Love

Saint Love, Martyr (in Greek Agape, in Latin Caritas, in Russian Liubov), is, according to hagiography, a child Christian martyr of Rome in the second century, the daughter of Saint Sophia and sister of Faith (Pistis) and Hope (Elpis), the names of the three theological virtues. All three were put to death by order of the emperor Hadrian.

Like her sisters, she was brought up on the Holy Scriptures and in faith in Christ. About the year 137 Hadrian's soldiers arrested them, for the fame of their piety had reached the emperor's ears. Amazed at their natural nobility, he wished to adopt them, but they and their mother refused. He had them appear one by one, then brought them together; they prayed, holding each other's hands, and sang an Alleluia to the glory of Christ. The emperor then ordered them put to death, and Sophia encouraged them in their torments. Love, aged nine, was hung on a gibbet and bound so tightly that her limbs broke under the bonds. Thrown into a furnace, she was delivered by an angel, but in the end her head was cut off. As the youngest of the three sisters, she was encouraged by her mother above all in the time of her torment, and her mother died three days later beside their tombs.

The tombs were at first in a crypt beneath the church later built in honor of Saint Pancras and were much visited by pilgrims in the seventh century. Their veneration probably arose in the sixth century on the basis of catacomb inscriptions. In the Roman Martyrology they were commemorated on 1 August, but they were removed from the official calendar; their veneration continues above all in Eastern Europe and Russia.