Holy Virginmartyr Seraphia of Antioch

Saint Seraphia of Antioch
القديسة سرافيا الأنطاكية

The twenty-ninth of July in the Holy Orthodox Church is the feast-day of the holy virgin-martyr Saint Seraphia of Antioch. Although her legend primarily comes to us from Latin documents, she has gained a significant cultus in the Slavic tradition, where she is known as Seraphima. She is one of several Orthodox saints in the late classical Christian world, together with Saint Onēsimos of the Seventy, Saints Esperos and Zōē of Pamphylia, Pope Saint Kallistos, Saint Boniface of Tarsos and Saint Padrig of Armagh, who were slaves.

Saint Seraphia [Gk. Σεραφία, Ar. Sarâfiyâ سرافيا] was born to devout Christian parents in Antioch sometime in the late first century. During the persecutions of Christians under Trajan, Seraphia’s parents fled Antioch for Rome, where they resided. They died in Rome. Seraphia grew up remarkably beautiful, and she was sought after by many for marriage. However, she refused all suitors, sold her parents’ belongings and distributed the proceeds to the poor, and sold herself into slavery to a Roman socialite named Sabina, the daughter of a senator named Herodius Metallarius and the widow of a certain Valentinus. Seraphia worked without complaint, led a quiet life free of reproach, prayed every day to God, and beyond her own immediate needs gave away in charity whatever she earned or was given her. In this way her mistress too began to believe in Christ, and was baptised.

After Hadrian came to power, the persecutions against Christians lessened but were not wholly done away with; individual governors and judges were left oftentimes to exercise their own discretion when an accusation was brought against a Christian in public. It appears that such happened to Seraphia, who had a charge brought against her to the governor Beryllus. The first time Seraphia appeared before the governor, she went willingly and without fear, and she was accompanied by her mistress Sabina. Upon seeing her vouched for by such a noteworthy personage, the governor allowed her to leave, but he summoned her back a second time to answer the charge of being a Christian. He instructed Seraphia to make a sacrifice to the Roman idols, which naturally she refused to do, professing her belief in the one true God – Christ Jesus.

Beryllus then handed Seraphia over to two guards of Ægyptian descent, who attempted to force themselves on her at Beryllus’s design. Saint Seraphia called upon God’s name and asked Him to protect her. Before the two men could lay hands on her, there was a mighty earthquake and they were flung away from her, senseless. They could neither rise nor speak. Upon the following day, Beryllus having learned what happened, ordered Seraphia to restore the two guards to health and allow them to speak. Once Seraphia had uttered her prayer to the Lord, the two guards were able to get to their feet and found their voices again.

They related to the governor that as they had approached Saint Seraphia, an angel of the Lord had appeared before them, shielding her body from them and preventing them from coming near her. Beryllus was convinced that Seraphia was in fact a sorceress, and he again commanded her to make a sacrifice to the idols. When Saint Seraphia again refused, the cruel governor ordered her to be burned with torches and beaten with rods. The executioners beat Seraphia so hard that the rods they were using splintered, and as punishment from God for his cruelty one of the splinters flew into the right eye of Beryllus, and after three days made him blind in that eye. Unable to break the holy martyr of God or to sway her, Beryllus ordered that she be put to the sword and beheaded. In this way she met her martyrdom.

Sabina later came to collect the body of her beloved slave, and buried her with due reverence. It would later come to pass that Sabina herself, six years later, would also be beheaded for professing Christ, after being accused before the prefect Elpidius – and she is also recognised as a saint, with her feast-day falling on the twenty-ninth of August.

In light of recent op-ed pieces in media either condemning Christianity for, or attempting to excuse, its involvement in the classical institution of slavery, we need to properly remember both the failings and the promises inherent in the Christian project with regard to slavery. (We also need to bear in mind that the classical institution, however brutal, was far less so than the modern chattel form practised after the advent of capitalism.)

In remembering slaves and former slaves like Seraphia as saints, we are admitting their fundamental ontological equality with their mistresses like Sabina; and we are more than only implicitly rebuking worldly structures which hold some persons to be more equal than others. This is primarily a Liturgical witness and a Liturgical demand, but it prompts extra-Liturgical reflection and action. We need to learn from those of our saints who actively preached and urged direct political action against slavery, such as Adamnán of Iona, and those within Christendom who followed their lead in the logical direction, such as the German legal scholar Eiko von Repgow. Any lesser form of Christian witness would be at best incomplete, and at worst complicit.

Moreover, as Christians we are called upon to repent of complicity in unjust social systems like slavery. This was precisely the key demand of Saint John the Forerunner when he called the people out of the cities to repent and be baptised. Baptism was an act of political symbolism whereby the penitent washed herself clean of her own sins, including the social sins of the Herodian puppet state and its Roman masters. Some Christians, historically, did so repent. Many others did not. This is the fallen reality and the fallen history to which we are witness, without excuse or apology. And following this we must repent of our own complicity in contemporary forms of slavery, including that in Libya and that in the prison-industrial complex. The heavenly equality in sainthood of Saints Seraphia and Sabina demands as much from us.

In that spirit, Holy virginmartyr Seraphia, steadfast confessor of Christ before the pagans, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!