Mary the Patrician

Holy Martyr Mary the Patrician of Constantinople suffered in the year 730, in the time of the iconoclast emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741), for the holy icons. With her suffered Julian, Marcian, John, James, Alexis, Demetrius, Photius, Peter, Leontius, the protospatharios Gregory and others.

The emperor drove the Holy Patriarch Germanus (715-730) from the patriarchal throne, sending him into exile, and unlawfully put the iconoclast Anastasius (730-753) in his place. By an edict all icons were to be taken out of churches and houses and destroyed. At Constantinople, above the so-⁠called "Bronze" gate, there had been since the time of the holy emperor Constantine the Great (324-337) a wonderworking icon of the Saviour cast in bronze. The emperor and Patriarch Anastasius ordered it taken down. A soldier set a ladder and climbed up to remove it. The gathered people were outraged at this profanation. In the crowd was the patrician Mary, a woman of noble birth; she, and after her many others, ran to the ladder and pulled it from the wall, so as not to let the soldier touch the icon. The ladder collapsed, and the soldier on it fell and was killed. It was 19 January 730. In the defence of the icon also took part the protospatharios (commander of soldiers) Gregory and the Venerable Martyr, the virgin Theodosia (commemorated 29 May).

Learning of it, the emperor at once put to death a multitude of Orthodox, whose names and number only the Lord knows. The protospatharios Gregory also received a martyr's death. But some Orthodox of the nobility, Julian, Marcian, John, James, Alexis, Demetrius, Leontius, Photius and Peter, were thrown into prison and kept there about eight months, receiving five hundred blows each day; by the power of Christ they remained alive in torments and bore them bravely. By the emperor's order their faces were burned with red-⁠hot iron and their heads cut off. Saint Mary the Patrician, who had not been put in prison, learning of the coming execution, accepted a martyr's death of her own will. The bodies of the martyrs were buried in the district of Pelagius, near the church of the holy Martyr Theodore, and were found incorrupt after a hundred and thirty-⁠nine years.

They are commemorated on 22 August, in the new style.