PARASKEVA (Parasceve), Saint. - Sister of St. Euthymius, bishop of Madyta, born ca. 1023 at Kallicratia, Epivat and Mesembria (Thrace) on the Black Sea, died at Epivat ca. 1050. She entered a monastery in Chalcedon at the age of 15, where she spent 5 years; after another 5, lived in the desert of the Jordan, she withdrew to Epivat. She was buried on the shore of the Black Sea. Later the inhabitants of the country found her remains there intact and brought them back to Epivat.
The emperor of the Vlach-Bulgarians, John Asen II (1219-41), brought the sacred relics to Tirnovo, to the church of the Forty Martyrs. Bayezid I gave them to Mircea the Great, prince of Wallachia, but after the victory of Nicopolis (1396) he took them back and donated them to the knjaghina Angelina of Serbia. Suleiman II (1520-66), transforming the central church of Belgrade into a mosque, had the relics sold together with other sacred treasures to the patriarch of Constantinople for 12 thousand ducats. From there Basil Lupu, prince of Moldavia, took them in 1641, paying for them 2,516,000 "aspers" in all, and deposited them in the church of the Three Hierarchs of Jassy. The sacred relics were miraculously saved from a fire on the night of 26-27 Dec. 1888. The feast of the Saint is 14 Oct.
P. is the most popular saint of the Balkans and among the Romanians and Slavs under the homonymous form of Piatnizza (=fifth day, Friday). For the Greeks her popularity seems connected with a devotion to Good Friday. Among the Romanians it must have had contact with St. Vineri, an unknown saint who has ancient churches in the great cities, and with the "St. Vineri" of folk tales (Friday or Venus), a sort of fairy, an earth goddess. To the devotion of Good Friday there is linked, it seems, the P. of Novgorod, since it is not possible to identify her with other homonymous martyrs.
Bibliography3 works
Petre Vălimăreanu