St. Apollonia

St. Apollonia was an aged Christian virgin, most likely a deaconess, of Alexandria in Egypt, who was martyred during an outbreak of anti-Christian violence in that city about the year 249, in the last years before the persecution of the Emperor Decius. Her death is recorded in an early and reliable source, a letter of St. Dionysius of Alexandria preserved by the historian Eusebius, which lends her story unusual historical weight among the early martyrs.

According to that account, a pagan mob seized her, beat her, and struck out her teeth, then threatened to burn her alive unless she uttered impious words against Christ. Asking a moment's freedom, she cast herself willingly into the flames rather than deny her Lord, so that the Church has honored her as a martyr who gave her life for the faith. Because of the manner of her suffering, she came to be invoked especially by those afflicted with toothache and diseases of the teeth, and is a patron of dentists. Her memory is kept on 9 February.