Daria

Holy Martyr Daria, the wife of the Holy Martyr Chrysanthus, is one of the martyrs of Rome, who is said, according to legend, to have died in the years 283 to 284, under the emperors Carinus and Numerian; some sources call her a martyr of the early fourth century.

According to the legend, Chrysanthus was the son of a certain Polemius of Alexandria in Egypt. After coming to Rome with his father, he was baptized. He met Daria, a Vestal, converted her and married her. By order of the city prefect both were arrested for their faith, but they also converted the judge who held them, his family and other persons. Chrysanthus was imprisoned and tortured; Daria is said to have been forced into a brothel but to have been protected by a lion. They were then buried alive in a pit on the Via Salaria. According to tradition they died on 25 October and were buried in a common tomb in the necropolis of Thrason on the Via Salaria Nuova. More recent historical research considers it unlikely that Daria was forced into prostitution, since it would have been an enormous scandal to humiliate a former Vestal in this way.

Pope Damasus I placed an inscription on the tomb. In the seventh century there was a church dedicated to them. Their oldest depiction is in the mosaics of the procession of martyrs in Sant'Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, from around 560. In 844 the relics of the two, given by Pope Sergius II to the abbot of Prüm, were taken to Prüm and in 848 to the daughter monastery at Bad Münstereifel, where a church was raised in their honour in 1100. Their commemoration is kept on 25 October in the Catholic Church and on 19 March in the Orthodox Churches. They are patrons of judges. They are saints of the undivided Church.