Martyr Alexandra the Empress

The Martyr Alexandra was an empress who suffered in Nicomedia together with the Great Martyr George the Trophy-bearer during the persecution of Diocletian; she is commemorated with him on 23 April (6 May). According to her Life, she came to faith after seeing George healed by an angel after torture on the wheel and emerge unharmed from a pit of quicklime. When she learned that he had shattered the idols in the temple of Apollo with the sign of the Cross, she confessed Christ openly before the court and rebuked the emperor. Diocletian sentenced her to death together with George; on the way to execution she grew faint, sat down by the road and died (another version says she was beheaded).

Many Russian texts, including St Dimitry of Rostov, call her Diocletian's wife, but early Byzantine Lives do not, and the only known wife of Diocletian was Prisca, who died in 313. The Menaion published by the Moscow Patriarchate identified Alexandra with Prisca and dated her death to 314, the year given in the current Russian calendar; the Orthodox Encyclopedia regards this as unproven. Her short Life was translated into Slavonic as early as the twelfth century.