Servitude and Faith
The sources describe Matrona as a young girl held in slavery in the household of a woman named Pautila, also given as Pantilla, whom they identify as Jewish and as the wife of a senior official of Thessalonica—named variously as a military commander or the governor of the city.
According to the tradition of her life, Matrona had believed in Christ from her youth and held to her faith despite her mistress's repeated attempts to convert her to Judaism. She is said to have continued to attend church in secret, keeping her Christian observance hidden within a household opposed to it.
Martyrdom
The principal account of her death relates that, when Matrona refused to enter a synagogue together with her mistress, Pautila had her beaten so severely that she died of her wounds a few days afterward. The Orthodox tradition records that her faith was discovered, that she was beaten and bound, and that she died rather than renounce Christ.
An alternative tradition, preserved chiefly in the Western veneration of the saint, holds instead that she was put to death at Rome for the time she gave to ministering to Christians. The Orthodox commemoration follows the Thessalonican account of her death by beating.
Veneration
Matrona is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on March 27 (April 9 on the old-style calendar). Her veneration was long established at Thessalonica itself: a church dedicated to her stood near the Via Egnatia and is referred to in the Book of the Miracles of Saint Demetrius, and the monastery of St. Matrona is reckoned among the first three monasteries of Thessaloniki, existing about the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century.
A parallel veneration developed in the West, where she is identified with Matrona of Barcelona (Catalan Madrona) and kept on March 15. There she is honored as patron of the church of Santa Madrona in Barcelona, the Santa Madrona hermitage on the mountain of Montjuïc, and churches in the Catalan villages of Madrona and Mora d'Ebre.
