Santa Sotéria

Who they were

Soteris was a Roman virgin martyr whom St Ambrose proudly claimed as the glory of his family, which included consuls and prefects. She gave up ornaments and worldly advantages, and when brought before the magistrates in the persecution of Diocletian she bore blows and torture without a groan and was beheaded.

Butler notes that she may have been tortured as a girl under Decius and killed fifty years later. She was buried on the Via Appia, a catacomb later bore her name, and Pope Sergius II moved her body to San Martino ai Monti.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: she has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

A Roman virgin martyr claimed by St Ambrose as his kinswoman.