Hermione of Ephesus

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Saint Hermione
Menologion of Basil 011.jpg
Beheading of St. Hermione. Miniature from the Menaion, c. 11th century
Martyr
BornUnknown
Caesarea
Died117
Rome
Venerated inEastern Orthodox Church Roman Catholic Church
Canonizedpre-congregational
Feast4 September

Hermione of Ephesus (d. 117) is a 2nd-century saint and martyr venerated by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. She was well known as a "great healer"[1] and founded the first Christian hospital in Ephesus.[1]

Hermione was born in Caesarea and was one of the four daughters of Saint Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven deacons as described in chapter 6 in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 6:1–6), chosen by the early Christian church to minister to the community of believers in Jerusalem. Her name does not appear in the Bible, but she and her sisters are mentioned in Acts 21:8-9, where they are described as virgins and "gifted with prophecy".[1][2] Hermione also appears in the Menaion, the liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox Church.[3] She is often confused with a daughter of St. Philip the Apostle.[4]

According to tradition, around the early 100s, after studying medicine, Hermione traveled with her sister Eukhilda to Ephesus, through Anatolia, to meet St. John the Theologian in the hopes that they could help him in his evangelization efforts. They found that he had already died, but met Petronius, a disciple of Saint Paul, and followed him instead. Hermione became well known for her healing and built a hospital in Ephesus. Soon her reputation as a doctor and as a devout Christian attracted the attention of the Roman emperor Trajan, who stopped in Ephesus on his way to a war with the Persians in 114 to convince her to renounce Christ. When she refused, he ordered that she be struck in the face for several hours, which she was able to withstand because she was "comforted by a vision of the Lord, in the form of Petronius, sitting upon the throne of judgment".[5] Trajan freed her when he saw that she would not recant her faith and that she bore the torture with "patience and courage",[6] and after she prophesized that he would defeat the Persians and that his son-in-law Hadrian would succeed him.[1][2][3]

Hadrian also tried to force Hermione to renounce Christ, by having her scourged and her feet pierced with wire.[3][6][7] Writer Demetri Khoury said that "she endured these trials without complaint".[7] Hadrian also ordered that Hermione be thrown into a cauldron full of burning tar; she made the Sign of the Cross before entering and was unharmed. The fire was extinguished after she entered the cauldron and she "seemed to be standing in dew".[2] Hadrian touched the cauldron himself, but his nails fell off and he was badly burned,[2] so he ordered his troops to "torture her without mercy";[7] they beat her and cut her feet with nails. They tried to fry her to death in an enormous pan, but a moment after she was tossed naked onto the pan, the fire under the pan exploded, burning several onlookers. After these miracles, as reported by scholar W. J. Lillie, Hermione pretended to want to sacrifice to idols and was taken to a pagan temple.[2] Khoury reported that she prayed and "caused the jeweled idols in Hadrian’s pagan temple to go crashing down into ruins",[7] so he had her beheaded. Before she died, her two executioners, who were named Theotimus and Theodulos, were briefly paralyzed. They knelt at her feet and were converted to Christianity “on the spot”.[7] She healed them and promised that they would go to heaven, and they died soon afterwards.[7] According to Khoury, Hermione "“owns a special place among the Palestine saints—the place reserved for valiant women of unbreakable faith in Jesus Christ”.[1]

Hermione might have been buried at the eastern slopes of Pion Hill in Ephesus, along with an “impressive” list of other saints, including Mary Magdalene, Saint Timothy, her father Saint Philip, Paul of Thebes, Aristobulus, Adauctus, and Adauctus’ daughter Callisthena, although “there is no archeological evidence to support even one sacred burial from the list”.[8]

According to essayist Christopher Bell, the character Hermione Granger from the series of Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling got her name from "a cadre of literary Hermiones",[9] including Hermione in Greek mythology, Shakespeare's character Queen Hermione of Sicily in his play The Winter's Tale, and St. Hermione of Ephesus.[9]

Hermione's feast day is September 4.[5][6]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e Khoury, p. 16
  2. ^ a b c d e Lillie, W. J. (4 September 2020). "Saint Hermione, the Daughter of Saint Philip the Deacon" (in Greek). Attica, Greece: St. Maxim the Greek Institute. Retrieved 12 June 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ^ a b c Miszczak, p. 45
  4. ^ Baring-Gould, p. 43
  5. ^ a b "Martyr Hermione, Daughter of Saint Philip the Deacon". Syosset, New York: The Orthodox Church in America. Retrieved 13 June 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ^ a b c Dunbar, Agnes B.C. (1901). A Dictionary of Saintly Women. Volume 1. London: George Bell & Sons, p. 380.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Khoury, p. 17
  8. ^ Miszczak, p. 243
  9. ^ a b Bell, Christopher E. (2012). "Introduction". Hermione Granger Saves the World: Essays on the Feminist Heroine of Hogwarts. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-4766-0005-5. OCLC 806039023.

Works cited[]

  • Baring-Gould, Sabine (1877). The Lives of the Saints (3rd ed.). London: J. Hodges. pp. 43–44.
  • Khoury, Demetri (2008). A Cloud of Witnesses: Saints and Martyrs from the Holy Land. Bloomington, Indiana: Author House. ISBN 1452033226.
  • Miszczak, Izabela (2020). The Secrets of Ephesus. Oxford, England: ASLAN Publishing House. ISBN 8395654030.
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