The life of Eugenia and Companions
Drawn to the Christian faith through reading and finding pagan learning empty beside it, she left her family in disguise, together with two household companions, Protus and Hyacinthus, and was baptized and taken into a monastery, living there for years under the name Eugene without her identity being known. When a woman's false accusation brought her before the very tribunal of her own father, she revealed who she was; Philip, moved to faith himself, was baptized with his household, was chosen bishop of Alexandria, and was later killed for it. Eugenia continued her hidden work in Rome, guiding others to baptism, until she too was arrested and martyred, tradition says on the day of the Lord's Nativity; her companions Protus and Hyacinthus had already been beheaded for the faith before her. Afterward she is said to have appeared to her mother in a vision of glory.
Eugenia's story survives only in an account composed centuries after the events it describes, and modern scholarship doubts whether her existence, or the particulars as told, can be verified as history. The Church has nonetheless long honored her memory, and that of her steadfast companions, together.
