Dionysia, martyr in Africa

“I entreat you, give no place to despondency. This is a dangerous temptation–a refined, not a gross temptation of the adversary. Melancholy contracts and withers the heart, and renders it unfit to receive the impressions of grace. It magnifies and gives a false colouring to objects, and thus renders your burdens too heavy to bear. God’s designs regarding you, and His methods of bringing about these designs, are infinitely wise.” – Madame Guyon

Published February 10, 2011 |

Dionysia (3), St., a Christian martyr in the 5th cent. According to the narrative of Victor Vitensis, her contemporary, she was a lady of rare beauty in Africa, who preferred tortures, shameful indignities, and death to renouncing her faith; a victim of the persecution of the orthodox or Catholic Christians by Hunneric, king of the Vandals. The date assigned for her martyrdom is 484.

See Victor Vitensis, de Persecutione Africanâ, V. c. 1; ap. Migne, Patr. Lat. lvii.; Tillem., Mémoires, t. xvi. (Paris, 1701, 4to); Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, t. viii. p. 463 (Lucae, 1741, fol.).

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wace/biodict.html?term=Dionysia,%20martyr%20in%20Africa