Proskudia of Edessa

Holy Martyr Proskudia of Edessa (also called Prosdoce) suffered in 304, in the time of the emperor Diocletian, together with her mother Domnina and her sister Berenice (Verina). The page names her in its title as of Edessa, but the account places the three women in Antioch of Syria.

The deed is related by Eusebius of Caesarea. Domnina was a woman known for virtue of soul, beauty, wealth and noble birth; she had raised her two daughters in the true faith, while they were in the flower of youth and beauty. Envious enemies sought to learn where they were hiding. Learning that they lived in another country, they called them to Antioch by deceit, and they fell into the trap laid by soldiers. The mother, seeing herself and her daughters in a hopeless situation, described to them the horrors that men were preparing, the most terrible being the threat of the house of vice. She told them that neither they nor she should hear even a word of such a thing, that giving one's soul into the slavery of demons is more fearful than any death, and she showed the only way: flight to the Lord. The daughters were strengthened in this thought, wrapped themselves modestly in their cloaks, asked the guards, halfway along the road, leave to step a little to one side, and threw themselves into the river that flowed beside them.

St Proskudia is commemorated, with her mother and sister, on 17 October, in the new style.