Xanthippe and Polyxena

The Venerable Women Xanthippe and Polyxena of Spain, Disciples of the Apostles

Venerable · Righteous · d. c. 109 (Polyxena)

Xanthippe and Polyxena were sisters of Spain in the first age of the Church, remembered as disciples of the apostles. The tradition relates that Xanthippe and her husband Probus were converted by the preaching of the apostle Paul in Spain; that Polyxena, carried off before her baptism and taken by sea to Greece, was preserved from defilement, heard the apostle Philip, and was baptized at Patras by the apostle Andrew, whose martyrdom she witnessed; and that returning home she laboured beside her sister some forty years, converting many, Xanthippe preaching in Toledo, until Polyxena reposed in peace around the year 109, a virgin to the end. They are commemorated together on September 23.

The whole account of the sisters comes from a single late-antique source, the Greek Acts (Life) of Xanthippe, Polyxena and Rebecca — a hagiographic romance generally dated to the third or fourth century — whose narrative, pruned of its more novelistic episodes, passed into the synaxaria. As the Church received it: Xanthippe was the wife of Probus, a magnate of Spain in the days of Nero, and with her husband heard the apostle Paul when he came preaching into their country — the tradition thus attaching the sisters to Paul's projected Spanish journey (Romans 15:24, 28) — and both received the faith and were baptized.

Her younger sister Polyxena's road was longer. Abducted before her baptism by a suitor and carried by ship to Greece, she was kept by the grace of God from all defilement through the whole odyssey that followed. In Greece she heard the preaching of the apostle Philip, and turning to the Christians for refuge was brought to Patras in Achaia, where she was baptized by the apostle Andrew the First-called; she remained near him, witnessed his miracles and his patient suffering, and stood by at his crucifixion. After the apostle's martyrdom she returned at last to Spain, in the company — so the Acts relate — of the apostle Onesimus and of Rebecca, a Jewish bondwoman baptized with her who remained her companion.

Restored to her sister, Polyxena gave the remaining forty years of her life to the Gospel, and the two women, "of one soul as of one blood," converted a multitude of pagans to Christ; Xanthippe's particular field was the populous city of Toledo. Polyxena reposed in peace about the year 109, having kept her virginity to the end; the synaxaria record no separate date for Xanthippe's repose. The verses of the Greek synaxarion give the pair their epitaph: the choirs of angels receive the kinswomen Xanthippe and Polyxena as fellow-dwellers.

Feast and commemoration

September 23 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 6), with the Conception of John the Forerunner, whose feast dominates the day. The OCA records a Slavic usage of September 24 (see Disputed questions). The sisters have no proper service in the Menaion; the day's service is the Forerunner's.

Iconography

No pre-modern image of the sisters has been identified, and a the list of icons still being sought listing stands in their place. They would be depicted as venerable women of the apostolic age — veiled, in tunic and mantle, bearing crosses or scrolls — attending the apostles Paul or Andrew.

Disputed questions

The source and its history. The Acts of Xanthippe, Polyxena and Rebecca is an edifying romance, not a documentary record; its chronology (Paul in Spain, Philip and Andrew in Greece, a repose in 109) cannot be pressed, and scholarship treats the work as a composition of the third or fourth century drawing on the older apostolic Acts. The Church's calendars nevertheless received the sisters themselves as historical disciples of the apostolic age, and this entry presents the tradition as the tradition, on that footing.
Classification. The Greek synaxarion styles the sisters ὁσίαι — venerable women — while the OCA calls them righteous; both terms are carried here, the ascetic-missionary tenor of the tradition (and Polyxena's lifelong virginity) supporting the Greek usage.
Date of commemoration. The OCA's synaxarion notes that in Slavic usage the sisters are kept on September 24; the Russian calendar as published by azbyka.ru, consulted live for this entry, lists them under September 23 (o.s.) with the universal commemoration. Both witnesses are recorded.