The holy Martyrs Ferbutha, the Consecrated Virgin, sister of the holy Hieromartyr Symeon, Bishop of Persia; and her sister, and her sister’s handmaid.
Saint Ferbutha of Persia was the sister of Saint Symeon the Bishop (celebrated Apr. 17), and both are mentioned in Book II of Sozomen’s Ecclesiastical History. After her brother Saint Symeon had been killed with many others in the great persecution raised by Sapor (Shapur), King of Persia, the Queen fell ill. Certain enemies of our Faith told the Queen that Ferbutha, Symeon’s sister, had put spells on her to avenge her brother’s death. Certain Magi were sent to arrest Saint Ferbutha, her sister, and her sister’s servant: the first and last were consecrated virgins; her sister, though married, was living in continence. When they were brought to be questioned, one of the Magi was inwardly stricken with her beauty. Sozomen reports that Saint Ferbutha was said to be “beautiful and very stately in form.” After condemning all three to death, the Magus sent secretly to Saint Ferbutha in prison and promised to free her and her two companions if she would marry him. She refused with disgust. The three women were sawn in half and placed in six baskets suspended on forked posts, three on each side of the road, for the queen to pass between them, which she had been told would heal her of her malady.
In his Ecclesiastical History, Sozomen calls Saint Ferbutha “Tarbula”; he gives her history in Book II, chapter xii, pages 266–67 of NPNF, Second Series, Vol. II, and he gives the history of her brother Saint Symeon in chapter ix, pages 264–65.
A translation of the Syriac version of the martyrdom of Saint Ferbutha and her companions can be found in Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, Sebastian Brock and Susan Harvey, University of California Press, 1987, where she is called “Tarbo.”
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