Saint of the Day – 25 June – St Febronia (284-305) Virgin Martyr. Also known as – Fevronia, Fibronia, Pebronia.
The Roman Martyrology reads today: “At Sibarolis, in Syria, under the Governor Lysimachus, in the persecution of Diocletian, St Febronia, Virgin and Martyr, who was scourged and racked for defending her faith and her charity, then torn with iron combs and exposed to fire. Finally having her teeth plucked out and her breasts cut off, she was condemned to capital punishment and went to her Spouse adorned with her sufferings as with so many jewels!”
Febronia is the subject of a Passio in Greek which is at least as old as the 17th Century and which has early medieval translations in Syriac and in Latin.
This Passio speak of her as a Nun who refused to flee her monastery during the Persecution and who was arrested, tortured at great length and finally decapitated at Nisibis (now Nusaybin in south eastern Turkey’s Mardin Province).
Nisibis was the Seat of a Syrian Christian Diocese (Nestorian from the later 5th Century onward) for most of late antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages. Febronia’s Passio is thought to have been written there.
An apparently reliable later reference and in 563, the existence of a Church dedicated to Febronia in Marga, across the Tigris from Nisibis, has been cited to show the cult’s existence already at that time.
AnaStpaul 