died 344
A former pagan priestess converted to Christianity by her sister, who was stoned after appearing in her baptismal robe and martyred in 344.
The Holy Martyr Memelchtha of Persia
Memelchtha was a fourth-century Persian woman who, before her conversion to Christianity, served as a pagan priestess of the goddess Artemis. According to the synaxarion, she was led to the faith by her sister, who persuaded her to receive Christian baptism.
After her baptism, hostile pagans seized on her open profession of the new faith. Seeing her in the white garment worn by the newly baptized, they stoned her to death. She is remembered as a martyr who suffered in the year 344, during the persecution of Christians in the Persian Empire under Shah Shapur II. Her feast is kept on October 5.
(Podoben: “You sought the heights...”) You appeared as a bright star announcing Christ with your radiance,
which is repulsive to this world, O Martyr Memelchtha;
extinguishing the allure of false gods,
you enlighten the faithful,
always interceding for us all.
Text used with permission of the Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).
Your holy martyr Memelchtha, O Lord,
through her sufferings has received an incorruptible crown from You, our God.
For having Your strength, she laid low her adversaries,
and shattered the powerless boldness of demons.
Through her intercessions, save our souls!
Text used with permission of the Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).
The synaxarion records that Memelchtha had been a priestess of Artemis before embracing Christianity. Her sister, already a Christian, was the human agent of her conversion, convincing her to accept baptism.
Her death followed directly upon her baptism. When pagans saw her still wearing the white baptismal robe — the customary garment of the newly illumined — they responded with violence and stoned her. The sources place her martyrdom in 344.
Memelchtha suffered during the great persecution of Christians in the Sasanian Persian Empire under Shapur II (reigned 309–379). After the Roman emperor Constantine the Great embraced Christianity, Shapur came to regard his Christian subjects as potential agents of a foreign rival, and the persecution that followed is reckoned among the most intense of the Sasanian period.
The persecution was triggered when Shapur imposed a heavy tax on Christians to finance his war against Rome. When the Patriarch Shemon Bar Sabbae and his clergy refused both the tax and pressure to convert to Zoroastrianism, a long cycle of martyrdoms began. The fifth-century historian Sozomen reckoned the number of named men and women martyred in this period at upwards of sixteen thousand, and Shapur's successors in the patriarchate, Shahdost and Barba'shmin, were also put to death. Memelchtha's martyrdom of 344 falls within this period.
Memelchtha is an obscure saint: no extended hagiography survives beyond the brief synaxarion notice. The wider account of the Shapur II persecution supplies the historical setting rather than further detail about her life.