01 — Foundations
The ground on which any honest treatment of St. Paraskevi must stand: the meaning of the name — Paraskeve, “Preparation,” the Greek word for Friday — and the tradition that she was born on a Friday; the indispensable disambiguation of the several distinct holy women who share the name; and the thin, in fact legendary, historical core of the second-century Roman Great Martyr who is this collection’s subject. Before a single episode of her legend can be told, the reader must know which Paraskevi is meant and how little of her can be established as history.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Great Martyr; healer of the eyes)
The foundation of this collection is laid in two movements. The first is the name itself, which is not incidental but generative: Paraskeve means “preparation” and is the ordinary Greek word for Friday — the day of preparation before the Sabbath and, for Christians, the day of the Lord’s Passion — and from that name flows both the tradition of the saint’s Friday birth and, eventually, the wordplay that bound her to the gift of sight. The same name, however, is borne by several distinct saints, and the first file therefore sets out the full disambiguation up front: the Great Martyr of Rome (2nd c., 26 July), Petka of Epivates (11th c., 14 October), and Paraskevi of Iconium. The second movement is the sober inventory of the historical core of the Roman martyr — which is to say, the recognition that her record is a legendary Passio with no early or contemporary witness, and that what can be securely known is the existence and shape of her cult rather than the events of her life.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Name Paraskevi | The meaning of Paraskeve (“Preparation”/Friday); the day of the Passion; the tradition of birth on a Friday and of the name given for it; and a full up-front disambiguation of the saints named Paraskevi — the Roman Great Martyr (26 July), Petka of Epivates (14 October), and Paraskevi of Iconium — with their differing dates, lives, and feasts. |
| The Historical Core | What can and cannot be established about the second-century Roman martyr: the absence of any early witness, the legendary character of the Passio, the reign of Antoninus Pius as the legend’s setting, and the honest disposition that the cult — not the biography — is the firm ground. |
See Also
- The Passio Tradition — the legendary source on which the historical core depends
- The Conflation Problem — how the disambiguation set out here breaks down in popular cult
- Reading the Paraskevi Tradition — the method governing a wholly legendary record
- Petka of the Balkans — the distinct 11th-c. saint introduced here in full
- The Pre-Schism Church — the second-century world the Roman Passio invokes
References
- Bibliotheca Sanctorum. 12 vols. Rome: Istituto Giovanni XXIII, 1961–1970. (The entries distinguishing the saints named Parasceve.)
- Delehaye, Hippolyte. The Legends of the Saints. Trans. Donald Attwater. New York: Fordham University Press, 1962.
- Lampe, G. W. H., ed. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. (For paraskeve as “Friday”/“preparation.”)
- Nikodemos the Hagiorite. Synaxaristes. (Commemorations of 26 July and 14 October.)