first half of the 5th century
A deaconess and abbess who founded a monastery in Constantinople and lived in asceticism.
Our Venerable Mother Maura, Deaconess and Abbess of Constantinople
Maura of Constantinople was a fifth-century ascetic who served as a deaconess and abbess (igoumeness) in the imperial capital. According to the synaxarion, she labored in asceticism during the first half of the fifth century and founded a monastery in Constantinople, in which she also reposed.
The surviving record of her life is very brief, and no details of her birth, family, or death survive in accessible sources. She is remembered chiefly as a model of monastic renunciation and leadership within the early Byzantine Church.
In you, O Mother, was preserved with exactness what is according to the image;
for you took up the Cross and followed Christ.
By so doing, you taught us to disregard the flesh, for it passes away;
but to care for the soul, since it is immortal.
Therefore, O Venerable Maura, your spirit rejoices with the Angels.
Text used with permission of the Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).
Maura is commemorated on October 31, while in Greek usage her feast is kept on November 9.
Her hymnography presents her as a pattern of monastic discipline: the troparion appointed for her (in the Eighth Tone) praises her for preserving the divine image in the human person and for taking up the Cross in imitation of Christ. It recalls her teaching to disregard the passing flesh while caring for the immortal soul, concluding that her spirit now rejoices among the angels.
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