Righteous Соломония мать Маккавеев

Martyr Solomonia was the mother of the seven Maccabee brothers who suffered in Antioch around 166 BC during the persecution of the Hellenizing king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who sought by force to compel the Jews to abandon the Law of Moses. Before Solomonia's eyes, her sons — from the eldest to the youngest — were tortured one after another and put to death for refusing to eat food forbidden by the Law and to worship pagan gods. According to 2 Maccabees (chapter 7), far from dissuading her sons, their mother encouraged each of them, telling them it was not she who gave them life, but the Creator of the world, who on the day of resurrection would restore both body and soul to those faithful to His law. After the death of her last, youngest son, Marcellus, Solomonia herself, raising her hands in thanksgiving to God, died. The Church honors Solomonia together with her sons and their teacher, the elder Eleazar, as Old Testament martyrs foreshadowing Christian martyrdom for the faith. Her feast is kept, inseparably from theirs, on August 1/14.