MAMA, Saint and Martyr. — Venerated in early Christian East and commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology on 17 August and in the Greek Synaxaria on 2 September. His body rested at Caesarea in Cappadocia, and over his tomb, about the mid-4th century, the brothers Gallus and Julian the Apostate, then exiled to Macellum, erected a basilica (Sozomen, Hist. ecc., V, 2). His feast was celebrated with great popular attendance.
From the discourses delivered in his honour by St Basil and St Gregory Nazianzen we learn only that he was a shepherd and that he died during the reign of Aurelian. The Passio, written toward the end of the 4th century by three alleged bishops, is highly legendary. According to this account, MAMA was educated by the bishop of Caesarea, Tamasius; at the age of twelve he withdrew to a cave where he lived together with wild beasts. Captured by soldiers and brought before the tribunal of the prefect Alexander, after various torments he was shut up in prison and left without food for a month. Finally he was led to the amphitheatre to be exposed to wild beasts, but he died without the beasts having touched him.