Victoria, Anatolia and Audax
The Holy Virgin-Martyrs Victoria and Anatolia, sisters, and the Holy Martyr Audax
Martyr · Virgin · d. c. 250, in the Sabine country of Italy
Commemorated 10 July — Commemoration of Anatolia and Audax at Thora, as in the Roman Martyrology, 23 December — Commemoration of the virgin-martyrs Victoria and Anatolia in Byzantine usage
Victoria and Anatolia were sisters, Christian maidens of noble family in the Sabine country north-east of Rome, who refused the pagan husbands to whom they had been betrothed, gave away their property, and were put to death in the persecution of Decius about the year 250. Anatolia was held at Thora and Victoria at Trebula Mutuesca. To Anatolia's passion belongs the third name: Audax, the man sent to kill her, who was bitten — or, as the legend has it, seized — by the serpent shut up with her, was delivered by her prayer, confessed Christ, and died with her. The Byzantine calendar keeps the two sisters on December 23; the Roman Martyrology keeps Anatolia and Audax on July 10, which is why they stand in this collection's July 10 file as well.
The two sisters
The passio, a Roman text of no great antiquity and considerable elaboration, makes Victoria and Anatolia sisters of a wealthy Christian family at Rome, betrothed by their kindred to two pagan suitors — named in the legend Eugenius and Aurelius. Both girls had resolved on virginity. Anatolia persuaded her sister to refuse the marriage; the two distributed their inheritance among the poor of the city; and the disappointed suitors, with their families' consent, carried them off to their country estates in the Sabina to break their will by isolation and hardship.
Anatolia at Thora
Anatolia was confined at Thora, identified with the place that still bears her name — Sant'Anatolia di Borgorose, in the upper Salto valley. Confinement did not silence her: the passio has her converting the household and the neighbourhood, healing the sick and turning the country people from their idols, until the local authority took the matter up and the governor was informed.
Her judge tried the ordinary means and then an extraordinary one. She was shut in a chamber with a venomous serpent, that the beast might do what the executioner need not. The serpent did not touch her. A man skilled in handling serpents — Audax is his name in the tradition, and it means "the bold" — was then sent in, either to charm the snake or to finish what it had failed to do; the serpent turned on him, and he was saved only by Anatolia's prayer and her word to it. Audax came out of the room a Christian. He confessed Christ openly, and the two were put to death together: Anatolia, in the received account, run through with a sword, and Audax beheaded.
Victoria at Trebula
Victoria was held at Trebula Mutuesca, the modern Monteleone Sabino. She too refused, converted those about her, and — the passio adds the hagiographical flourish proper to the region — drove off a dragon that was ravaging the countryside. Her suitor, losing patience, had her killed: she was stabbed through the heart. A basilica of Santa Vittoria stands over the traditional site at Monteleone, and the cult of the two sisters is old and firmly localised in the Sabina, whatever the value of the narrative attached to it.
Feast and commemoration
December 23 (church date; Old Calendar civil January 5), within the Forefeast of the Nativity, is the Byzantine commemoration, of Victoria and Anatolia together. July 10 (Old Calendar civil July 23) is the Western commemoration, of Anatolia and Audax at Thora. They are among the pre-schism Western martyrs whom the Orthodox calendar has received from the Roman martyrologies, and their entry is written here from the July 10 side because that is where the fuller notice — the one that names Audax — is preserved.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions save our souls.
Iconography
The sisters are shown as young virgin-martyrs in the long tunic and maphorion, crowned or with the hair bound, each holding the cross; Victoria's attribute is the wound in the breast, sometimes with the sword, and in the Italian tradition the dragon beneath her feet. Anatolia is given the serpent — coiled at her feet or in the chamber behind her — and beside her the figure of Audax, a young man in a short tunic, holding a cross, whose whole iconographic existence consists in standing where the snake did not kill her. Western panel paintings of the Sabina, and the frescoes of Monteleone Sabino, carry most of the surviving imagery; no Byzantine icon of the three has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Which day, and with whom? This is the point on which the two calendars part. The Roman Martyrology commemorates Anatolia and Audax on 10 July, at Thora in the Sabina; older editions place Anatolia on 9 July. The Byzantine reckoning keeps Victoria and Anatolia, as two virgin-martyrs of Rome, on 23 December, and does not carry Audax. Both are recorded here: December 23 as the primary feast, since that is the day the Orthodox calendars keep, and July 10 as the secondary. (The July 7 file records these martyrs as expressly not a July 7 commemoration; that determination is confirmed here.)
- Historicity. The passio is a late composite of hagiographical topoi — the refused marriage, the serpent that will not bite, the converted executioner, the dragon — and the historical residue is small: the ancient and localised cult of two Sabine virgin-martyrs at Thora and Trebula Mutuesca, and the name of a companion, Audax. The corpus records the legend as legend and the cult as fact.
- Rome or the Sabina? The Byzantine notice calls the sisters martyrs "at Rome," and the Roman notice locates the deaths in the Sabine towns. The two are reconciled by the passio itself, in which the family is Roman and the martyrdoms happen on the country estates to which the sisters were taken.
- Audax's part. Some retellings make him a soldier or an executioner rather than a serpent-handler, and some make the serpent bite him. The core is stable: the man sent against her became a martyr with her.