Hiereia

Saint Hiereia was a young pagan woman of noble birth from Nisibis in Mesopotamia, who became a Christian through the witness of Saint Febronia and died in peace as a nun.

She has no synaxarion of her own. It is known from the Synaxarion of Constantinople (tenth century) that she departed in peace and that her commemoration is kept on 3 June. The only word preserved about her is the couplet of the Menologion: she did not remain outside the bridal chamber of the Lord. The other reports come from the life of Saint Febronia (25 June).

In the time of Diocletian, at Nisibis, a convent of virgins had fifty nuns under the abbess Bryaena, and among them lived her niece, the beautiful and virtuous Febronia, then twenty years old. Hiereia, a young pagan of a noble family, visited the convent and asked to speak with Febronia. The conversation kindled compunction in her; she stayed awake all night, shedding rivers of tears. Returning home, she told her family about Febronia and proposed that they become Christians. When the Roman prefect Selenus attacked the convent, the nuns scattered and only Febronia and Thomais stayed with the abbess. Febronia was led to terrible torments, and Hiereia was present. Her sensitive heart could bear it no more: she cried out and defended Saint Febronia, but in vain. Selenus ordered the martyr's body cut limb from limb and then her head cut off. Selenus's nephew, Lysimachus, carried the relics to the convent.

Febronia's unjust martyrdom strengthened Hiereia's faith, and she hastened to be baptised with her family, and was then tonsured a nun in Bryaena's convent. She fell asleep in peace beside the wonder-⁠working relics of her beloved sister.