May 29 -- Feast of a pair of Saints named Theodosia

Acknowledgment of the artwork should probably precede anything else, since it is contemporary and reproduced without permission. Hopefully, the artist is grateful for the link to her own site and work. The pictures is from this website, displaying the artwork of Stèphanie M.T. Krëhbiël , and an explanation of her intent is also found there. Although the woman may bear a vague resemblance to the Wicked Stepmother Queen in Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the figure represented is actually St. Theodosia of Constantinople. Since she's featured in the pictures, let us discuss her before the St. Theodosia of Tyre, even though the Tyrian was a few centuries earlier.

St. T. of Constantinople lived in a convent in that city, capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, during the reign of Emperor Leo the Isaurian. We've talked about Leo and his rabid iconoclasm earlier. Leo sent troops to remove all the icons from the convent as well as a famous and popular image of Christ over the Chalke Gate, the main ceremonial entrance to the Byzantine palace.

Here's a fun new word to know: iconodule. An iconodule is the opposite of an iconoclast, i.e. someone who favors the use of icons as tools of religious worship. I lean toward the iconodulistic side of the debate, as long as one is clear that the icon is not a god, but rather a visual cue to prompt the worshipper. But that's me. Others take a harder line on the Second Commandment. But I should get back to the Theodosiae.

T of C was an iconodule of great courage. As a soldier climbed a ladder to take down the Chalke Gate icon, she shook his ladder. He fell off and died. She was arrested, taken to the palace, and executed by a ram's horn (driven through her neck).

The story of Saint Theodosia of Tyre (T of T) is a less extraordinary, though contemplating the details should make you think. It occurs to me that if I wanted my daughter to have a long, happy life, I wouldn't name her Theodosia. T of T was busted as a Christian in AD 308, the last great persecution before Constantine made Christianity legal. T of T refused to make an offering to the polytheistic idols and so "her sides and breasts were mercilessly scraped even to the inward parts and bones." She didn't have a lot to say as this was happening, which the writers attribute to her great courage. The governor, a Roman named Urban, gave her another opportunity to apostatize, thereby saving what was left of herself. Instead she mocked him. Whatever tortures followed have not been described, but they were said to be worse. Then her body was dumped in the ocean.