Hieromartyr Athanasius the Bishop (+270–275); Venerable Anthusa (+c. 298) and Her Servants, the Holy Martyrs Charisimus and Neophytus (III)

The Hieromartyr Athanasius, Bishop of Tarsus in Cilicia, who baptised the Venerable Anthusa, was beheaded in the reign of the Emperor Aurelian (270–275). Anthusa was the daughter of noble pagans living in the Syrian city of Seleucia. When she came to know the teaching of Christ, she went to the hierarch Athanasius on the pretext of visiting her nurse, and was baptised. Her daughter’s conversion to Christianity terribly enraged her parents. Then the blessed one was tonsured a nun by the hand of Saint Athanasius and went into the desert to labour. The handmaid of Christ laboured here for twenty-three years, and at last, at the end of the third century, commended her soul to the Lord in peace. Together with the Venerable Anthusa her servants Charisimus and Neophytus were baptised, and they ended their lives as martyrs.