June 7 -- Feast of Saint Potamiaena

Every elementary school kid learns to be careful with compassion; show a little kindness and the neediest, dullest, most annoying kid in school is your new BFF.   For the kindest people among us, it is a lesson they keep repeating throughout life.  [Full disclosure:  I am not one of the kindest people among us.]

Potamiaena and Marcella, escorted by Basilides

Saint Basilides of Alexandria, whose feast is June 30, was among the kindest people in Egypt.  It didn't get him into immediate trouble, but when Saint Potamiaena repaid the kindness he had shown her, he might have experienced a momentary twinge of regret.  Probably not, since he is a saint, but I certainly would have.

Potamiaena was a stunningly beautiful slave girl in Alexandria, Egypt.  Her master lived large and would have indulged her generously if she had been more receptive to his overtures, so to speak.  Being a Christian, she spurned his advances, disdained his luxury, and mocked his polytheist idolatry.  Fed up with her contempt, he denounced her as a Christian to the prefect.  Once she was safely stowed in the dungeon, he privately offered the prefect a handsome reward if he could break her will (but not her maidenhead).  Otherwise, he gave his permission for as brutal a death as the prefect desired.

I doubt the prefect spent much time trying to force apostasy.  He condemned poor Potamiaena to a slow death: boiling pitch was poured slowly over her body from foot to head.  Another description is that she was dipped slowly in a cauldron of boiling pitch, which is basically the same effect.  Then they did the same to her mother, Marcella. 

Basilides was the guard who escorted her to her execution.  Seeking cheap entertainment, a crowd had formed to abuse the condemned girl, but Basilides was a battle-hardened soldier who kept them at bay.  Grateful, she told him she would speak for him before the Lord.  Later, in a vision, she appeared to him and placed on him a martyr's crown.

Within three weeks, he was condemned by his military comrades and beheaded for the capital crime of Christianity.

An alternate source offers her feast as June 28, and suggests that was handed over to gladiators to be raped before her execution.  They did not rape her, though they tortured her a fair bit; she is nonetheless considered a patron of rape victims.