ON S. POTAMIAENA THE YOUNGER,
VIRGIN MARTYR AT ALEXANDRIA IN EGYPT.
UNDER MAXIMIAN.
HISTORICAL COMPILATION.
Her Martyrdom from Palladius, its time, and day of cult.
Potamiaena the Younger, Virgin and Martyr at Alexandria in Egypt (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
Although the name of this holy Martyr our Laherius reported in his Menology of Virgins on the 23rd of February; yet because it did not appear, on whose authority he did this, The Elder who is venerated June 28 it pleased Bolland then to defer her to the 28th of June, because on such day among other Alexandrian Martyrs, disciples of Origen, who suffered under Severus, and praised by Eusebius lib. 6, occurred a certain Potamiaena; whom with this younger synonym, praised in the Lives of the Fathers of Palladius and Heraclides, many confused. To change this opinion of his, that distinguished and often praised pair of Synaxaria in this work, found at Dijon and Paris, was the cause, where her Acts on the day June 7 were thus found reported: Τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ. Μνήμη τῆς ἁγίας Μάρτυρος Ποταμίνης. "On the same day, memory of the holy Martyr Potamina." Baronius, from a corrupt text of Palladius, had read Potamenia; Hervetus, interpreting the same under the name of Heraclides in Lipomanus, Potamiana: but the true spelling of the name, she is distinguished by condition and time, this Potamiaena: in better exemplars of both Eusebius and Palladius, is Ποταμιαῖνα. In vain therefore with Baronius shall we attempt to distinguish two persons, of equal praise of chastity, of the same place of contest, and of an almost similar end of martyrdom consummated through boiling pitch, otherwise than through condition, by which one was free-born, the other a slave; and by reason of time, on whose account this is called the Elder, this the Younger. But the History of the Younger in Palladius Bishop of Helenopolis cap. 3 is thus found in Greek.
[2] Ὁ μακάριος Ἰσίδωρος ὁ Χενοδόχος, συντετυχηκὼς Ἀντωνίῳ τῷ ἁγίῳ καὶ μακαρίῳ, who, by her master in vain solicited to defilement, γγραφῆς ἄξιον διηγήσατο πράγμα, ἀκηκοὸς παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ. Ὅτι Παταμίαινα τις ὡραιοτάτη κόρη, κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν Μαξιμιανοῦ τοῦ διώκτου, παιδίσκη τινὸς ἀκολάστου ὑπῆρχεν· ἣν πολλὰ λιπαρήσας ὁ ταὺτης δεσπότης ὑποσχέσεσι διαφόροις, ἀπατῆσαι ταύτην οὐκ ἴσχυεν. Ἐν οἷς τὸ τελευταῖον μανεὶς, παραδίδωσι, ταύτην τῷ κατ᾽ ἐκεῖνον καιρὸν Ἐπάρχῳ τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας, ἔκδοτον αὐτὴν δεδωκὼς ὡς Χριστιανὴν, καὶ βλασφημοῦσαν καὶ τοὺς καιροὺς καὶ τοὺς Βασιλεῖς ἐπὶ τοῖς διωγμοῖς· ὑποσχόμενος αὐτῷ χρήματα ἱκανὰ ἐπὶ τῇ ταυτῆς συμφορᾳ· Ἐὰν πείσῃς ταύτην, φήσας, συνθέσθαι μου τῷ σκοπῷ, φύλαξον αὐτῆν ἀτιμώρητον· ἐὰν δὲ ἐμμείνῃ τῆ ἐξ ἀρχῆς αὐτῆς αὐστηρίᾳ, παρεκάλεσα τιμωρουμένην αὐτὴν ἀποθανεῖν, ἵνα μὴ ζῶσα λέγων καταγελάσῃ μου τῆς ἀσωτίας. Προαχθεῖσα δὲ πρὸ τοῦ βήματος ἡ ἀνδρεεία, and handed over to the judge, as a Christian, διαφόροις ὀργάνοις τιμωρητικοῖς τὸ σῶμα ἐβασανίζετο, καὶ πρὸς πολλοὺς λογισμοὺς ἐπυγρομάχει τῇ γνώμῃ. Ἐν οἷς ὀργάνοις τῶν τιμωριῶν ὠμότερός τις κολαστηρίων βάσανος παρὰ τοῦ τότε δικάζοντος εὕρηται. Κελεύει λέβητα μέγαν, πίσσης πλησθέντα, ὑποκαίεσθαι τούτον λαμπρωτάτῳ πυρί. Βραζούσης οὖν τῆς πίσσης, καὶ σφόδρα ἐκκαιομένης, προέτεινεν ὁ ἀνήμερος Ἄρχων τῇ Μακαρίᾳ ἐκείνῃ, λέγων, ὅτι, Ἢ ἄπελθε, she chose to lose life rather than chastity. ὑποτάγηθι τοῖς θελήμασι τοῦ δεσπότου σου· ἱνα ἰδέναι ἔχοις, ἐν τῶ λέβητί σε καταγγισθῆναι κελεύω. Ἡ δὲ ἀπεκρίνατο λέγουσα· Μὴ γένοιτο τοιοῦτος πώποτε δικαστὴς, ὁ κελεύων ὑποτάττεσθαί με ἀσωτιᾳ. Ἀπομανεὶς οὖν ἐκεῖνος, κελεύει αὐτὴν ἐκδυθεῖσαν ἐμβληθῆναι ἐν τῷ λέβητι. Ἡ δὲ ἀφίησι φωνὴν, εἶποῦσα· Τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ Βασιλέως σου, ὃν σὺ φοβῇ, εἰ κέκριται σοι τὸ οὕτως με τιμωρήσασθαι, μὴ κελεύσῃς με ἐκδυθῆναι· ἀλλὰ κατ᾽ ὀλίγον με πρόσταξον ἐν τῇ βρασούσῃ πίσσῃ καταχαλᾶσθαι, ἵνα ἰδῃς πόσην ὑπομονήν μοι εὐχαρίσατο ὀ Κύριος, ὅν συ ἀγνοεῖς. Καὶ χωλασθεῖσα κατὰ μικρὸν, ὡς ἐπὶ παρατάσει ὡρῶν τριῶν, οὕτως ἐξέψυξεν, φθασὰσης τῆς πίσσης περὶ τὸν τράχηλον. Thus far Palladius, which are thus rendered in Latin in the Lives of the Fathers published by Rosweid, in a somewhat more contracted phrase (which is also noted in the aforesaid Synaxaria) but in substance entirely the same, beginning from this sign .
