|
A holy virgin who suffered
martyrdom in Alexandria during a local uprising against the
Christians previous to the persecution of Decius (end of
248, or beginning of 249). During the festivities
commemorative of the first millenary of the Roman Empire,
the agitation of the heathen populace rose to a great
height, and when one of their poets prophesied a calamity,
they committed bloody outrages on the
Christians whom the authorities made no effort to
protect. The great Dionysius, then Bishop of Alexandria
(247-265), relates the sufferings of his people in a letter
addressed to Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, long extracts from
which
Eusebius has preserved for us (Hist. Eccl., I, vi, 41).
After describing how a
Christian man and woman, named respectively Metras and
Quinta, were seized by the seditious mob and put to death
with the most cruel tortures, and how the houses of several
other
Christians were completely pillaged, Dionysius
continues: "At that time Apollonia the parthénos
presbûtis (virgo presbytera, by which he very probably
means not a virgin advanced in years, but a
deaconess) was held in high esteem. These men seized her
also and by repeated blows broke all her teeth. They then
erected outside the city gates a pile of fagots and
threatened to burn her alive if she refused to repeat after
them impious words (either a blasphemy against Christ, or an
invocation of the heathen gods). Given, at her own request,
a little freedom, she sprang quickly into the fire and was
burned to death." Apollonia belongs, therefore, to that
class of early
Christian martyrs who did not await the death they were
threatened with, but either to preserve their chastity, or
because confronted with the alternative of renouncing their
faith or suffering death, voluntarily embraced the latter in
the form prepared for them. In the honour paid to her
martyrs the Church made no distinction between these women
and others. St. Augustine touches on this question in the
first book of the "City of God", apropos of
suicide
(De. Civ. Dei, I, 26); "But, they say, during the time of
persecution certain holy women plunged into the water with
the intention of being swept away by the waves and drowned,
and thus preserve their threatened chastity. Although they
quitted life in this wise, nevertheless they receive high
honour as martyrs in the Catholic Church and their feasts
are observed with great ceremony. This is a matter on which
I dare not pass judgment lightly. For I know not but that
the Church was divinely authorized through trustworthy
revelations to honour thus the memory of these
Christians. It may be that such is the case. May it not
be, too, that these acted in such a manner, not through
human caprice but on the command of
God,
not erroneously but through obedience, as we must believe in
the case of Samson? When, however,
God
gives a command and makes it clearly known, who would
account obedience thereto a crime or condemn such pious
devotion and ready service?" The narrative of Dionysius does
not suggest the slightest reproach as to this act of St.
Apollonia; in his eyes she was as much a martyr as the
others, and as such she was revered in the Alexandrian
Church. In time, her feast was also popular in the West. A
later legend assigned a similar martyrdom to Apollonia, a
Christian virgin of Rome in the reign of Julian the
Apostate. There was, however, but one martyr of this name,
i.e. the Saint of Alexandria. The Roman Church celebrates
her memory on 9 February, and she is popularly invoked
against the toothache because of the torments she had to
endure. She is represented in art with pincers in which a
tooth is held. There was a church dedicated to her at Rome
but it no longer exists. The little square, however, in
which it stood is still called "Piazza Sant' Apollonia".
|
