The Holy Martyr Pherbutha, her widowed sister and their slave.

Commemorated April 4 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

In the reign of the Persian King Saborius, a bishop, St Simeon, was executed. His sister, Pherbutha, was taken to court for the Queen's pleasure. Pherbutha was unusually beautiful, and she therefore had many suitors, including pagan priests and soothsayers. Pherbutha refused them all, thus bringing down great wrath upon her head. When, just at that time, the Queen fell ill, all the priests informed the King that the Queen had been poisoned by Pherbutha, and, as a means of healing, proposed that Pherbutha, her sister and their slave, as Christians, be sawn to pieces, that three parts of their bodies be placed on one side and three on the other, and that the Queen be taken through between them. The King agreed to this bloody suggestion of the soothsayers', and Pherbutha, her sister and their slave-girl suffered in this way for Christ in 343, thereby meriting an unfading wreath in the deathless Kingdom of their Lord.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK