at prayer in the wilderness, hands raised, with the city they had left behind them; that composition is not part of the received repertory, and no cycle of their passion exists.

No pre-1900 image of these three martyrs, securely identified by inscription, has been located for this collection, and the risk of taking some other Kyriake, Valeria or Mary for them is high enough that no candidate has been stored. The Menologion of Basil II, the usual resort for a minor fixed-calendar commemoration, cannot serve: it covers only September to February.

• The name Kaleria. The Greek transmits Καλερία, which is almost certainly the Latin Valeria taken through Greek, where initial V was regularly written B, and B as often read K by a copyist. The Slavonic and Russian lists print Valeria (Валерия), the Greek and OCA Kaleria; both stand for one woman. The entry gives Kaleria as the head-form, following the Greek and the OCA notice, with Valeria among the alternates.
• The date of the commemoration. The three are kept on June 7 in the Byzantine calendars. Cardinal Caesar Baronius, revising the Roman Martyrology, entered "Valeria, Cyriaca and Maria" at Caesarea in Palestine under June 5, and — this is the confusion worth flagging — attached to them there the name of Zenais of Caesarea, whose own commemoration is June 7 and whose synaxis at Constantinople was June 6. The Byzantine books keep the two notices distinct, and so does this collection; the Latin conflation is a cataloguer's error and not a witness to a joint martyrdom.
• Almost certainly a doublet of the Five Virgins of June 6. The Greek books carry, on the preceding day, the Five Virgins of Caesarea — Martha, Mary, Cyria, Valeria and Marcia — and the two notices are the same notice twice. Three of the five names answer exactly to these three: Mary to Mary, Cyria (Κυρία) to Kyriake (Κυριακή), Valeria (Βαλερία) to Kaleria (Καλερία). So does every element of the narrative: converts to Christianity rather than born Christians, living together in retirement, keeping fasting, vigil and prayer, praying not for themselves but for the Church under persecution, denounced to the governor of the province, refusing to sacrifice to the idols, and dying in the torments — with no year, no emperor, no governor's name and no burial-place in either notice. Cardinal Baronius then produced a third form of the same commemoration at June 5, "Valeria, Cyriaca and Maria" of Caesarea, with Zenais attached. What most probably happened is that one Palestinian company of ascetic women martyrs reached the synaxaria twice, in a longer and a shorter roll, and the calendar duly kept both. Because the Byzantine books do keep both, on two days and under two headings, this collection keeps two entries and states the relation in each; a decision to merge them would be a decision against the received calendar and is left to be taken deliberately rather than by an author's guess.
• How much is history? Everything in the notice is generic: converted pagans, a solitary place, a refusal, torments, a crown. There is no passion narrative, no governor's name, no place of burial, no year. It is entirely possible that these are three of the Caesarean martyrs whom Eusebius knew and whose names reached the synaxaria detached from their story; it is equally possible that a single line in a martyrology has been read as three persons. The record does not decide it, and no detail has been supplied here to fill the gap.
• Not to be confused with the great-martyr Kyriaki of Nicomedia (July 7), the best known bearer of that name; nor with the several other martyrs called Valeria in the calendar, among them the Valeria of the company of Kerkyra and the martyrs of Corfu and the Valeria who appears in the passion of Vincent of Saragossa; nor, among the very many holy women called Mary, with any of the martyrs of that name kept elsewhere in the year.