Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology. Usuardus. Authority: — Victor of Utica, De Pers. Vandai. lib. v.] In 484 Huneric, the Arian Vandal king of Africa, banished the Catholic bishops. Dionysia, a lady remarkable for her beauty as well as for her piety, was taken up, and scourged in the forum, till her back and sides were raw, and dripped with blood. Majoricus, her son, turned deadly pale, and trembled. Seeing him faint with horror, she turned towards him, and said, “ My son, do not forget that you have been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity into the Catholic Church, our Mother. Let us not lose the garment of our salvation, lest the Master of the Feast find us without the wedding raiment, and cast us forth into outer darkness.”

The lad was encouraged by her words to endure martyrdom. His mother embraced his dead body, and buried it in her own house, that she might pray over his tomb. Dativa her sister, her cousin iEmilianus, a physician, Tertius or Terecius, Leontia, and Boniface also were scourged and tortured. A nobleman of Tuburbo, named Severus, was beaten, and then hoisted into the air, then jerked down on the pavement, and pulled up again, the whole weight of his body being supported by ropes round his wrists. He was next dragged over the pavement, along the streets, which were reddened with his blood.

At Cucusa there were many confessors and martyrs. Among them was a lady named Victoria, who was hung over a slow fire. Her husband, who had become an Arian [followers of Arius, who taught that the Son is a created being, not fully God], brought her babes to the place, in hopes that the sight of them might nerve her to abandon her confession of the Consubstantial. But she turned her eyes away from them. She was cast off the rack when the executioner thought her dead, but she eventually recovered.