The life of St Parasceva of Serbia
From childhood she gave away her own clothing to those in need, a habit that drew real frustration from her family before her parents' deaths freed her to follow it fully; at fifteen she was tonsured and, not long after, withdrew to the wilderness near the Jordan, living the ascetic life there for a decade. She returned to her homeland, tradition says at the prompting of a vision, and settled again at Epivates, where she died at only twenty seven and was buried near the sea. Reports of healings at her grave led to the discovery, some time later, that her body remained incorrupt, and her relics were placed in a local church. Three centuries afterward, a different man who happened to share her brother's name, Patriarch Euthymius of Tarnovo in Bulgaria, wrote the Life that fixed her commemoration on this day; the shared name is coincidence, not a family connection. Her relics were carried afterward through an unusually long journey across the medieval Balkans, from Bulgaria's Trnovo to Constantinople and Serbia and finally to Iasi in Romania, where they remain venerated to this day as a saint claimed by several peoples in turn.
