Epicharis (martyr)

This article is about the Christian martyr. For other uses, see Epicharis (disambiguation).

Epicharis is the name of two Christian martyrs.

250

His feast day is 9 January (the day of her martyrdom) in the Roman Catholic Church.

Born in Africa, and becoming a bishop, he was martyred in 250 with Felix, Jucundus, Secundus, Vitalis, and seven other companions. An Epictetus, a bishop, was recorded by St. Cyprian.

Note: This information pertains to Epictetus, not Epicharis (see The Book of Saints)

300

Said to be the wife of a Roman senator, she was martyred in Byzantium or Asia Minor in 300. Her feast day is September 27 in the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

Some sources give her as a lady of a senatorial family, who was scourged and then smitten with the sword in Rome in the persecution of Diocletian.

According to the Annals of Tacitus, Nero, "supposing that the tender body of a woman could never endure the rage of the rack, order'd her to be crush'd and mangled with variety of torments." After not breaking under these tortures, "with the girdle that bound her breasts, she fram'd a noose for her neck, and tying it to the canopy of the chair hung upon it with all the weight of her body and dislodg'd the slender remains of life" (Cornelius Tacitus, The Works of Tacitus, Vol 1, containing The Annals (London: Tho. Woodward and John Peele, 1728), p. 441)

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