Theodosia of Tyre
The Holy Virgin-Martyr Theodosia of Tyre
Martyr · Virgin · d. 307
Commemorated 3 April — Martyrdom of the maiden of Tyre at Caesarea
Theodosia was a young maiden of Tyre, about eighteen years old, who during the persecution of Maximinus Daza went up to the confessors awaiting trial at Caesarea in Palestine to greet them and ask their prayers, and was for this seized and put to a cruel death — her sides and breasts torn, and at last cast into the sea (or, in the Greek synaxarion, beheaded). Her martyrdom is recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea, who was an eyewitness of the persecution.
In the seventh year of the persecution begun by Diocletian and carried on with special ferocity in Palestine by the governor Urbanus under Maximinus, a company of Christian confessors was being held at Caesarea, awaiting sentence for their faith. As they sat before the governor's tribunal, a young woman of Tyre, whom Eusebius names Theodosia — not yet in her nineteenth year — approached them to salute them and to beg that they would remember her before the Lord when they should come into His presence. The soldiers, seeing her speak with the condemned, seized her and brought her before Urbanus.
The governor, enraged, ordered her tortured with savage cruelty: her sides and breasts were torn to the bone with iron combs, yet she bore all with a serene and even joyful countenance, so that her tormentors marvelled. Urged to renounce Christ and offer to the idols, she answered that she was only the more resolved. At last, still living, she was cast into the depths of the sea. (The Byzantine synaxaria, following a somewhat different tradition, add that she was afterward brought up and beheaded, and that she appeared in glory to a fellow-Christian.) So the maiden of Tyre completed her martyrdom while yet a girl, and was numbered among the virgin-martyrs of the Church.
Feast and commemoration
April 3 (church date; Old Calendar civil April 16); the Byzantine calendars also keep her on May 29 in some usages. Within Great Lent.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a woman-martyr)
Thy lamb, O Jesus, crieth with a loud voice: Thee, O my Bridegroom, do I love, and seeking Thee I pass through many sufferings; I am crucified and buried with Thee in Thy baptism, and I suffer for Thy sake that I may reign with Thee; I die for Thee that I may live in Thee. Accept me as a spotless sacrifice offered in love. By her prayers, O merciful One, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Theodosia is shown as a young woman in the martyr's dress, holding a cross, sometimes with the sea of her martyrdom beside her. No pre-1900 icon of her alone has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Theodosia of Constantinople, the nun-martyr of the early Iconoclasm (kept May 29), who was slain resisting the removal of the icon of Christ over the palace gate — a distinct saint of a later age. The confusion is entrenched because several calendars — the OCA day-page among them — carry both Theodosias on May 29, this Theodosia of Tyre being kept there as well as on her own April 3, so that the two names stand side by side in one day's list; and some abridged notices merge them into a single composite saint. The distinguishing marks are state of life and iconography: Theodosia of Tyre is a young laywoman of the last pagan persecution, painted in the martyr's tunic with the sea of her death behind her, while Theodosia of Constantinople is a nun, painted in the monastic mantle with the great-schema analavos.