St. Parascheva of Iasi

An eleventh-century woman from Epivates on the Sea of Marmara who gave away her clothes to a beggar as a child, left home, and lived as a solitary in the desert of the Jordan until she was warned in a dream to go home to die. Her relics made a long journey after her, following the fortunes of the Orthodox peoples: to Tarnovo in Bulgaria, to Belgrade, to Constantinople, and in 1641 to Iasi in Moldavia, where they are kept in the cathedral. Every October hundreds of thousands of pilgrims queue for days to venerate them. She is called Petka among the Serbs and Bulgarians. Feast: October 14.