Theopista

Saint Theopista, martyr, was according to tradition a martyr of Rome in the time of the emperor Hadrian, whose name before baptism was Titiana. She is commemorated on 20 September, with her husband and children, with whom she received the crown of martyrdom.

According to the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, Titiana was the wife of Placidas, a general and himself one of those who persecuted Christians. One day Placidas was hunting a stag, and the stag turned toward him, showing between its antlers a cross bearing the figure of Jesus, who said to him: "Placidas, why do you pursue me? I am Jesus, whom you honor without knowing it." Placidas returned home and told his wife everything, and she told him that that night she had had a vision in which a stranger announced to her that the next day she would go to him with her husband. Placidas, his wife and their two sons went the next day to the bishop, believed and were baptized. Placidas received the name Eustace, his wife Titiana the name Theopista, and the sons the names Theopistus and Agapius, or Agapetus.

The emperor Hadrian arrested them as Christians and condemned them to death. They were tortured and, mysteriously saved from the beasts in the Colosseum, all of them died on 20 September 120, roasted inside a bronze bull.

The historian Hippolyte Delehaye holds that Eustace and Theopista never existed and that their story is the fruit of the popular legends of the time. As proof he cites the fact that the two saints are not mentioned before the fifth century and that neither the Depositio martyrum nor the Hieronymian Martyrology speaks of them. The Church has nevertheless honored them from ancient times, and their feast is kept on 20 September.