Myropis

The holy martyr Myrope (also rendered Myropis or Myrope of Chios) is commemorated in the Eastern Orthodox synaxaria as a third-century Christian who suffered in the Decian persecution. According to that liturgical tradition she was born at Ephesus in Roman Asia at the beginning of the third century. Her father died while she was still a child, and she was brought up by her mother in the Christian faith. The accounts relate that she often visited the tomb of the martyr Hermione, venerated as a daughter of the Apostle Philip, and that she took myrrh from the relics there, using it to anoint the sick. Her name in Greek is associated with that fragrant oil.

When persecution of Christians intensified under the emperor Decius, Myrope and her mother left Ephesus for the Aegean island of Chios, where they devoted themselves to fasting and prayer. On Chios the soldier Isidore was put to death for confessing Christ, and a guard was set over his body. The hagiographical narrative states that Myrope, moved by reverence for the martyr, secretly recovered Isidore’s remains and buried them. When the soldiers charged with watching the corpse faced punishment for its disappearance, she came forward and acknowledged that she had taken the body.

She was arrested and beaten by order of the local governor, then thrown into prison. Tradition holds that during the night a light filled the cell and a voice assured her that her contest was finished; a fragrance filled the prison. She died there of her wounds. A prison guard who witnessed these signs is said in the same accounts to have been converted and later to have suffered martyrdom himself.

Veneration of Myrope remained rooted in Chios and in the wider Orthodox calendar; her principal feast is kept on 2 December. No independent civil record of her birth survives, and the year of death given in later martyrologies is the traditional association with the Decian persecution rather than a documented archival date. Beyond the synaxarion narrative, little historical documentation exists, as is typical for many early martyrs known chiefly through liturgical commemoration.