Thomais of Lesbos

Saint Thomais of Lesbos, the Venerable, was a Byzantine saint of the tenth century, born on the island of Lesbos and living at Constantinople, patron of marriage, honoured for the patience with which she bore a hard marriage and for her almsgiving. Unlike many Byzantine women saints, she did not enter a convent but reached sanctity as a married woman who remained in the world. She died around 947 to 951, at thirty-⁠eight, from the blows received from her husband. The Church commemorates her on 3 January.

Sources

The earliest life of her was written around the middle of the tenth century by an unknown author and was edited in the Acta Sanctorum by Hippolyte Delehaye (1925); it was translated into English by Paul Halsall (1996). In the fourteenth century, in the Palaiologan period, three new works about her appeared: an encomium by an unknown author, who says his headache was cured at her tomb, a new life written by Constantine Akropolites (died about 1324) and a metrical synaxarion. The old life attributes fourteen miracles to her, five in her lifetime and nine after death.

Childhood and marriage

Thomais was born on Lesbos to Michael and Kale, between 909 and 913. Her parents had had no children for many years, until the Mother of God told Kale in a dream that she would bear a daughter. The family later moved to the Bosporus region, perhaps to Chalcedon, where they raised her piously, strengthened in good works, devoted to the service of God and adorned with all the virtues.

At twenty-⁠four she was forced to marry Stephen. She did not want marriage and wished to remain a virgin, which also explains why she married later than was usual among the Byzantines. The couple lived at Constantinople, childless, in modest circumstances: Stephen was a sailor and Thomais a weaver. She sold the clothes she wove and also gave them to the poor. Throughout the marriage she suffered her husband's violence; he often beat her to punish her for her acts of mercy, such as giving away part of the household income. She walked the streets of Constantinople to help the poor and visit places of worship; it is thought that, being of humble birth, she was more easily allowed to go out alone in public. The women of the imperial family gave alms, but usually through others, while Thomais helped in person, with her own hands. Once, meeting a poor naked man in the street, she gave him the clothes off her back; Stephen, enraged by her nakedness in public, beat her terribly.

Death

On 1 January, around 947 to 951, at thirty-⁠eight, she died of the bodily sufferings caused by Stephen over thirteen years of marriage. She was buried in the grounds of the convent of ta Mikra Romaiou, where her mother, Kale, had been abbess. For forty days after her death she worked miracles; at the sight of the first, the nuns moved her remains into the church. The last recorded miracle is the healing of Stephen himself, who had been possessed by the devil as punishment for what he had done.

Miracles

Among the miracles during her life: a man possessed by an evil spirit, in a procession, fell at her feet and asked forgiveness, and she anointed him with oil and healed him; she healed a eunuch, Constantine, of paralysis and quinsy by anointing him with the water in which she had washed her hands; she healed a possessed woman who threw herself at her feet in church before the icon of the Mother of God; and she healed two women who had lived in sin, one sick for six years with a severe haemorrhage and another with a disease of the breast, on condition that they change their lives.

After death, a man seized by a demon came to her coffin and was cured at once; a nun who struck her head on the tomb was freed from an evil spirit; a wealthy man of high birth, Eutychianos, struck by palsy as a result of his sinful conduct, caused by demons, was healed at her tomb after doctors had failed; a man sick with epilepsy and partial paralysis was cured; a grieving fisherman who had lost his gear and catch in a storm recovered his nets, filled with fish; the nuns lost a prayer book and the saint showed them that it lay in her tomb; a woman with severe abdominal pain was cured; a monk named Symeon, who had lost his prayer stool, was reminded by her to whom he had lent it and recovered it; and Stephen, tormented by a demon, was healed at her tomb.

Veneration

Thomais is honoured in the Orthodox Church as a model of devout living in marriage. Her life is compared to that of Saint Mary the Younger (about 800), also a married saint, rare among Byzantine women saints, who were mostly nuns and ascetics. Paul Halsall judges that her almsgiving alone would not be enough for sanctity; what raises her is her endurance of violence, while her resistance to marriage and her childlessness show a continuing conflict between the ideal of domestic life and the ideal of sanctity. She has also been compared with Saint Matrona of Perge (about 400), whose husband was also brutal over her almsgiving, but who fled and joined a monastery, living as a monk under the name Babylas. A wide cult of her never took root; she was not included in the Synaxarion of Constantinople and no early iconography is known; Alice-⁠Mary Talbot supposes a local cult among ordinary women, because she could be imitated as a married woman of the world. Her day of commemoration is 3 January, and she is regarded as patron saint of marriage.