Thecla, Mariamne, Martha, Mary and Enata

The holy martyrs Thecla, Mariamne, Martha, Mary and Enata, also called the Five Sisters of Persia or the Five Virgins of Persia, were five Christian women who, according to tradition, suffered for Christ in the reign of the Persian king Shapur II (309 to 379). They are commemorated on 6 June.

Their story is known from Syriac and Greek sources, and the history of these texts has been hard to establish. The names differ from source to source: the Syriac texts give Thecla, Mariam, Martha, Mariam and Emmi (or Amai), while the Greek ones give Thecla, Mariamne, Martha, Mary and Enata, with variants. The scholar Sebastian Brock argues that the form Mariamne was chosen in Greek so as not to repeat the name Mariam of the original. The regional tradition of Crete moved the events to Cretan places.

According to the account, they lived near the village of Aza in the Sassanian Empire and led a monastic life of chastity and prayer; some texts call them virgins. They were under the spiritual guidance of a certain Paul, said to have been a priest, but also a rich and greedy man. The five women distributed their possessions and entrusted them to him, but he kept everything for himself.

A man named Nerses made Paul's wealth known to the countrymen, who threatened to kill all six unless they renounced faith in Christ. Paul renounced it to save himself, but the five women refused to deny the Christian faith. One source says Paul himself beheaded them, another that they were put to death by the Persians and Paul. According to the English-⁠language source, Paul was thrown into a river the next day.

On the feast the sources do not agree. Their commemoration on 6 June is ancient, in recent times 9 June has also been noted, and a Serbian source commemorates them on 26 September.