[3] "A certain Potamiaena, was a most beautiful girl in the time of Maximian the persecutor, which are rendered in Latin from the old interpreter of Palladius the handmaid of a certain intemperate and lustful man. Whom when her master had much begged, and had promised her various things, he could not deceive. By which it happened, that he at last roused with fury, handed her over to the Prefect of Alexandria, who was there at the time, as a Christian, and one who pursued the times and the Emperors with curses on account of the persecutions; promising he would give him a great sum of money, for her calamity, saying: 'If you persuade her to assent to my desire, keep her, afflicted with no torment; but if she remained in that austerity which she had shown from the beginning, I have asked that, afflicted with torment, she should die, saying, Let her not living mock my intemperance.' But the strong virgin brought before the tribunal, with various instruments prepared for taking punishment, was tortured in body; and against many and various arguments, in mind, like a firm and stable tower, she resisted. But among the instruments of punishments, a certain crueler torment of tortures was found by him who was then Judge. For he orders a great cauldron, filled with pitch, to be heated with most violent fire. When the pitch therefore boiled, and burned greatly, the savage Prefect turning to that Blessed one said: 'Go, obey the will of your master; otherwise, that you may understand, I order you to be plunged into the cauldron.' But she answered, saying: 'Far be it, that there be a judge so iniquitous, who orders me to obey lust and intemperance.' He therefore struck with fury,
[4] Palladius prefaces, that Isidore, the Xenodochus of the Alexandrian Church and Presbyter (whose exercise on Mount Nitria he had described in Cap. 1), narrated this matter, worthy of being committed to letters, to himself, as heard from B. Anthony, whom he had met: and in almost the same words the same are read in Rosweid under the title of "the Paradise of Heraclides the Hermit," as heard from S. Isidore from B. Anthony. from the interpretation of an uncertain but ancient interpreter; yet Rosweid does not dare to call them different authors; and rightly, since both texts narrate entirely the same things in almost the same order. What if Palladius, writing to Lausus the Prince, Whence the name of Heraclides was prefixed to the Paradise, made for his book the title "Paradise," and assumed the name of Heraclides; and the same under his proper name was sometime caused to be described, calling itself the Lausiac History? Yet the sense varies slightly at times, perhaps from the haste of the interpreters more than that in the original texts there was any difference: although also this could have happened to those through the transcribers. So in Palladius the virgin entreats that she not be ordered stripped (which makes for the commendation of modesty), but rather slowly immersed in the pitch. In Heraclides, no care of caution against nudity is expressed; but the slow immersion into pitch is sought primarily, which also the Synaxaria have: and small diversity in the text? but these say also that her head was immersed, so that she was entirely covered with pitch; μέχρις οὗ ἡ κεφαλὴ αὐτῆς ἐκαλύφθη ὑπὸ τοῦ βράσμου τῆς πίσσης, when the Author himself says only, that the pitch reached up to the neck, when the Virgin expired.
[5] As to the time of the Martyrdom, "Maximin" from the interpretation of Hervetus I find in the edition of Rosweid; but as much as I understand from the Annotations, whether Maximin for Maximian? beyond his intention. For he confesses that in the Greek Parisian edition is read Μαξιμιανοῦ, and the same he had read in other Greek manuscripts, in the old interpreters of Palladius and Heraclides. But I judge that S. Anthony narrated to Isidore those things which he had remembered to have been done in his time in the most fervent persecution of Diocletian and Maximian (himself often a spectator of Martyrdoms), not the events of the year 235, fifteen years earlier than his nativity, which he could only have learned from the report of his elders. Athanasius certainly in his Life, S. Anthony seems to have been a spectator of the Martyrdom. illustrated on the 17th of January, in chap. XI describes his journey to Alexandria, in the time of the persecution stirred up by Maximian the Emperor. But Antonius came there, that himself, a martyr by love, either might encounter, or watch others contending, or exhort them, and follow them to the place of happy blood. But after the storm of persecution had flowed off, and the blessed Bishop Peter had received the crown of martyrdom, he returned to his former monastery: so that it is not to be wondered at, if Potamiaena suffered in his sight.