Mary Syncletica

Mary Syncletica lived at Constantinople in the time of the pious emperor Tiberius and suffered from an incurable disease. The Azbyka page tells, after Bishop Euthymius of Achelous, an event connected with the Mandylion, the Image of Christ Not Made by Hands.

Maria asked the priests who kept the Mandylion to bring it to her house and leave it there forty days, that she might be healed by miracle. The priests brought it, she venerated it, then covered it with a piece of cloth of the same size, put it in a case and took it to the family chapel, where she lit a lamp before the case, which burned all the forty days. After forty days Maria's pains, instead of passing, increased and became unbearable. Then she asked a maidservant to bring her the case with the holy image, so that she might venerate it and ease her suffering. But, entering the chapel, the maid saw tongues of flame rising from the case to the ceiling and descending, without burning any object around. In fear and amazement she fell to the ground. Other maids came and, seeing her lying on the floor, told the lady of the house. Maria rose with difficulty from her bed, went to the chapel and saw the flame. She sent at once for the priests of the church; many people came with them. The priests made a prayer, and the crowd cried "Lord, have mercy."

At the end of the prayer the flame gradually died. The priests opened the case to see whether the Image Not Made by Hands had suffered. The icon remained whole, but on the cloth that the patrician Maria had laid over it a copy of the Mandylion was imprinted. And when Maria's body was covered with this cloth bearing the image, her pains stopped at once and she was healed completely.

Before her death Maria gave the holy copy of the Mandylion to Archbishop Domitian of Melitene (Armenia), who had come to Constantinople with the officials of Melitene. According to her wish, the copy was placed in the women's monastery of the Ascension of the Lord in Melitene. In the time of the emperor Heraclius, when the Persians began to plunder the imperial lands, the monks of Melitene fled to Constantinople and took with them the copy of the Holy Image Not Made by Hands.

She is commemorated on 24 August, in the new style. Her name is not in today's Menologion of the Russian Church.