Virgin Martyr Syra of Persia

Syra was a sixth-century virgin martyr of Persia, the daughter of an illustrious pagan priest of the Zoroastrian fire-worshippers. According to the synaxarion, she was born at Karkh-Seleucia in Elimiade and was raised within the priestly caste of her father's religion. After the death of her mother, her father sent her to the city of Tharsis to be educated as a pagan priestess, and she came to serve at a temple of the sacred fire.

By tradition, Syra came to faith in Christ after speaking with poor Christian women, and her conversion was confirmed by a miraculous healing when she touched the vestments of a Christian priest. She secretly took up the Christian life, learning prayers and Psalms, fasting, and reading Christian books, until she openly confessed Christ during a morning fire sacrifice, rejecting the gods of her people. When her father discovered her conversion he beat her and imprisoned her, urging her with both threats and entreaties to return to the religion of the fire-worshippers, but she remained steadfast.

The synaxarion relates that her father denounced her to the pagan high priest and to the civil authorities under the Persian emperor Chosroes (Chozroes the Elder, identified as Chosroes I). While imprisoned she received Holy Baptism. She was condemned to death and, by the tradition, was strangled with a rope and drowned, suffering martyrdom about the year 558 at the age of eighteen. She is commemorated on August 24.