The life of St Kyriake of Nicomedia
Her father was beaten for his faith and exiled with her mother, while Kyriake herself was passed from one official to the next for interrogation, first at Nicomedia, then before the governor of Bithynia at Chalcedon, and finally before his successor.
Church tradition remembers her ordeal as marked again and again by deliverance: she endured beatings and burning without yielding, was shown mercy from fire and from wild beasts set against her, and even a pagan temple's idols were said to fall in an earthquake as she prayed within it. Her judges, unable to break her, at last condemned her to die by the sword. Given a little time to pray beforehand, she asked God to receive her soul, and it is said she was taken to Him in that same prayer, before the blow could fall. The faithful gathered her relics and kept them in honor.
