Great Martyr Irene of Thessaloniki (Migdonia/Macedonia)

The Great Martyr Irene was born into the pagan family of the local ruler Licinius in the region of Migdonia (Macedonia/Thrace) and bore the secular name Penelope. Her tutor Apellianos secretly instructed her in the Christian faith and baptized her with the name Irene. When her father wished to give her in marriage, the saint refused and openly confessed herself a Christian, for which she was subjected to brutal torment, including being thrown to be trampled by wild horses — but the horses instead turned on the ruler himself, and only through the saint's prayer was Licinius kept alive, after which he came to believe in Christ along with most of his subjects. Some sources (Russian tradition, azbyka.ru, drevo-info.ru) place her in the 1st century and connect her baptism to a disciple of the Apostle Paul; others (English-language sources, OCA) place her in the 4th century. Given this divergence, an exact date cannot be established with certainty. After further preaching labors and renewed torments in Thrace and Macedonia, St. Irene withdrew to a cave near Ephesus, where she reposed.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON IMAGES: the original entry's image files turned out to be a mix of SEVERAL DIFFERENT saints named Irene — besides Irene of Thessaloniki herself (Great Martyr, feast May 5/18), the files include: (1) Venerable Irene Chrysovalantou of Cappadocia, a 9th-century Byzantine abbess (feast July 28) — a completely different saint; (2) Martyr Irene of Lesbos, a 15th-century child martyr, companion of the Hieromartyrs Raphael and Nicholas of Lesbos (the three suffered together in 1463 under the Turks, relics revealed in the 20th century) — three separate files turned out to depict this group, not the Great Martyr Irene of Thessaloniki; (3) Irene of Rome, a widow who secretly nursed the Martyr Sebastian after his first failed execution (Western tradition, 4th c.) — also a different saint; (4) one file turned out to be a modern photograph of an unidentified living woman with no connection to hagiography whatsoever — a clear junk artifact in the database. All these images are retained in the entry with honest explanations, but do NOT confirm the identity of the Great Martyr Irene of Thessaloniki — only irene_1.jpg does.