In the year 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian, then in his 19th year of power, desiring to restore Rome to his vision of its prior glory, instituted what was the final major persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, and arguably the most severe. The emperor issued a number of edicts removing legal protections from Christians and mandating they comply with religious practices only to gods officially sanctioned by Rome. Later edicts required universal sacrifice to Roman gods and were targeted at Christian clergy. This persecution lasted ten years.
Born in the city of Aquileia, on the northern Adriatic coast of Italy, the orphaned sisters Agape, Chionia, and Irene were living devout lives under the supervision of a priest named Xeno. As young women, they each declined numerous offers of marriage, preferring lives of service and prayer.
When the edicts from Rome were announced, they hid their Christian writings but were arrested for refusing to eat meat sacrificed to the Roman idols. Diocletian had been passing through the area on his way to Macedonia and they were brought before him. Seeing their beauty, he encouraged them to renounce their faith and find grooms from among the men in his entourage. The sisters replied that they had no bridegroom but Christ and were ready to suffer for Him. Enraged, and seeking to make an example of them, the emperor ordered they be brought with him and put on trial in front of the governor of Thessalonica.
Standing firm, though alone, the sisters refused to bow to the demands of the governor. They were ordered to stand before yet another official, and they were subjected to yet another trial. At this second trial, they were found guilty of not renouncing their faith. The official sentenced the older two, Agape and Chionia, to be publicly burned at the stake. According to tradition, in death the sisters appeared to be sleeping as the bodies themselves had not burned.
Irene, the youngest, was ordered to be taken to a brothel. En route, the escort was met by two soldiers who instructed them that their orders had changed and instead they were to take her to a certain mountain and abandon her to her death there. They did so and reported back, enraging the official who had given no such order. He sent a contingent of soldiers to bring her back and, in the melee, she was shot with an arrow in the throat and died on the mountain, allowing her dignity to be preserved.
Their names in the Greek mean, respectively, ‘love’ (Agape), ‘snow’ (Chionia – indicating purity), and ‘peace’ (Irene). Word of their martyrdom helped buttress the Church for the remaining nine years of persecution that was to follow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape,_Chionia,_and_Irene
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletianic_Persecution
https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/04/16/101106-virgin-martyrs-agape-irene-and-chionia-in-illyria
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