Whose Memory the Holy Church
Celebrates on the
31st of January
Tryphaina, the holy martyr, was a native of Kyzikos on the Hellespont.1 She was the daughter of the nobleman Anastasios. Her mother, a Christian, was named Socratia.
Tryphaina was reported to the idolaters, but she came forward of her own accord and mocked their idols. She also denounced the pagans' shameful acts by which the foolish ones honored their falsely-named deities. Not only this, but she also instructed them to forsake their religion of vain idols, so they might turn to the Faith of Christ.
Whereupon, by order of Governor Cęsarius, the holy woman was cast into a fiery furnace. Since she was preserved unharmed by the grace of Christ, they suspended her from a high post. When the executioners cut the rope that bound her, she fell and was pierced by iron spikes which jutted upwards.
The cruel pagans then cast her to wild beasts to be devoured. At first, the beasts neither harmed nor touched her. However, a bull rushed towards her and gored the saint's body with its horns. Thus, Christ's victorious contestant in piety, Tryphaina, crowned with the chaplet of true Faith, received the undying laurel wreath of martyrdom.
It is said that, at the site where the martyr shed her blood, clear water gushed forth. When the water was partaken by women whose breasts did not give milk after childbirth, immediately their milk flowed. Moreover, it is reported that not only women, but even female animals lacking milk, also receive the same benefit when they drink of that water.
1Kyzikos (Cyzicus), now Balkiz near Erdek, is a city on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmara, at the head of routes leading into Asia Minor (Turkey). Emperor Diocletian made Kyzikos metropolis of the province of Hellespont, headquarters of a legion, and site of an imperial mint.