medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
8. July is also the feast day of:
Glyceria (d. later 2d cent., supposedly). G. is a popular saint of Thracia and Moesia mentioned in several Bioi and Martyria of other saints of the region. Her late antique cult and early medieval center was at the Thracian metropolis of Heraclea (today's Marmara Ereğlisi in Turkey). She is entered under 8. July in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and under 13. May in Byzantine synaxaries.
We know nothing about the historical G. Her legendary Martyrion (several versions: BHG 699-699b), a tissue of hagiographic commonplaces, makes her an aristocrat -- her Christian father is said to have been consul three times -- who in the reign of an emperor Antoninus (this is commonly taken to mean Marcus Aurelius) proclaimed the superiority of her Christian faith by going into a pagan temple at her native Traianopolis (today's Traianoupoli in Greece's Evros prefecture) during a festival and there destroying the idols with a single sign of the Cross. Condemned to death, she overcame numerous forms of torture and execution both at Traianopolis and at Heraclea before being gently dispatched at the latter venue by a lioness. Heraclea's bishop obtained her corpse and buried it outside the city. Thus far G.'s Passio.
G. as depicted perishing by the sword in a May calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo
http://tinyurl.com/35ot2bw
Best,
John Dillon
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