Theodota of Nicaea
The Holy Martyr Theodota of Nicaea
Martyr · d. c. 230
Commemorated 17 September — Martyrdom at Nicaea under Alexander Severus
Theodota was a wealthy Christian woman of Cappadocia who suffered a long martyrdom ending at Nicaea around the year 230, in the reign of Alexander Severus. Denounced to the governor Symplicius, she endured raking with iron hooks, imprisonment, a red-hot furnace from which she emerged unharmed between two shining figures, torture on heated iron at Ancyra, and an attempt to saw her body apart, before she was finally beheaded at Nicaea and buried by its bishop Sophronius. She is commemorated on September 17.
Theodota's passio, preserved in the Slavic and Greek hagiographic tradition, places her in Cappadocia in the reign of Alexander Severus (222–235), a rich woman and an open confessor of Christ. Reported to Symplicius, the governor, she was summoned and long pressed to abandon the faith; failing, he had her suspended and raked with iron hooks — which, the passio says, she did not feel — and then chained in prison. When she was brought out for further torture eight days later, only faint traces of her wounds remained, and to the governor's astonished "Who are you?" she answered that his mind must be darkened indeed if he could not recognise Theodota.
Cast into a red-hot furnace, she was preserved: the flames burst outward upon the bystanders, and when pagan priests later opened the furnace to scatter her ashes they too were burned, while those left standing saw the martyr alive amid the fire between two youths in white raiment, glorifying God — a scene the hagiographer patterns on the Three Children of Babylon. Returned to prison, she was afterwards carried along on the governor's own journey: at Ancyra he had her thrown upon red-hot iron, again without harm. Brought at last to Nicaea, she was taken into a pagan temple to be forced to sacrifice; at her prayer the idols fell and shattered. The exasperated governor ordered her stretched out and sawn through, but the saw would not bite and the executioners tired; she was then beheaded. Sophronius, bishop of Nicaea, buried her body.
Feast and commemoration
September 17 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 30), within the afterfeast of the Elevation of the Cross; carried by the OCA calendar ("Martyr Theodota at Nicaea") and, as a bare notice, by the Greek synaxarion of the day (both consulted live). No proper service is appointed; the day's office belongs to the feast and to Sophia and her daughters.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a woman martyr)
Thy ewe-lamb Jesus crieth out with a great voice: Thee, my Bridegroom, do I love, and seeking Thee I contend, and am crucified and buried with Thee in Thy baptism; I suffer for Thy sake, that I may reign with Thee, and I die for Thee, that I may live in Thee. Receive me therefore as a spotless sacrifice, slain for Thee with love. By her intercessions, O Merciful One, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No verified pre-modern image of this Theodota has been identified: the one candidate, the Menologion of Basil II miniature catalogued as "Theodota of Nicaea with children," belongs by its manuscript position (late December) and its children to Theodota of Bithynia, and was rejected on identity grounds. She would be painted as a woman martyr with a cross, and her distinctive scenes — the furnace with the two white-clad youths, the failed sawing — belong to narrative cycles rather than to panel icons.
Disputed questions
- The record. The Greek synaxarion for September 17 carries only a bare "memory of the holy martyr Theodota" with a distich on her eagerness for the sword; the full passio summarised above is transmitted in the Slavic-received tradition (so the OCA Life). The governor's name appears as Symplicius or Simplicius (OCA "Symblicius").
- Not to be confused with several other Theodotas and near-namesakes: the martyr Theodota of Bithynia and her three children (†c. 304), of the December 22 and July 29 commemorations, who also suffered in the region of Nicaea — the Menologion of Basil II miniature labelled "Theodota of Nicaea with children" depicts her, not this saint; the penitent martyr Theodota of Philippopolis (September 29); the martyrs Maximus, Theodotus and Asclepiodota, commemorated this same day (September 17); the righteous Theodota, mother of the Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian (November 1), who reposed in peace; and, among the saints of adjacent days in this calendar, the venerable Theodora of Alexandria (September 11) and Theodore of Alexandria (September 12).