Cointhe

Saint Cointhe (also recorded as Cointa, Cointha, or Quinta) was a Christian woman martyred in Alexandria in Roman Egypt during the persecution associated with the emperor Decius in the middle of the third century. Virtually all that is known of her comes from a contemporary letter written by Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, to Fabius, bishop of Antioch. That letter, which describes the sufferings of the Alexandrian church, was later incorporated by Eusebius of Caesarea into the sixth book of his Ecclesiastical History and thus became the principal historical source for several early Egyptian martyrs.

The violence that claimed Cointhe’s life formed part of a popular outbreak against Christians in Alexandria that preceded, or immediately accompanied, Decius’s edict requiring inhabitants of the empire to sacrifice to the traditional gods. Dionysius recounts that a pagan mob first seized an old man named Metras, then a woman named Quinta (Cointhe), and afterward the aged virgin Apollonia, among others. These attacks took place in the streets and public spaces of the city and were characterized by extreme physical brutality intended both to punish and to terrorize the Christian community. Dionysius noted that this local violence in Alexandria began about a year before the imperial edict itself.

Dionysius relates that the crowd brought Cointhe to a temple and tried to force her to worship the idol there. When she turned away in revulsion and refused, they bound her feet and dragged her through the entire city over the uneven, steeply paved streets. During this ordeal they repeatedly dashed her against millstones and scourged her. At last they conveyed her to a site outside the city gates—the same place where they had prepared a fire for Apollonia—and there they stoned her to death. The account presents her simply as a believer, without indicating whether she was married, a widow, or a consecrated virgin, and without recording her age, family, or place of origin.

No independent biography, passio, or local tradition supplies further details about Cointhe’s earlier life, her burial, or any miracles associated with her relics. She is not known to have belonged to a religious order, nor is she recorded as having held ecclesiastical office. Her memory was nevertheless retained in the liturgical tradition of the West. The Roman Martyrology enters her on 8 February with a brief notice that at Alexandria, in the persecution of Decius, Saint Cointa was dragged through the city by the feet, dashed against the stones, and finally buried under a hail of stones, thereby consummating her martyrdom.

Because the historical record is so sparse, later hagiographers have been unable to attach specific patronages to her name, and the precise year of her birth remains entirely unknown. She stands among the many otherwise barely named Christians whose steadfastness was documented by their own bishop in the midst of the crisis. Her feast continues to be observed on 8 February in calendars that follow the Roman Martyrology, serving as a reminder of the first great empire-wide persecution and of the particular sufferings endured by the church of Alexandria in the mid-third century.