MARTYR BASILISSA OF NICOMEDIA

“Let the children come to Me, and do not hinder them,” says Jesus in the Gospel (Matthew 19:14). The life of the holy child martyr Basilissa of Nicomedia is a rare case when suffering for the faith turns into conversion to the executioner.

1 On September 16, the Church celebrates the memory of the holy martyr Basilissa of Nicomedia. The saint belongs to a very rare category of saints, namely the holy child martyrs who suffered for the Christian faith not with their parents, but independently. Saint Basilissa was killed by pagans during the Great Persecution of Diocletian. She died after the torture she endured; she was only nine years old.

2 The life of the saint has been preserved and reached us in the edition of the famous Byzantine theologian and hagiographer Nicephorus Gregoras (1295-1360). Written more than a thousand years after the death of Saint Basilissa, it testifies to the fact that in Constantinople in the fourteenth century, the saint was highly revered in the monastery of Saint Mary in Blachernae. She was considered the patroness of young mothers who were breastfeeding, as well as an assistant for various types of frostbite. With all the incredible changes in times since then, these two prayer specializations of Saint Basilisa are as relevant as ever.

3 The patronage of frostbite obviously owes its origin to the paradoxical and, of course, supernatural fact that the saint, after her body had turned into a continuous wound after torture, and wild animals did not touch her, bleeding, was thrown into the oven alive, but did not die. Seeing her unharmed, emerging from the oven with a prayer and the name of Jesus the Lord on her lips, the executioner named Alexander turned to faith. Obviously, this fact from the life, in addition to the already mentioned “forms of heavenly intercession” accepted for her in ancient popular piety, makes her an intercessor for the gift of faith for those who especially suffer from hardening of the heart.