02 — The Martyr of Rome
The legend itself, told as the Passio tells it: the virgin of Christian parents who, after their death, gave away her inheritance and went out to preach Christ openly, and who for that confession was seized, tortured, and at last beheaded under Antoninus Pius. This section narrates the Passio of Paraskevi of Rome (BHG 1420) fully and reverently — the preaching virgin, then the sequence of tortures, the cauldron, and the beheading — while pinning every wonder to the legend as its own testimony rather than asserting it as documented fact.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Great Martyr; healer of the eyes)
Having established in Section 01 that the record is legendary and the firm ground is the cult, this section does what every saint’s collection must: it tells the saint’s story. The two files divide the Passio between them. The first follows the saint up to her arrest — the noble Christian birth, the consecrated virginity, the renunciation of her inheritance, and above all the public preaching that marks her out as a confessor as much as a martyr. The second follows the Passio’s climax — the escalating tortures, the great cauldron of boiling pitch and oil, the episode in which the persecuting emperor is blinded and his sight restored (the seed of her patronage of the eyes), and the beheading — with the wonders reported, as throughout this repository, as the claims of the legend (METHODOLOGY §3.5).
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Preacher Virgin | The Passio’s account of the early life: pious Christian parents, the Friday birth, the consecrated virginity, the death of the parents and the giving-away of the inheritance to the poor, and the public preaching of Christ that brings her before the authorities under Antoninus Pius — the confessor before the martyr. |
| The Martyrdom | The sequence of tortures, the cauldron of boiling pitch and oil, the blinding and restoration of the persecutor’s sight, and the beheading; the wonders pinned to the Passio as its testimony (an attestation-pinned treatment in the manner of METHODOLOGY §3.5). |
See Also
- The Historical Core — the sober frame within which this legend is read
- The Passio Tradition — the genre and reliability of the source narrated here
- Healer of Blindness — the eye-healing patronage seeded by the Passio’s cauldron-and-sight episode
- The Virgin-Martyr with the Eyes — how the Passio is rendered in the icon
- St. Catherine of Alexandria — the parallel learned-virgin-martyr Passio
References
- Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (BHG) 1420–1420f. Ed. François Halkin. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1957.
- Delehaye, Hippolyte. Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires. 2nd ed. Brussels, 1966.
- Nikodemos the Hagiorite. Synaxaristes. (The 26 July narrative.)
- Bibliotheca Sanctorum. Rome: Istituto Giovanni XXIII, 1961–1970. (Parasceve of Rome.)