Saint Domnina and her daughters Berenice (Bernice, Veronica, Verine, Vernike) and Prosdoce are venerated as Christian martyrs by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
[1] According to 4th-century Greek bishop and historian Eusebius, Domnina was an extremely wealthy and well-known Christian noblewoman from Antioch who had two widely-desired young daughters.
[4] Feminist scholarship on Domnina argues that her story as proliferated by Eusebius's and John Chrysostom's homilies were a tool in reshaping norms of wealthy Roman motherhood toward a Christian ideal of motherhood concerned with "pudicitia," meaning "feminine modesty" and "pietas," meaning piety.
[5] This scholarship also argues that Chrysostom's homily specifically accentuates and reframes Eusebius's original narrative toward such norms — the retelling was intentionally utilized to "pattern feminine behavior" within Christian congregations that was different from Roman norms of elite motherhood in its "rabid" pursuit of chastity.
[6] Moss also argues that even still, the level of persecution under Diocletian is exaggerated by modern Christian rhetoric, and that these persecutions resulted from the church committing the "capital offense" of "treason and sedition," not specifically due the nature of Christian beliefs.