Virgin Apollonia

Saint Apollonia was a Christian virgin martyr of Alexandria in Roman Egypt who suffered death in the mid-third century during an outbreak of anti-Christian violence associated with the persecution under the emperor Decius. Almost all that is known of her life and death comes from a contemporary letter written by Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, later preserved by the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History. Dionysius describes Apollonia as an aged virgin held in high honor among the Christians of the city. In 249 a pagan mob, stirred by civic unrest and hostility toward the Christian community, attacked believers in Alexandria, seizing them, destroying their property, and subjecting them to public humiliation and torture.

According to Dionysius's account, the rioters seized Apollonia and by repeated blows broke all her teeth. They then erected a pyre of faggots outside the city gates and threatened to burn her alive unless she repeated impious words. Given a brief respite, she sprang of her own accord into the fire and was burned to death rather than deny her faith. Early Christian writers regarded this death as martyrdom. The outline of these events rests on Dionysius's near-contemporary testimony, which historians generally accept as a reliable witness to the Alexandrian riots of 249, even though later medieval legends added miracles and narrative embellishments that cannot be verified.

Devotion to Saint Apollonia spread widely in the Latin West during the Middle Ages. Because her teeth had been shattered in the course of her passion, she became the principal patron of those afflicted with toothache and, in time, of dentists and the dental profession. Artists commonly depicted her holding a pair of pincers grasping a tooth, often together with a martyr's palm. Her feast is kept on 9 February in the Roman Martyrology and in many Western calendars. Relics attributed to her have been claimed by numerous churches, including churches in Rome and elsewhere in Europe; the original place of her burial and the authenticity of later relic claims cannot be established from early sources.

Saint Apollonia was never the subject of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval or modern type; her cult belongs to the ancient veneration of martyrs and was later confirmed by inclusion in liturgical calendars. She is commemorated as a virgin martyr. There is no reliable evidence that she belonged to a later religious order, that she was married, or that she had children; the earliest witness presents her simply as an elderly consecrated virgin of the Alexandrian church. Beyond the brief narrative preserved by Dionysius and Eusebius, almost nothing can be verified about her family, place of birth, or earlier life.