Great Martyr Kyriake of Nicomedia

Persecution and Martyrdom

When Kyriake declined the marriage proposal of a wealthy magistrate, declaring that she had dedicated herself to Christ, the rejected suitor reported her family to the emperor Diocletian as Christians who refused to sacrifice to the idols. According to the accounts, her father Dorotheus was beaten, and her parents were exiled to Melitene, on the eastern border between Cappadocia and Armenia, while Kyriake was sent for interrogation to Maximian at Nicomedia.

Maximian is said to have offered her wealth and marriage to one of Diocletian's relatives if she would worship the pagan gods. When she refused, she was flogged; the synaxarion relates that the soldiers administering the punishment grew tired and had to be replaced three times. Shamed by his failure, Maximian sent her to Hilarion, the eparch of Bithynia, at Chalcedon, where she was suspended by her hair for several hours while soldiers burned her body with torches. After Apollonius succeeded Hilarion as eparch, she was subjected to fire and wild beasts before being condemned to death by the sword. Permitted to pray beforehand, she is said to have given up her soul in peace.

Miracles and Traditions

Traditional accounts of her passion preserve a series of miracles. By tradition, after the tortures at Chalcedon, Christ appeared to her during the night and healed her wounds. When she was brought to a pagan temple, the synaxarion relates that an earthquake toppled and shattered the idols, and that Hilarion was struck by lightning and died. The same tradition holds that when she was cast into fire the flames were extinguished, and that the wild beasts set against her became tame.

Relics and Shrines

By tradition, her relics are kept at the Monastery of the Taxiarchs in Aigio, Greece, said to have been brought there from Constantinople in the fifteenth century.