Mary the Younger

Saint Mary the Younger (Mary the New of Thrace, Sainte Marie la Jeune) was a married woman of Vizye in Thrace, of Armenian descent, who reposed in 903. She is commemorated on 16 February and on 2 June. Her veneration is regarded as local: the Russian source shows that after the middle of the tenth century nothing is known about her feast, and that the absence of her name from the Synaxarion of Constantinople suggests that her veneration was limited to Vizye and its surroundings, although her life survived in two manuscripts of lives into the fifteenth century.

According to her life, she came from an Armenian family, thought to be of the Mamikonian clan, which moved from Armenia to Constantinople in the time of the emperor Basil I. Her father was a soldier, as was her husband, the drungarios Nikephoros. She was a gentle and virtuous wife; she was known for her piety in prayer, at services and at home, and for her great almsgiving. The author of the life notes that she treated her servants as members of the family, not as slaves. When in 894 the war with Symeon began, her husband was appointed commander of a turma at the city of Vizye in Thrace. She followed him to the new place and there continued her works of charity. She endured with humility and prayers of thanksgiving the death of two small sons, and then twins were granted her: one, Vaan, entered among the saints, and the other, Stephen, received the monastic habit with the name Symeon.

Nikephoros' brother and sister accused Mary of squandering the property and of being unfaithful to her husband. Although Mary denied the fault and said that by almsgiving she was saving not only her own soul but his, Nikephoros ordered her kept locked in the bedroom. One day those who hated her told him Mary's words in a distorted form; he grew angry and began to beat his wife; trying to flee, Mary injured her head and died after a few days. As they prepared for the burial, a fragrance came from Mary's body. When her chests and cupboards were opened, it became clear that she had sold all her jewels and clothes to help the poor, to ransom prisoners and to adorn churches.

Mary the New was buried in the cathedral of Saint Sophia in Vizye and, four months after the burial, a healing of a possessed man took place at her grave. Archbishop Euthymius of Vizye did not believe that miracles could be worked not only by chaste men, holy monks and martyrs, but also by a married woman, but this miracle was followed by others, which convinced the bishop of Vrysis, Stephen, and the other sceptics of Mary's holiness. Nikephoros repented, and after a time his wife appeared to him in a dream and asked him to build a church in her honour. The new church was consecrated by Archbishop Euthymius, and Mary's relics, despite the attempts of the clergy of Saint Sophia to prevent it, were moved there by Nikephoros, and at the new place the miracles continued. Once Mary the New appeared to an icon painter from Redestos and asked him to paint her icon and take it to Vizye.

Twenty-⁠five years after her death, when the war between the Bulgarians and the Byzantines had ended, her incorrupt body was reburied in a marble tomb. For the church in which she was buried her sons gave a large sum of money and later made it a monastery. Her sons are Venerable Marinos (of Constantinople, around 930), in the world Vaan, and Stephen-⁠Symeon, a monk.