Saint of the Day – 16 August – Saint Serena (4th Century) Wife of Emperor Diocletian and, therefore, the Empress of the Roman Empire and a clandestine Christian.
The Roman Martyrology reads today: “At Rome, St Serena, who had been the wife of the Emperor Diocletian.”
In the Acts of Saint Marcellus and Saint Susanna, whom we celebrated on 11 August, Empress Serena intervened to defend Christians from persecution. For this reason, tradition holds that Serena was repudiated and some sources say she was later Martyred by her husband.
In fact, Lactantius (Lucius Cecilius, 3rd-4th Century), a Latin Christian writer who lived at the time and Court of Diocletian, states in his “De Mortibus Persecutorem” that his wife and daughter were called Prisca and Valeria and that they were forced to perform pagan rites.
While the abovementioned “Acts” speak of an Empress named Serena, wife of Diocletian, who intervened to defend Christians from the persecution unleashed by her husband, the tenth and most violent.
Her intervention evidently helped bring the persecution to an end because in 305 Diocletian abdicated and retired to Split.
Probably from antiquity, she was, therefore, considered a saintly figure to be venerated as a Saint and some sources regard her as a Martyr.
AnaStpaul 