St. Demiana

St. Demiana was a Christian martyr of the early 4th century. When she was fifteen years old, her father wanted her to be wed. But she refused, and told him that she had vowed herself a bride to the Lord Christ. She asked her father to build her a place where she could worship God in seclusion with her virgin friends. He fulfilled her wish and built her the house that she wanted. She lived in it with 40 other virgins. They spent their time reading the Scriptures and in worship.

Shortly after, Emperor Diocletian sent for Mark, Demiana's father, and ordered him to worship the idols. At first he refused, but after the Emperor appeased him he obeyed his order and worshipped the idols, forsaking the Creator. Mark returned to his official seat, and Demiana, knowing what had happened, rushed to meet him. She said to him, "What is it that I heard about you? I would have preferred to hear about your death rather than to hear that you have renounced your faith and forsaken the God Who created you from non-existence into being, to worship gods made by hands. Take note that if you do not return to your first faith and renounce the worship of stones, you are not my father and I am not your daughter," and she left him.

Her father was deeply moved by the words of Demiana, and he wept bitterly. In haste, he went to Emperor Diocletian and confessed the Lord Christ. When the Emperor could not convince him with threats and promises, he ordered him beheaded.

Emperor Diocletian knew that the one who turned Mark from worshipping the idols was Demiana, his daughter. He sent her a prince to try first gently to convince her to worship idols, and if she disobeyed him to behead her. The prince went to Demiana with 200 soldiers and the instruments of torture. When he arrived at her palace, he said to her, "I am a messenger sent from Emperor Diocletian. I came to call upon you according to the Emperor's orders, to worship his gods, so that he can grant you all that you want." But Demiana said to him, "May God denounce the messenger and the one by whom he was sent. Don't you have any shame at all to call stones and wood gods which are inhabited by devils? There is no god in heaven or on earth except one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Eternal Creator... As for me, I am the maidservant of my Master and my Savior Jesus Christ, and His Good Father and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, Him I confess and upon Him I depend, and in His Name I die, and by Him I live forever."

The prince became angry and ordered her to be placed in the squeezing press until her blood poured out of her body on the ground. The virgins were standing weeping over her. When they put her in prison, the angel of the Lord appeared to her, touched her body with his illumined wings, and she was healed of all her wounds. The prince used all his evil imagination to torture Demiana, once by tearing her flesh and another time by placing her in boiling oil. Through it all the Lord raised her up safely. When the prince saw that all his attempts were in vain, he ordered the soldiers to behead Demiana by the sword, along with the 40 virgins.

The relics of St. Demiana and the 40 virgin-martyrs repose at the Monastery of St. Demiana (pictured here) in El-Barary in the Nile Delta of Egypt. According to tradition, it was St. Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine, who built Demiana and her 40 virgins a tomb, and around that tomb a church and monastery eventually flourished. St. Demiana is often referred to as the founder of female monastic life.

St. Demiana and the 40 virgins' martyrdom is commemorated on 13 Toba (corresponding to about 21 January).