Synaxarion
By Venerable Gerasimos Mikragiannanitis
On the 11th of the same month, the commemoration of the Holy Venerable Martyr Theodora of the Peloponnese, who lies in the village of Vasta in Megalopolis, Arcadia.
Verses
As a gift, O Mother, you offered to God,
The labors of asceticism and the shedding of blood.
On the eleventh, ruthless men severed Theodora’s neck.
By Venerable Gerasimos Mikragiannanitis
On the 11th of the same month, the commemoration of the Holy Venerable Martyr Theodora of the Peloponnese, who lies in the village of Vasta in Megalopolis, Arcadia.
Verses
As a gift, O Mother, you offered to God,
The labors of asceticism and the shedding of blood.
On the eleventh, ruthless men severed Theodora’s neck.
This blessed woman came from the Peloponnese. She flourished in the ninth century and sprang forth from Messenia or Arcadia, the exact locality of her homeland being unknown. Her parents were poor and lived by their own labor, but were pious and faithful toward Christ our Lord, and besides the Saint they also had other children. Raised by them in the education and admonition of the Lord, and having become an example of decorum and good character, she discerned in a divinely-inspired mind that she should be espoused to Christ and came to embrace the monastic life in a monastery for men, not as a woman, but in male attire, as Theodore. The Monastery to which the blessed woman came, and which survives to this day, is called in the local dialect Panagitsa, and is situated in Upper Messenia, on the borders of Messenia and Arcadia, near the village of Monasteraki.
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