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Mar. 14th, 2010 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichAlexander of Pydna (d. early 4th cent) According to Greek synaxary accounts, Alexander was a priest at Pydna who was successful in gaining many converts for Christianity and who in the persecution of Galerius (Diocletian's colleague who ruled from Thessalonica) was severely tortured and finally executed by decapitation. He has a brief, legendary Passio that consists primarily of his response to an interrogation by Galerius and of a scene in which the emperor sees four men wearing white stoles bear Alexander's soul to heaven, after which he accedes to a request that Alexander's body be taken to Thessalonica for Christian burial. The emperor Nicephorus Phocas (963-969) is said to have presented Alexander's skull to the recently founded Great Lavra on Athos.
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Martyrs Under Nero (A.D. 67) These forty-seven martyrs are believed to have been converted by S. Peter, at the time when he was confined along with S. Paul, in the Mamertine prison, in which they spent nine months. According to tradition S. Peter brought water out of the rock wherewith to baptize them. They suffered execution by the sword.
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Matilda of Saxony (d. prob. 968) Born c895 as the offspring of Saxon and of Danish-Frisian nobility, the pious Matilda received at the convent at Herford an upbringing suitable for her class and then was married to Henry, son the Duke of Saxony. In 919 Henry became king of the Germans and Mathilda became queen. Matilda had a reputation for piety, especially after Henry's death in 936, although she did help her younger son Henry rebel against her older son, Otto I. Of her many foundations, the one for which she is best remembered is the convent of St. Servatius and St. Dionysius at Quedlinburg in today's Sachsen-Anhalt. This was founded by the royal pair on the castle hill; its original church was the castle's chapel. A new church was built in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, was rebuilt in the early twelfth century, and was later expanded. Mathilda and Henry repose in its crypt.
She is a Patron for those with "disappointing children", death of children, second marriages, and a handful of other causes.
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Martyrs Under Nero (A.D. 67) These forty-seven martyrs are believed to have been converted by S. Peter, at the time when he was confined along with S. Paul, in the Mamertine prison, in which they spent nine months. According to tradition S. Peter brought water out of the rock wherewith to baptize them. They suffered execution by the sword.
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Matilda of Saxony (d. prob. 968) Born c895 as the offspring of Saxon and of Danish-Frisian nobility, the pious Matilda received at the convent at Herford an upbringing suitable for her class and then was married to Henry, son the Duke of Saxony. In 919 Henry became king of the Germans and Mathilda became queen. Matilda had a reputation for piety, especially after Henry's death in 936, although she did help her younger son Henry rebel against her older son, Otto I. Of her many foundations, the one for which she is best remembered is the convent of St. Servatius and St. Dionysius at Quedlinburg in today's Sachsen-Anhalt. This was founded by the royal pair on the castle hill; its original church was the castle's chapel. A new church was built in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, was rebuilt in the early twelfth century, and was later expanded. Mathilda and Henry repose in its crypt.
She is a Patron for those with "disappointing children", death of children, second marriages, and a handful of other causes.
