E02568: John Chrysostom delivers a homily On *Bernike, Prosdoke, and Domnina (martyrs of Antioch, S01008), during their festival at Antioch (Syria). He recounts their story and suicide in the face of persecution, and invites the audience to venerate their coffins and bones. Written in Greek at Antioch, 386/397.

John Chrysostom, On Bernike, Prosdoke, and Domnina (CPG 4355, BHG 274)

Summary

1-3. The festival is less than twenty days after Easter. Thanks to Christ’s Resurrection, now even women disdain death. Before Christ, death was dreadful even for holy men like Abraham, Jacob, and Elijah. Death was fearful, in order that the grace of the era of Christ might become clearer. In the New Testament, Paul refers to death as the preferable condition, because it leads to a better life.

4. A great war is started against the Church, resembling a civil war. Christians are attacked by the authorities and people of their own country, and by their own relatives. During that time, these women abandon their house and relatives, and leave their country – a distressful journey for a mother and her daughters, who had had no previous experience of such hardships. Although devoid of guards and protectors, the honour of these women is protected by their faith in Christ.

5. They fly to Edessa, a rural but pious town, which receives and protects them for some time. While they live there, new decrees arrive, commanding that relatives betray their own relatives, children and parents, thus fulfilling a prophecy of Christ (Mark 13:12). The devil incites people to filicide. Thus the husband and father of the martyrs arrives at Edessa with soldiers, looking for his wife and daughters.

6. The three women give themselves up peacefully. They are taken to Hierapolis, where they drown themselves in a river, while the soldiers have their meal. Some people say that their husband/father helped them. Their drowning was a new baptism, i.e. martyrdom, and this kind of baptism can be administered even by women. Thus their mother became a priestess, baptising her daughters in martyrdom, and offering them as a sacrifice to God. She suffered a triple martyrdom – her own and of her two daughters.

7. The woman did not go to the court, because of her great eagerness to earn the wreath of her victory, even before the contest started. She was not afraid of torments, but was afraid about the virginity of her daughters. Her suffering was greater than any martyrdom, because she found herself compelled to assist in the death of her own daughters. The girls themselves are also admirable, because they did not resist. They left their shoes by the river, thus providing for the soldiers who could present them as a proof to the judge, and escape charges of treason. The author invites his audience to embrace the coffins (thekai) of the martyrs with fervour, because their bones have great power. Their veneration should not be confined to their feast-day.

Summary: Efthymios Rizos.