Sophronia

Saint Sophronia was a hermit woman of Taranto in Apulia (Italy), who reposed in the year 309 on the Cheradi islands. Tradition calls her a holy anchoress and, in some sources, also a martyr.

She lived in the 4th century and was brought up in the Christian faith. On reaching youth, she wanted to follow the example of Saint Pelagia and lead a life of hermitage and penitence. She fled in secret from her father's house and sailed to the Cheradi islands, then called the Pelagie islands because there was a church of Saint Pelagia there. She lived as a hermit on the larger island, today the island of San Pietro, in a hut of branches and tree trunks. A devotional legend says that she spent her life meditating on divine things, speaking with angels, fasting, and writing her thoughts on the bark of trees.

At her death, another legend says, her body lay unburied, and the birds covered it with flowers and branches. Some fishermen who landed, drawn by the fragrance of the flowers, found the body and carried it to Taranto, where it was buried. Her veneration is attested in old paintings, among them a fresco at San Pietro Mandurino in Manduria, which shows her in penitent's dress carving her name on the trees of the island. She is commemorated on 10 May, by the Western calendar (new style). She is honored as a saint of the undivided Church.