Saint Apollonia

Saint Apollonia of Alexandria is among the best-attested virgin martyrs of the third century, though almost nothing is known of her life before her death. The sole contemporary account is a letter of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, written to Fabius of Antioch and quoted at length by Eusebius of Caesarea in Book VI of the Ecclesiastical History. Dionysius, an eyewitness to the events of 249 in his own city, calls her the admirable Apollonia and that marvelous aged virgin. No ancient source records her parents, her place of birth, or the year she was born. She was already advanced in years when the violence that claimed her life broke out.

In the last year of the reign of the emperor Philip the Arab, a popular uprising against the Christians of Alexandria preceded the official edicts of Decius. Dionysius describes how a pagan prophet and poet stirred the mob; Christians were seized in their homes, dragged through the streets, and subjected to torture. Apollonia was captured, and the rioters struck her repeatedly in the face until they had broken or knocked out all of her teeth. They then constructed a pyre outside the city gates and threatened to burn her alive unless she uttered impious words, either a denial of Christ or an invocation of the pagan gods. Given a moment of liberty at her own request, she chose death rather than apostasy and sprang of her own accord into the flames.

Because her torment uniquely involved the destruction of her teeth, medieval Christians invoked Apollonia against toothache and came to regard her as the patroness of the dental profession. From the later Middle Ages onward she is commonly shown in art holding a tooth in pincers or a golden tooth, sometimes with a martyr's palm. Churches, hospitals, and guilds of barber-surgeons and dentists were dedicated to her across Europe. Relics claimed to be hers, including teeth, fragments of bone, or even an entire skull, were preserved in numerous churches, including sites in Rome, Antwerp, and other cities, though the original place of her burial in Alexandria is unknown.

The Roman Martyrology commemorates Saint Apollonia on 9 February, the date also observed in the General Roman Calendar and in several Eastern calendars. She was never formally canonized by a pope according to the later juridical process; her cult rests on the early church's recognition of her martyrdom as reported by a contemporary bishop. Later legendary elaborations, including claims that she was a deaconess or that she suffered under Decius himself rather than in the preceding riot, lack support in the earliest sources. What remains historically secure is the testimony of Dionysius: an elderly Christian virgin of Alexandria who, after the violent extraction of her teeth, voluntarily entered the fire rather than deny her faith.