The Account in Maccabees
The principal source for the martyrdom is the seventh chapter of Second Maccabees, a deuterocanonical book describing the persecution of the Jews under Antiochus IV Epiphanes. There the mother and her seven sons are arrested and ordered, under torture, to eat pork in violation of the Mosaic Law. Each son in turn refuses and is put to death, while the mother encourages them all.
Second Maccabees relates that the mother watched her seven sons die in the space of a single day, yet bore it bravely because she put her trust in the Lord. Rather than breaking under the ordeal, she strengthened her sons' resolve, and each made a confession of faith before his death.
A second source, Fourth Maccabees, retells the same events at greater length and with a philosophical cast, presenting the martyrs as exemplars of reason ruling over the passions. The two books together shaped the way the family was remembered as martyrs.
Her Name in Tradition
The mother is left unnamed in Second and Fourth Maccabees, and various religious communities later gave her different names. Eastern Orthodox tradition knows her as Solomonia. Syriac Christians call her Shmouni or Shmuni, and Armenian sources call her Shamuna.
Jewish tradition assigns her still other names: Hannah, or Chana, in the medieval Josippon, and Miriam bat Nahtom, Miriam the baker's daughter, in Lamentations Rabbah. The variety of names reflects how widely her story was received and retold across communities.
Veneration and Legacy
Solomonia, her seven sons, and their teacher, the elder Eleazar, a ninety-year-old scribe who also suffered for the Law, are venerated together as the Holy Maccabean Martyrs. Their feast is kept on August 1 in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in traditional Catholic calendars.
The Church Fathers honored the martyrs in their preaching; Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory Nazianzus, called the Theologian, both delivered homilies on them. Their steadfastness was also remembered as having inspired the revolt of Judas Maccabeus, who afterward purified the Temple.
By Antiochene Christian tradition the relics of the martyrs were interred at Antioch on the site of a former synagogue. Tombs later associated with them were reported at the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome in 1876, and another in the Jewish cemetery of Safed.
