Martyrs Timothy and Maura

Timothy was a young Reader (anagnostes) of the church at Penapeis in the Thebaid in upper Egypt, around the year 286, during the reign of Diocletian. He was responsible for the church's books — the codices of the Gospels and the prayers used in the liturgy — and when the imperial edict went out commanding the surrender of all sacred Scriptures, the Roman governor came specifically to seize what was in Timothy's keeping. Timothy refused. He had been married only twenty days to his bride Maura when the soldiers arrived.

The governor began with cruelties calculated to break Timothy quickly so that the surrender of the Scriptures might be obtained before any public scandal: red-hot iron rods thrust into his ears, lime poured into his eyes. When this only confirmed his constancy, the governor sent for Maura, expecting that a new bride would be more easily moved than the husband. He told her to persuade Timothy to recant. Maura went to him and, finding him steadfast, said that she could not be his wife in the faith if she had not been his wife in confession. The synaxarion records her words as a confession in their own right.

The governor, baffled and enraged, ordered them both crucified — facing each other, so that each could see the other's suffering, on neighboring crosses. They lived on the crosses for nine days, conversing all the while of the Kingdom and of the visions God granted them. On the tenth day they gave up their souls together.

Their joint feast is kept in the Orthodox Church on May 3.