Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Dionysia, martyr in Africa

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.).

[I.G.S.]